Blood Kings: Lanka vs. Mictlan

[Shovah32]

Dragonlord, if you have a decent bless with mictlan(which you should) then jaguar fiends and maybe beast bats should be good national summons for you. As for non-nationals ice devils, arch devils and heliophagi all make fine thugs/SCs(as does father illearth). For your SCs/Thugs(such as father illearth) luck, ethereality, reinvigoration, fear, fireshield(or another way to kill alot of enemies), high defence, high prot, regeneration and quickness(and many other things from items or buffs cast by the commander) are all helpful things that may help them take on larger enemy forces. Also consider using them in groups or with your armies if they arent doing well alone.

[Aleph]

I'm definitely not extensively experienced in Mictlan, but I like them as much as I like any nation in the game (most enjoyment thus far - Yomi, EA/LA Mictlan, MA/LA Ermor, LA Rl'yeh).

1. I tried to cover this above in the "bloodhunters of mictlan are cheaper but mictlan needs to spend blood in dominion maintenance" point. Not saying that mictlan spends 1/3 of its blood in dominion maintenance, but I've often spent 30+ slaves in sacrifice a round in 150 province games.
2. Lanka can easily forge knives, and if they want to sacrifice then level 2 priests with jade knives in temples that do spread dominion are pretty much the same as level 3 priests in non-functional temples.
3. See point 5.
4. Mictlan national summons do rock - I love the Tlahuelpuchi and Civeteto as assassins and leader/reanimators respective, and the Onaqui is great. So do Lanka's summons, however, albeit benefitting more from defensive than offensive blesses. And Lankan high end summons are remarkably good SCs, able to cast Mistform and Mirror Image, being sacred, and one possessing Blood Vengeance while the other automatically shrouds the battlefield in Darkness while possessing a fatiguing aura. I've taken out 100+ unit armies with a single Dakini with a snake ring, snake bladder stick, horned helm, and vine shield (funded by an early game mother oak, in turn funded by an early game push to skull mentors - an option that Mictlan generally lacks unless they get lucky with their national hero, since your pretender will likely be imprisoned for the best bless).
5. I made a similar point above re: Mictlan's magic being in general more predictable, but this particular example doesn't hold water. Armor of Thorns requires a little more luck, but it's definitely doable. All it takes is a bramble mace (forged by a Yogini, guaranteed nature 2) and either a lucky BBB Rakshasi or an empowered BB Rakshasi (not particularly rare, roughly 50% of all Rakshasi are at least BB), which is the same thing you do with Priest Kings. Then your assembly line is up and rolling, and the random picks which were annoying in fact now potentially give you anywhere from N4 to B4 with Armor of Thorns alone, without empowering or further items.
6-8. Lanka's national rank and file summons are pretty heavy brawlers and can do quite well all the way up, and their B6 national is a flying AAABBBDHH with Blood Vengeance for 50 blood. I'm not saying that Ice Devils wouldn't be nice on top of that, but I didn't really miss them and wouldn't use many of them in preference to the Dakini.
9. I think you're overestimating the difficulty this causes - it has pros and cons, like everything. But since they can get past the Armor of Thorns/Brazen Vessel/Blood Thorn horizon without any real difficulty, it's not a stumbling block on their road to blood dominance.

I want Mictlan to be the best at blood, and I'm certainly not super experienced in either nation. Initially, however, Lanka seems like it has too much blood power for the other things it has.

[Huzurdaddi]

I don't know what Mictlan "gives up" to be the best blood nation. They have the most cost effective sacred troop in the game ( jaguar warror ) and it is recruitable everywhere. It is totally broken. Most people who play Mictlan build this one troop almost to the exclusion of all others so the argument that their conventional army is bad does not hold water.

The only thing that Mictlan does "give up" is automatic dominion spread. However, considering the very heavy bless that is commonly taken with Mictlan ( and the associated very bad scales ) this is not necessarily a bad thing. Mictlan can easily control when and where their dominion lies. The cost for this is very heavy micromanagement. But that is the cost of playing a MP game.

PS: The Jauguar warrior *may* not be as cost effective as the Van, although in the CB mod I think that the Van was correctly nerfed. Also in some cases Nifel Giants may be more cost effective, but they are not recruitable everywhere which somewhat limits them ( not a huge limit considering that they rarely die, but still limits them ).

[NickW]

Huzurdaddi said:
I don't know what Mictlan "gives up" to be the best blood nation. They have the most cost effective sacred troop in the game ( jaguar warror ) and it is recruitable everywhere. It is totally broken. Most people who play Mictlan build this one troop almost to the exclusion of all others so the argument that their conventional army is bad does not hold water.

Mictlan has no high protection troops, no effective ranged troops, no cavalry for fast attacks, etc. Jaguar warriors are very predictable and predictable is bad. I can count the number of times as Mictlan I've watched my hordes of Jaguar warriors get hung on cheap summon trash from castings of Summon Sprites or Howl while ranged units shred them.

Huzurdaddi said:
The only thing that Mictlan does "give up" is automatic dominion spread. However, considering the very heavy bless that is commonly taken with Mictlan ( and the associated very bad scales ) this is not necessarily a bad thing. Mictlan can easily control when and where their dominion lies. The cost for this is very heavy micromanagement. But that is the cost of playing a MP game.

Giving up normal dominion spread can be really bad news, especially if one starts out neighboring, oh, say, Ermor or Rlyeh in late era.

The whole idea of micromanaging spread of one's own bad dominion is quite frankly a bad idea and I wish people would stop suggesting this as a reasonable way to play Mictlan. It's do-able but not a good idea. Mictlan needs the dominion spread in order to get free summons out of Onanqui (A great late game Mictlan trick) plus of course Mictlan can't benefit from their neighbors good dominion.

