AI unblamable for Mictlans early dominion death !

[Nerfix]

So, home province has conversion rate of 0? I thought that Mictlan was supposed to get *at least* Dominion spread from that.

[Meglobob]

This is ALL explained under Mictian on page 93 of the manual.

Basically EA/LA Mictian's only source of dominion spread r pretender (1/2 as effective as a normal pretender) and temple sacrifices, 1 sacrifice per priest level.

This is not bugged, but themed and has early drawbacks but could be a game winner if used correctly later on.

I see no problem with it in MP, anyone choosing Mictian should have an effective strategy to spread Dominion with blood sacrifice.

In SP, well the AI has issues so needs looking at, until then in SP I suggest people avoid playing against EA/LA Mictian.

[Arralen]

Meglobob said:
This is ALL explained under Mictian on page 93 of the manual.

Those who can read ... . The thread is about the AI ... and did I say it isn't in the manual?

But that it is written in the manual, does it make it absolute, correct-without-a-doubt? Btw., the game "was there first", and the manual is wrong on details sometimes anyway ... .

The problems are the following:

- holy-1 priest seem only able to 'hold' the dominions strength level at 1. With only 1 priest allowed per temple, this means you'll need a 2nd temple in a 2nd province to get more dominion (spread). More likely, an enemy dominion will have killed you by that time.

- the LA Mictlan site gives only 1 bloodslave, while the old site (Dom2 and EA) gives 3 IIRC => blood hunting needed from turn 1

- the AI will most likely use the first priest it buys, but not necessarily the prophet. Looks like it ends up with a holy-1 priest 90% of the time, and therefore dom strength 1 until it has conquered another province and build a temple there. And maybe, just maybe a 2nd holy-1 priest sacrificing there (where does he get his blood slaves from, though?) will be enough to push its dom strength to 2+ ...


Ergo: Prophet and home province should spread dominion for Mictlan (or similar blood nations) as well. Thematically it's hardly understandable that it isn't that way anyway. For players it will make little difference, as they have little trouble to optimize their MM to make sure they have enough dom strength, at least in the beginning. But for the AI it will be the difference between life and death within the first 8 turns !!

[Peter Ebbesen]

Interesting conclusion, Arralen. A radically different conclusion might be: "In pretender design, EA and LA Mictlan AIs should always choose an awake pretender with a decent strength of dominion"

After all, that would have the effect desired: more and better dominion checks in the home province in the early game for Mictlan, thus preventing dominion-death, and it would have that effect without changing any rules whatsoever but just adding a few guidance rules to the AIs pretender design.

(More generally, if it was possible to set "guidance rules" for pretender design on a nation basis and made possible to mod this, we'd probably end up with much more capable AIs in general than we have now)

[PDF]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Interesting conclusion, Arralen. A radically different conclusion might be: "In pretender design, EA and LA Mictlan AIs should always choose an awake pretender with a decent strength of dominion"

After all, that would have the effect desired: more and better dominion checks in the home province in the early game for Mictlan, thus preventing dominion-death, and it would have that effect without changing any rules whatsoever but just adding a few guidance rules to the AIs pretender design.

(More generally, if it was possible to set "guidance rules" for pretender design on a nation basis and made possible to mod this, we'd probably end up with much more capable AIs in general than we have now)

Combine this with "Mictlan is specifically designed for big bless effects - and suck without it" and what do you have ? A contradiction !! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

[Meglobob]

PDF says:-
Combine this with "Mictlan is specifically designed for big bless effects - and suck without it" and what do you have ? A contradiction !!

OR

A strategic choice...