Blood Kings: Lanka vs. Mictlan

[Aleph]

Nick - why are you taking order scales instead of chaos if you're going with spread? If you're going to go to a nearly pure blood economy, aren't the chances for free cash and gems for every province (even those dedicated wholly to blood) better than slightly ramped up cash just in the handful of gold producing provinces, not to mention spreading Turmoil/Sloth 3 as a weapon against your more cash dependent enemies and the net zero cost of Turmoil/Luck 3?

Quantum -

Points against you:

1. Mictlan has five paths (astral nature blood fire water) to Lanka's four (blood air death nature), so I think the magical diversity award has to go to Mictlan, the moreso because the national summons of Lanka have the same paths while Mictlan adds Death through its nationals.

2. I do like reanimation of random undead monkeys with the Lankan priests (forget the name, picks are BHH?), although at 160 gold a pop I recognize that Mictlan can get equally good reanimators maintenance free in the form of the Civateteo. That is, I grant you, available quite a bit later on in the game, but Mictlan still has it.

Neutral Observations

1. I'm not morally opposed to Lanka being stronger than Mictlan, however, while I am opposed to Lanka being better at blood magic.

2. I also prefer for the clarity of the argument that you not bring in "the scales they take" for Mictlan - I'm not an authority, but some people with experience have come into other posts I've had and argued for mixed blesses (Smoking Mirror F9W4B4D4, for example) which leave room for a decent economy. Scales/blesses are choices, not racial attributes; while some work better than others for particular nations, I hope we haven't come to believe that there's one best way to play a particular nation (at least, that would make me sad, since the wide open range of options is what I like so much about the game).

Points for You:
1. On the power front, I can't really get my head around how Lanka deserves Longbowmen on top of everything else it gets. I'd never played with a nation with Longbowmen before Lanka, and their ability to shatter opposing archers was a pleasant surprise to me (not to mention the way the computer often positions commanders near enough to archer units to be wiped out in the deviation fire).

2. I find the durability of properly blessed Lankan heavy infantry absolutely shocking. They never get tired, never retreat, and never seem to die.

[Huzurdaddi]

Aleph said:
1. On the power front, I can't really get my head around how Lanka deserves Longbowmen on top of everything else it gets.

I find them worthless considering their sacreds. 20 gold for a guy with a bow? Please gimmie some more of those sacreds.

Aleph said:
2. I find the durability of properly blessed Lankan heavy infantry absolutely shocking. They never get tired, never retreat, and never seem to die.

They are almost exactly the same as Giant woodsmen except with slightly better skills, better prot, a little less damage, and for lower cost. Oh and they are size 3 instead of size 4 which is HUGE. They are excellent sacreds.

quantum_mechani said:
To sum it up, both nations are extremely powerful (could easily be classed as overpowered, infact) but Mictlan's power is in some ways limited when compared with Lanka's across-the-board insanity.

You nailed it.

[quantum_mechani]

Aleph said:

1. Mictlan has five paths (astral nature blood fire water) to Lanka's four (blood air death nature), so I think the magical diversity award has to go to Mictlan, the moreso because the national summons of Lanka have the same paths while Mictlan adds Death through its nationals.

Magical diversity is in some sense better for Mictlan, but Lanka has better access to cross-path spells, and has a critical bit of diversity Mictlan lacks: Death and Air. One of Mictlan's biggest handicaps is the difficulty of getting undead/demonic leadership, particularly on a flying commander. Lanka has no problem with this, national demon or undead commanders with boots of flying let you lead all the demon raid forces you could want. So, perhaps a better way of stating it would have been to say they have a better magical selection. Air and Death certainly allow more useful things, particularly for a blood nation, than Water and Fire- in addition bless pretenders tend to bring Water, Fire and often Astral access anyway.

2. I do like reanimation of random undead monkeys with the Lankan priests (forget the name, picks are BHH?), although at 160 gold a pop I recognize that Mictlan can get equally good reanimators maintenance free in the form of the Civateteo. That is, I grant you, available quite a bit later on in the game, but Mictlan still has it.