No, Mictlan needs dominion spread and is forced to spend blood to get it.

Huzurdaddi said:
PS: The Jauguar warrior *may* not be as cost effective as the Van, although in the CB mod I think that the Van was correctly nerfed. Also in some cases Nifel Giants may be more cost effective, but they are not recruitable everywhere which somewhat limits them ( not a huge limit considering that they rarely die, but still limits them ).

Giants and Vans don't have an easy obvious counter like Jags do. Jags are low protection and low HP compared to Vans and Giants and have no shields or other special defensive abilities so archers just shred them.

[Shovah32]

Well f9w9s9 gives jags increase speed and twist fate so archers dont shred them quite as badly as other unarmoured troops, jaguar warriors also have a second form. A tough thug/SC out front can draw plenty of archer fire easily and mictlan also has multiple flying sacreds(eagle warriors, beast bats, jaguar fiends, summoned commanders ect)

[Huzurdaddi]

NickW, I thought that you were pretty solidly against the domination of blessed troops in Dom3. Guess I was wrong.

Anyway,

NickW said:
Jags are low protection and low HP compared to Vans and Giants

The low HP part is simply not true wrt. Vans. Jags have at a minimum 18 HP ( I do not know if the two HPs add, it is difficult to see on the battle map and I have not looked that hard, if they add they have 30 HP). Assuming 18 HP that is more HP straight out than Vans and more and x2 more HP/gold than Nifel Giants.

NickW said:
Mictlan has no high protection troops, no effective ranged troops, no cavalry for fast attacks, etc.

That is irrelevant. Their Jags are on a cost basis ( assuming heavy bless, we can factor in the cost of bad scales on Mictlan as well ) far superior to any mundane troop in the game. I doubt it is possible to construct an army composed of mundane troops (ie: archers, cav, and high prot troops ) supported by mundane leaders which can come close to defeating an army of jags where both armies have comparable gold costs.

NickW said:
Giants and Vans don't have an easy obvious counter like Jags do.

Agreed. Vans are gold for gold, probably the best troops in the game ( as I said I think that they have been well priced in CB mod, and in that mod I think that the Jag has gone to top gold for gold troop ). Giants at least have the limitation that they are only recruitable at the home province ( may or may not be a limit since they do not die commonly ).

f9w9s9 is one heavy bless! I was only thinking about the ubiquitous f9w9 bless.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I played Lanka a bunch yesterday (studying up for a new MP game), and I’ve got a much better handle on them now.

1) At least the way I play them, Mictlan will always have significantly more blood slaves for two reasons. First, as previously mentioned the blood hunters are 50% less expensive, this makes a big difference when you’re focusing on blood and plan to be paying upkeep on lots of blood hunters and maximizing the amount of provinces you can use for blood hunting (as in don't have much income). Secondly all the other units are much less expensive. Obviously this is a trade off as you’re getting pretty good units for your gold, but every game I’m playing Lanka I’m strapped for gold as I always want more brawlers, more of the very expensive (non-sacred, high upkeep) random path mages to increase my path coverage, more of the expensive demon kings to lead my demons, etc (you didn’t want to reanimate corpses did you?). Not only are you balancing the spending of new gold, but also the upkeep cost for Lanka I find is much higher. This cuts not only into how many/how fast you deploy blood hunters, but also how many provinces you can devote to blood hunting. Again, this is more the way I play it than anything else, but I find Lanka is harder to really focus on blood hunting because of the opportunity cost. At the end of the day though, even if everything else was equal you’ll have 50% more blood hunters with Mictlan.

2) I don’t think Lanka can blood sacrifice, can they? If they can I must have totally missed that.

3) Lanka’s national summons are indeed pretty good, probably about par with Mictlan’s. I might give an edge to Mictlan on the low end summons as flying sacreds is a nice complement to their forces and solidly help against Jaguar warrior counters, while Lanka’s low end summons don’t really add a lot to their versatility (wohoo, more brawlers!). High end summons are probably comparable in power…gotta love that blood vengeance!

4) I maintain my point about Mictlan having an advantage due to not having to rely on random pics for the simple reason of economics. Again, this may change with my play style, but I found I had no problem having the paths I needed with Lanka but the tradeoff was that I spent a decent amount of money on expensive, high upkeep mages. With Mictlan, you recruit exactly what you need, no waste, and everybody is sacred so your upkeep stays low. When you’re really focusing on maximizing your blood economy it’s vital that you pinch every penny you can. With Mictlan I regularly end up with probably 80-100% of the territories between 5k-10k set to blood hunting, with Lanka I can’t come anywhere near that much blood hunting before the rest of my economy stalls from upkeep and a few necessary purchases per turn.

5) One other thing not directly related to blood magic, but very useful nonetheless for guarding your blood hunters is that Mictlan gets Jaguar warriors for PD over 20. If you’ve got a good bless (which you better with Mictlan) this can be an amazingly effective surprise landmine. 30-40 PD aint cheap, but I’ve wiped out some surprisingly large invading armies with it when they weren’t expecting any resistance (and had no jaguar counters). And you guessed it…no upkeep. Makes it easy to defend high risk blood hunting sites when somebody tries to take out your blood slave flow.

Again, I’m really enjoying Lanka and they’ve got some significant advantages, but in my mind from a pure blood point of view Mictlan is hands down a better nation because of the economics. When focusing on blood, it all comes down to economics since you’re essentially trading gold for blood slaves so Mictlan’s much lower overhead maintains their title as undisputed best blood nation.