Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

I did not. Both sides had a pretender.

Except for Mictlan, each pretender gets 10 dominion spread plus 2 temple checks at your max dominion level. The Mictlan pretender has the full 10 dominion spread also but zero temple checks. Plus, the Mictlan home province with a temple does not get the extra temple check like all other races do. Thus, the 10 pretender spread of Mictlan cancelled the 10 pretender spread of Marigon and left the difference at 3 (or is it 4?) missing temple checks.

Which seemed exactly to match my testing. Both 3 and 4 slaves sacrificed per turn seemed close to balanced as far as the random number generator would allow over a short term.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Overall, it's a pretty bad deal for Mictlan though. In real game scenarious you are going to be fighting off hostile dominions all over and not just against one enemy. The amount of blood required for that cannot possibly be viable.

On top of that, you've got to build temples to increase your maximum dominion (and to actually sacrifice) but they don't do anything else positive...Mictlan is on a hiding to nothing dominion-wise I fear. Not to mention the time spent hunting for slaves when other dominions can be actively preaching against you.

I'd recommend 1/2 price temples which increase the max dominion and the ability to sacrifice without a temple in the province. As things stand, those temples look like a huge waste of cash that you are unlikely to be able to afford considering you'll be running blood provinces. Mictlan is weak and needs too much micromanagment to be viable. Even the AI gets mullered with it most games :- I've seen one strong Mictlan AI in about 100 games.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

It certainly is viable, and Mictlan actually has to be careful to not overwhelm the dominion of your neighbours.

No dominion can actively preach against you unless they've already conquered your provinces. Preaching does not spread dominion outside of the province that it happens in.

They are easy to afford once you've stopped purchasing troops and switched over to Mictlan Priests and capital-based mages.

Mictlan ain't weak, and the micromanagement consists of little more than selecting your hunters in each province and pressing 'Z'.

That's not a surprise, since the AI doesn't play blood nations effectively at all.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

I must greatly disagree with the Dice Man here. This overwhelmence is late game only. You are SO darn far behind spreading dominion early that it lingers well into the middle game. There is essentially zero chance of overrunning your neighbors with dominion for at least 40 turns into the game. You must fight like crazy for a long, long time just to try and hold your own dominion from getting crushed. The only solution to this early on is getting 9 or 10 base dominion, which is typically a misuse of pretender points.

And you really, really want to spend your slaves on anything but wasting them on dominion spread. Like IDs, ADs, devils, vampires, etc, and etc, and etc. Being unequivocally forced to sacrifice on the order of 20 slaves per turn JUST TO STAY EVEN with any other race is no fun at all. I can assure you that this hurts bad in my current Mictlan game.

The Dice is mostly correct here, though there are races with stealthy preachers. Getting 10 PD everywhere, while expensive, puts a stop to the stealthy business. But the point is that other races passively spread dominion into Mictlan territory just by building temples on your border. Mictlan cannot do this passively. He is forced to waste the blood slaves anywhere he wants to push dominion.

Jim Parker has a good point here. Just because you can maybe afford them later on in the game does not change the fact they temples are pretty much a COMPLETE waste of gold for Mictlan. And just because you need them to recruit the Mictlan priests does not change this fact either. I mean, you will NEVER be able to afford to build a priest in every single province with a temple that you are forced to sacrifice from. If not for the requirement of needing them to sacrifice slaves, I doubt any Mictlan player would build very many temples at all. They would put them in grudgingly only when they want to get to the next set of 5.

This is both right and wrong.

Mictlan does suffer from more micro than any other race. And it it not as simple as selecting your hunters and hitting 'Z'. I tried that and it simply does not work. It is a start, but you must also baby every single hunter based on the current unrest level in each hunting province. With less than 5 unrest, you can have 3 hunters. With about 10 unrest, you need to put one hunter temporarily on research. And when you get one of those outliers of high unrest or a bad event, or get attacked by knights or barbarians, then they all hunters in the province must go to research while you either wait with zero tax and/or patrollers to clear it.

You must move your patrolling slaves around where needed the most. You also must switch hunting provinces around as you use up population. You also must decide each and every turn on exactly how many slaves you can afford to sacrifice this time.

But I will certainly agree with Dice on one thing here: Mictlan is not weak. If you can survive through the harsh middle game, it can be very strong in the end game with its IDs, ADs, devils, vampires, and the ability to crush other peoples dominions almost at will.

