Understanding Mictlan

[HoneyBadger]

Well, Dom 2 is definitely a tradeoff then, but if it wasn't then my strategy might make Mictlan too powerful, and that wouldn't be good either. If you want to use the above suggestion, then you might want to consider Wishing your Dominion a little higher when you're able to, and maintaining a vigilant program of temple-building and blood-sacrificing.

I'm actually happy to be able to say that it's not perfect. It's not meant to be.

[mivayan]

Random fact: No matter what forge bonuses you have, a soul contract still costs 65 blood slaves and 5 fire gems. Why? Game balance. And it's fairly thematic.

Random fact two: You always need more (on average) blood sacrifices to spread dominion if you started with dominion 2 than if you started with 6, even if you have 100 temples. This might be a bug since the manual disagrees.

[Aleph]

Honeybadger - I was more asking about whether people bother empowering someone with earth before an imprisoned pretender wakes up, since it takes some time and in the meantime I'd like to be working some better forging mojo. There's some decent earth/astral mixes, so that's where my mind went.

I'll keep that in mind about the regeneration. Not a huge deal for rank-and-file if you're only pushing 5%, but probably a nice boost for the larger nationals and the affliction prevention can't hurt. While we're on the topic, can you or someone tell me how the game handles fractions? Are they kept, rounded up, or rounded down?

Seriously, man - some part of me wants to play an uber-broken turkey-mage strategy, and if you've any guidance I'd love to hear it.

Mivayan - someone was saying in another post (possibly my newb undead post) that high initial dominion is always stronger than low initial dominion, no matter how templed. I can't verify that for sure, but when I play LA Ermor with Dominion 10 I definitely run roughshod over the dominion of my enemies, even when they have lots of temples.

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for the information, Miyavan. It actually helps because it's just as efficient for Mictlan to produce Soul Contracts before or after obtaining a forge bonus.

Aleph, I was just thinking earth for the Dwarven Hammer. Miyavan, I think forging bonus still applies to gem-producing items, doesn't it? If so, then it's still a really good idea. I don't know where my manual is but if I did, I'd post the types and costs in path levels and gems of the various gem-producers and how these could be applied efficiently to Mictlan.

[Aleph]

Certainly the forge spell works for clams, it drove my whole LA R'yleh economy.

[HoneyBadger]

So boosting up to dwarven hammer is definitely worth the time, gems, and trouble.

[Baalz]

Here’s an alternative strategy, lean & mean. I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, so it’s a rough sketch.

Take turmoil, sloth, growth, luck, magic (magic at least should be 3). An imprisoned pretender with one 9th level bless and one 4th level (your choice) and a dominion of at least 8 (higher is better). First turn get a cheap priest and make the tribal king your prophet, recruit maximum number of your favorite sacred troops (I like Jaguar Warriors). Second turn, prophet recruits slaves, priest begins blood sacrificing, get another set of sacred troops and about 10 cheapo warriors (note: do NOT buy more soldiers just because you haven’t spent all your resources, you’re saving every gold piece at this point). 16-20 sacreds should be plenty to start conquering indys with a screen of disposable warriors to catch arrows.

Continue this pattern, every turn recruiting as many sacred warriors as you can, with just enough non-sacreds to catch arrows. You should have an indy-conquering force every other turn, be expending very little gold (you’re recruiting an average of about 12 cheap units every turn, and almost all your troops are sacred so your upkeep is low). You should have enough for a second castle very quickly, put it up as soon as possible, then repeat sol you have a third castle, which should also happen very quickly (particularly if you’re lucky in your random events. At this point your research has been going kinda slowly because you’re only recruiting a researcher every other turn (the other turns your recruiting priest kings to lead your armies), but now you’re cranking out around 30 jaguar warriors a turn, and 2-3 researchers who are so cheap they’re practically free (but are giving 5 research points apiece because of your magic scale). Now your options start opening up, you’ve got a fairly tough offensive ability if any of your neighbors are looking shaky this early in the game, but all you really need to do is maintain a holding pattern as you leverage your low upkeep (your army is relatively small and sacred and your researchers as well) to plop down several more castles as you research straight towards construction-4. Put the castles on provinces with at least 5000 population.

If you manage to get the national hero with death (not unlikely with a heavy luck scale) forge some skull mentors, and if any of your neighbors has a weak dominion creating a few jade daggers will ruin their day, but the real prize here is the sanguine dowsing rod. Immediately upon hitting construction-4 forge as many of them as you have blood slaves for. In each of your non-capitol castles set up 3 of your cheap priests with sanguine rods to blood hunt, and put the tax rate to 0. At this point your income is going to drop a bit, but again you’ve got a nice, low-upkeep army. Keep recruiting cheapo priests every turn, as many as you can get, and switch all research to blood. You should have sufficient cheapo priests at this point (plus the capacity to recruit them every turn) that the research goes a lot faster, so your sacred national troops should be enough to defend your borders long enough for you to get to blood 4, 5 & 6, which you’ll hit with several hundred blood slaves in the bank. Make sure you have a couple dudes doing bowl of blood, as some of the blood sites really cut your casting cost by a lot.

At this point you’ve got too many options to list, but that’s when it gets fun.