Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[Jim_Parker]

The Panther said:I also wonder about your mass sacrificing at strategic points thing. A huge problem is that only one priest at a time can sacrifice in a province with a temple. I simply cannot see how mass sacrificing will work at all.

What I was assuming was a constant 5 slave sacrifice over a few turns would really start to turn the dominion around. That's why I was saving up rather than just sporadically cutting a few throats.

As for the population loss thing, your pop is dying if you don't have growth. Write down the population in a provimce from one turn to the next and see how much it goes down each month. Every blood slave you create results in a loss of a minimum of 2 people per slave. The virgin and her mother perhaps???

So, 3 hunters in a single province over 5K population will lose you 30-35 people each turn for the 15 slaves on average that you get. Add in a -0.4% loss from death 2, and you would be losing 50+ pop per turn.

Hmmm, I'd better look more closely at the figures I'm seeing. Is there another factor involved, like migration perhaps? I've seen a few migrations from my lands before due to misfortune events...do those people actually go elsewhere? Even if they do, I can't quite understand why they'd choose my empire instead.

By the way, I did have my level 5 prophet with the jade knife successfully sacrifice 8 slaves per turn, just as it is supposed to be. Even then, though, I could not get my dominion to expand. Probably because I am squeezed between a 10-dominion Ermor and a rapdily expanding Caelum...

I dunno...there must be a constant effect thing in progress surely? The province I'm currently blood hunting/slaving in had a -1 dominion (as I said, it's right next to the Caelum capital) to start with. It rapidly fell to a -3 but went straight to -2 the turn I built a temple. It's now -1 and I haven't sacrificed a single slave all game or 17 turns overall. A clarification on how Mictlan's dominion worked would be a good place to start I think.

[Cainehill]

The Panther said:
I have to agree about the sacrifice thing. It seems to work odd at best. The dominion spread from sacrificing does not seem to be the same as the dominion spread from temples for other races. Four slaves sacrificed in a single province is supposed to produce 4 temple checks, but it seems less than this in practice. I wonder if the devs can explain this for real. In my current game, I am sacrificing 20 slaves per turn and still not gaining any dominion.

I'm likewise dubious that it's working the way it should be. In one game with Vanheim, I had about 25 temples, 15 of them on one border. All of them I got to neutral or friendly dominion but one in the corner. So - four turns of having a Priest/Blood Van-leader with a jade knife doing sacrifices. Dominion remained stucked at -1 the whole time, with my prophet (dominion strength 10) in the next province, plus all the temples.

The Panther said:
I have to agree about the sacrifice thing. It seems to work odd at best. The dominion spread from sacrificing does not seem to be the same as the dominion spread from temples for other races.

After some tests on Mictlan some time ago I came to the conclusion that the chance to gain a white candle with a sacrifice is 4 times less than an ordinary temple check.
If the chance to get a candle is 10% * maximum dominion, the chance to get a candle with a slave is only 2,5 % * max dominion.

I dont know if the devs are fully aware of this, I think I've never seen an official post on that question...

Cheers

[PDF]

Sunray_be said:

After some tests on Mictlan some time ago I came to the conclusion that the chance to gain a white candle with a sacrifice is 4 times less than an ordinary temple check.
If the chance to get a candle is 10% * maximum dominion, the chance to get a candle with a slave is only 2,5 % * max dominion.

I dont know if the devs are fully aware of this, I think I've never seen an official post on that question...

Cheers

It makes sense - as a bug : isn't sacrifice supposed to be 4 times MORE efficient than Temple check ?

[Huzurdaddi]

With 3 hunters per province, zero tax rate, and no patrolling, you can just about balance the pop loss from hunting with 2 growth.

The real power of Mictlain is that you have the slaves for patrolling. If you are not partolling with Mictlain you are not getting the most blood / time that you can and that inefficient for THE blood nation.

And getting back to the original post for a second. Mictlain has basically, 2 options:

1) Make a bless pretender and expand using your decent sacred troops.
2) Make an SC pretender and expand using your SC

The advantage to #1 is that you do not have to research alteration-3 which is nice. The disadvantage to #1 is that you have to make troops which cost money which could have been spent on more mages for blood hunting and using that blood.

The downside to #2 is that you *need* to take Blood-3 ( or ) and Water-3 on your pretender since you just *have* to have the ice devils. This may be difficult to take on an SC pretender and not break the bank.

[Jim_Parker]

Huzurdaddi said:The real power of Mictlain is that you have the slaves for patrolling. If you are not partolling with Mictlain you are not getting the most blood / time that you can and that inefficient for THE blood nation.

Not sure I agree with that. Patrolling is very costly in population so it's really self defeating. You can counter it with growth but you can also counter having a few 0% tax 'feeder provinces' with order - and not have to suffer terrible unrest (therefore you have no need of patrolling).

If you take the patrol/growth route you'll have a larger standing army...if slaves can be called an 'army'. If you use a few feeder provinces at 0% tax you can run a proper empire elsewhere.

It probably works out fairly similar. The patrol/growth tactic is bound to end up taxing your economy quite badly. Slaves are cheap but not in the numbers you'd need to patrol every province. On the plus side, you should be able to get an awful lot of bloodslaves.

If you have a few feeder provinces and order, the tax revenue you lose is going to be more than made up for elsewhere. It's basically substituting growth for order. This empire will have more cash and less blood slaves...but how many blood slaves do you really need?

[Kel]

Keep in mind that you don't have to take growth to counteract population loss, you can just take more provinces

- Kel

[Jim_Parker]

Kel said:
Keep in mind that you don't have to take growth to counteract population loss, you can just take more provinces

- Kel

Good with Ermor, not quite so good with Mictlan...although I can definitely see the benifits of having an undead horde opposed to a bunch of awful troops.

This is probably why Mictlan doesn't have any death mages...kinda a no-brainer if they did.

[Huzurdaddi]

Not sure I agree with that. Patrolling is very costly in population so it's really self defeating. You can counter it with growth but you can also counter having a few 0% tax 'feeder provinces' with order - and not have to suffer terrible unrest (therefore you have no need of patrolling).

With patrolling you can blood hunt in every provicne with more than 5k pop. Those 12k pop provinces that make your economy go? Those can easily maintain 100% taxes and hold 2 or 3 blood hunters with 50-100 partollers. The cost? 5-10 gold in maintainance. That sounds like a bargin to me.

When you are playig Mictain the blood must flow. Every province should be blood hunted.

As an added bonus it's darn hard for other people to spy on you! Yay!

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
With patrolling you can blood hunt in every provicne with more than 5k pop. Those 12k pop provinces that make your economy go? Those can easily maintain 100% taxes and hold 2 or 3 blood hunters with 50-100 partollers. The cost? 5-10 gold in maintainance. That sounds like a bargin to me.

You've missed most of the cost there. Unrest from blood hunting is generated before taxation, and then the unrest is removed by patrolling. Your actual income is quite a bit lower than what it would be had you not blood hunted at all.

Plus, a few patrollers with 10 or so hunters will wipe out 5000 people in about 5 turns, while putting three or foud hunters in that same province would let it Last for the rest of the game. The best long-term strategy is to spread your hunters throughout many provinces.