Amen to this. You really can't base the true strength of the races based on how the AI plays. I mean, the AI plays Caelum probably worse than any other nation (beside Mictlan, I mean). And Caelum is actually the best nation, based on the results of that informal poll in another thread. The play of the AI is mostly based on how strong the national troops happen to be, since that it what it uses the most by far. Ermor is an exception here because, while the AE/SG troops are weak, the AI can get so darn many of them and micro the heck out of them.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

10 unrest has only about a 2.5% chance of causing a blood hunt to fail. A 1d400 is rolled, and if it's greater than the unrest level the hunt goes to the next part of the check. The unrest has to get to 100 or more before it starts to be really noticeable.

Don't patrol. Never, ever patrol for unrest reduction unless you want to kill your provinces off as early as possible. With 0% tax, and three or four hunters, your provinces will Last for the entire game.

Why bother? Three priests with SDR's cost only 8 gold per turn. Just buy three more if you want to set up a new province, and leave the old ones there, since that province wouldn't give you any gold anyways anymore.

Two per priest is easy enough.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

3 or 4 hunters? With 2 good hunters a province (Each with 2+ blood magic + Sanguine rod) I'm finding the unrest creeps up at 0 taxes. Admittedly, I don't have growth scales, but I'm simply hoping for the provinces to Last the entire game, but expecting a "lucky" event to wipe them out if blood hunting doesn't. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

no I think 3 hunters is the most effective. Sure, unrest will often creep up, but it is a self-balancing system, as failing to find slaves will allow the natural 0% taxation unrest reduction to operate.

think of it this way - If your unrest stays at 0, you're being inefficient... [well, 0% itself would be efficient]

This is part of why, say, 4000 pop is almost as good as 5000. Sure, you get a few misses, but that keeps unrest down, so it is almost as productive as 5000 pop. [i'd need the precise numbers for unrest generation to determine how low your pop can be and still be equally productive on average as 5000]

basically, 0% taxation yields a certain number of potential bloodslaves (without patrolling, which is a true killer), and you don't want to miss a drop of that sweet sweet sugar...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

I haven't tested in 2.14 BUT in 2.12 patrol was no killer : 10 pop / 5 brigands killed .
This is not so heavy and in 8+k provinces probably even compensable with growth 3 .

Normally i am a fan of a death 3 scale only with bloodhunt i tend to take growth 3 : A 5k pop province stays at about 5k forever with growth 3 and bloodhunting .

With death 3 you lose each turn 0,006% pop + more pop by bloodhunt .
With 3 bloodhunters you lose about 50 pop per turn cause of bloodhunt and about 25 per deathscale .
So even without events normally a 5K province is down to 4k in about 12 turns and down to 3k in about 25-30 turns .

Since those 4-6k provinces are so common i really think growth is for bloodnations not too bad .
At about turn 50-60 the deathscale starts to really disturb your bloodhunting .
On a small map you have either long won or are long dead then but other games often Last until turn 50-60 easily .

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

If you can find someone with growth scale, just keep taking their territories and your death scale won't hurt so much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Kel

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Unfortunately enemy dominion causes a bit unrest so limits bloodhunting a bit too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

So...convert their dominion ? I don't mean you leave it in their dominion, that wouldn't do you any good anyway. I mean, if you keep taking fresh provinces, your death scale won't matter as much since you always have a fresh supply of blood.

I only mentioned taking provinces from people with growth scales since their population should be higher than people with death scales. Really, taking new territory to hunt in is the point. It's just a bonus if the person you are at war with has growth.

- Kel

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Yeah sure but normally the war is not so easy and the victim damages normally your provinces quite a bit too and the war Lasts some time .

Or do you mean to steal away provinces as second / third opponent from already almost beaten / crippled opponents ?
This works better of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

ok taking a 5k pop province

0% taxation will undo around 35 unrest approx, i think.
patrolling instead of having 0% tax will kill 10 pop per % unrest, so around 350 pop :O (i'm not sure if this goes down at all for smaller pop provinces)
death 3 will kill 30 pop
getting 13 bloodslaves a turn (guestimate as to average) will kill 26 pop.

so death 3 and 0% tax bloodhunting will kill around 55-60 pop/turn, letting one bloodhunt in the province for 30+ turns (since numbers lost to death will decrease as the pop decreases) before pop goes to 3K (which is still ok for bloodhunting, just not as good)

while growth 3 and 100% tax w/ patrollers for the unrest will kill over 300 pop a turn, letting one bloodhunt w/ similar effectiveness for about 8 turns tops...

summary: patrolling is murder.

and we see that Graeme's estimate of 1000 dead a turn from massively patrolling away the unrest from keeping taxation at 100% and bloodhunting w/ 10 hunters is, if anything, on the low side. besides being especially silly, since the massive patrolled-away unrest still affects your tax take.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Archeolopt i have run tests during 2.12 and per 5 points unrest reduced you lose 10 pop !
And i would keep taxes at 0% and bloodhunt and patrol .