An expensive summoned commander that can reainimate doesn't even begin to hold candle to Lanka's skeleton hordes. The same commanders that work great for research and blood hunting can, at flip of a switch, start producing 100s of skeletons per turn as early as turn 25. Combined with incredible sacreds, even something as crazily powerful as Helhiem would be biting off a lot to try to fight them early. And by late game, gold recruitable reanimators can surpass even LE Ermor's undead armies.

1. I'm not morally opposed to Lanka being stronger than Mictlan, however, while I am opposed to Lanka being better at blood magic.

Quite the opposite for me, I don't care at all whoever has a slight edge in blood magic, it's the balance of the game on a whole that concerns me.

2. I also prefer for the clarity of the argument that you not bring in "the scales they take" for Mictlan - I'm not an authority, but some people with experience have come into other posts I've had and argued for mixed blesses (Smoking Mirror F9W4B4D4, for example) which leave room for a decent economy. Scales/blesses are choices, not racial attributes; while some work better than others for particular nations, I hope we haven't come to believe that there's one best way to play a particular nation (at least, that would make me sad, since the wide open range of options is what I like so much about the game).

One of my favorite ways to play, even in MP, is to take unusual blesses just to see if I can make them work. It's a lot of fun, but the vast majority of bless setups just aren't very optimal. The one you mentioned does seem better than most, but in the case of Mictlan a bless almost as extreme as possible is very hard to top for optimization. Regardless, it is certianly safe to say Lanka is not forced down the bless path as rigidly as Mictlan, having many other powerful areas to focus on (and lacking the special dominions spread that further optimizes extreme blesses for Mictlan).

1. On the power front, I can't really get my head around how Lanka deserves Longbowmen on top of everything else it gets. I'd never played with a nation with Longbowmen before Lanka, and their ability to shatter opposing archers was a pleasant surprise to me (not to mention the way the computer often positions commanders near enough to archer units to be wiped out in the deviation fire).

As Huzzur points out, this is really the least of their advantages, given they have so many other greatly powerful things to pour gold into.

[Aleph]

I didn't find the Tlahuelpuchi all that expensive (25 blood is a notable expense, maybe 3 provinces, but not a heavy one for a blood economy, and it has no maintenance, while 160 gold might be 2 provinces with maintenance), but I can see some of your point - that gold recruitable reanimators are pretty potent as an early game weapon, and might be what tips Lanka from powerful to most dominant.

Let's leave LA Ermor out of this - the majority of your Lankan bloodhunters /researchers are going to be the 90 gold H1 priests, since the research differences with the H2 160 gold models are negligible when both are carrying skull mentors whereas the price is notably different, and the 90 gold is still more efficient at research on a cash-per-point basis. LA Ermor has all the H1 gold recruitable priests it wants to summon soulless in the wake of battle/domain kill, and it cares less about the downsides of ghouling your population as well (since it's not triple dipping for ghouls/blood/gold). While in the extreme late game (once a good gold/research conversion is no longer important) Lanka could readily have more people capable of summoning Longdead infantry than LA Ermor (although overcoming the domain summons as well is a high bar), Ermor's national priests can summon Longdead Horsemen, and their temples/forts summon Ermorian uniques, who are a vastly different level of useful.

I'm not playing MP, so the balance issues aren't so bothersome to me, and while Lanka is rock-hard it seems that EA already has a lot of radical power fluctuations (most of the Heims, for example). But one of the things I love about Dominions is how thoroughly it realizes certain concepts, such as "the undead nation" or "the Cthulhu nation" to an extent unseen in other games. Lanka intruding on Mictlan's brand identity of "blood nation", or Ermor's identity as "undead nation", threatens that aspect of the game's appeal. Therefore the framing of the original post, and therefore the defense of ermor.

Aside - Longbowmen, likely not such a big deal in MP. When you take out badly placed spellcasters in your deviation fire from archers in SP, pretty valuable.