35 unrest kill not 350 pop but 70 !

I personally don't patrol either but it is not as bad as you write .

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

hmmm i was going on earlier reports that patrolling 1 pt of unrest kills 10 pop. this may be dependent upon population size though, or may have been changed, or may always have been wrong ;p

even w/ only 2 pop killed per point of unrest, growth 3 + patrolling will kill pop as fast or faster than death 3 + no patrolling. and, frankly, I like the 240 design points...

though that does explain why its taking so long for me to kill off my pop in my stupid swamp goldmine province http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

On the subject of unrest, you must try to keep it clear, not because of the possible failure to find slaves, but because of the bad events that will happen. Like barbarian or knight attacks, which has happenned to me about every third turn in my Mictlan game. Or the worst of all, the peasants might leave to find a better home when unrest hits 20. That is a killer event, but I have had that only once when the knights seiged my castle and unrest hit 40 before I cleared it. Maybe this is because I got 3 misfortune, but I think 90% of the Mictlan MP players will take 2-3 misfortune also.

Cainehill is right. You can only keep the unrest always at zero in a 5K+ province with a maximum of 2 hunters. Doing this would certainly decrease the micromanagement. But it seems better to work hard to keep that third hunter as productive as possible and spend the extra time each turn on each and every hunting province to do this.

As for the sacrificing 2 slaves per priest, that is another trick to reduce micromanagement but at a high cost. I think you must give a jade knife to each sacrificier in every province with a temple. This allows you to sacrifice up to 4 slaves any time you have the available slaves or need them in a particular sector. And you can choose between 0 (researching), 1 (probably a waste to do so when you could get research done instead), and 2-4 which are all useful to do.

As for the death scales, this works well on shorter games. But in a long game, death 3 is certain death to Mictlan. No blood hunting means you will die extremely fast to a diminion kill in the late game. The only alternative from dying is building up to wish by having a hundred or so clams working for you.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Like I said, take more provinces. Population usually comes with em.

- Kel

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

no death 3 is not certain death lol. the losses are moderate. I'm currently on turn 58 in my mictlan game, and have only had to leave one province due to pop loss. my blood income is 160 on a very bad turn, and more likely over 200. my dominion is on par w/ the strongest in the game. my income is fine. And i've had one barbarian attack all game - that's w/ misfortune 2. I think taking misfortune 3 is definitely a no-no though. As well I have no soul contracts and only one vampire lord, who is actually patrolling not summoning allies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Now, Storm knows the endgame much better than I do, so I may well lose, but that will not be the fault of Mictlan.

And, again, while you can keep unrest at 0 w/ 2 bloodhunters, that does not in and of itself make it the most effective use of your resources. so what if my unrest hovers around 40-50? that's a 10% blood slave loss only from what it would theoretically be if I patrolled.

Mictlan is about the least likely nation to experience dominion kill in the late game. And even early it is easy to avoid unless you're a total moron.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

How do you protect the vulnerabilites of a blood economy? Strikes me that it is damn easy to use unrest producing spells to make blood hunting difficult or kill off population en masse. Playing non-blood hunting races, I usually don't care about this issue, but here it really matters.

Certainly one method is a really 'deep' economy ie tons of blood hunting sites, but here you are just increasing tolerance for damage, not actually stopping it. Another method may be the virtual blood economy ie summons that in turn summon allies, soul contracts, special sites, etc that enable you to reap the fruits of blood income without the blood slaves coming in each turn. If you trace the turn-by-turn devil producing capacity back to the spell costs, you can generate a very high equivalent blood slave total this way given time. This is one reason I believe soul contracts are not imbalanced. They are necessary to balance the fragility of blood economies. What other ideas do people have?

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Yeah this is the true power of mictlan imo . You have both worlds , clamhoarding AND blood http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
You are horrible fragile earlygame but then if you aren't totally unlucky with sitesearching you can bloodhunt and soon start clamhoarding too .
Since you don't need so many gems you can clamhoard probably even a bit better than e.g. pythium http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
If mictlan is left alone long enough it is frightening .
Earlygame it is weak so this is the biggest problem .

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Original post:
just wanted to let you know you can select both Restless Whorshippers and Ceremonial Faith as Mictlan.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

you can't select ceremonial faith, but you can select restless worshippers. dunno whether it works or not though.

Re: Mictlan , how to play it effectively
 

Well, it was a direct observation from the duel game I played against Argitoth, where I had something like 100 wolves patrolling while I had more than a dozen members of the second tier bloodhunting in a single province. They dropped in population from 10K to less than 1K extremely quickly.