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-   -   Some joy with Mictlan (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=17179)

Keir Maxwell January 4th, 2004 11:24 PM

Some joy with Mictlan
 
Inspired by the writings of General Tacitius I figured I'd have another go with Mictlan.

Taloc the Smoking Mirror, fire4, death4, blood4, earth4
Order3, prod1, growth1, heat1, misfortune3
Castle, Dom6
Desert Sun (no wrap around), 7 impossible AI's, indie str 5, events rare, win dominon strength 656.

The plan is to use Sun Warriors as Javelin throwers with their high strength (blood blessing) and reinforce them with large number of mace, javelin armed foot by building castles early with the extra gold this design provides.

I hired the Elephant corp early and they helped get things rolling. I started blood searching early and built alot of the native priests. Construction 2 was the first target for jade knives and I have stayed at the top of the dominon rank from early using first one priest with a jade knife then later two - I'm impressed.

First army lead by my Priest King prophet (attacking turn 3) and a Tribal King who got quickness and has done devestation with a longbow of accuracy more recently. Casulties have been heavy but mainly on secondary troops so the Sun Warriors have built up to large number. I did make the mistake of putting them on both flanks early and when ther enemy came up the middle they threw javelins at each other. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

The supporting Mace Javeling infantry have done very well as the game goes on though they have died in droves. I use a couple of standards per unit.

I have alot of tribal kings and thus generate a fair few Slave warriors but they are mainly useful for discouraging opponents to attack or us up lance attacks.

I started summoning Fiends of Darkness fairly early and have a force of 11 now (t.29) with a flying priest. I had to stop summoning awhile back as research became the priority.

Research was slow once the Smoking Mirror went site hunting in jaguar form. I had very little luck site hunting other than lots of earth gems which are hard to use lackign a native earth mage.

War came late vs Pythium (after t20) and has gone very well. Caelum has been raiding with calls of the winds and attacked a couple of turns back but I had kept plenty of forces in reserve and have launched a devestating counter attack.

The only bleak spot is C'tis casting Burden of Time which has been running 4 turns now and really hurting. I'm hitting enchantment 5 this turn and have enough astral gems to empower a Moon priest and I'll turn my horde of earth gems into astral for the dispel. I'm generating a horde of Clam Shells for future problems.

Its t.29 and I have 35 provinces and lead in all areas bar research. My income is probably close to that of all the remaining players combined. While there is some work to do basically the game is won and I figure once I set a couple more priests to work with Jade Knives I will get the dominion victory by ~t.40.

Sadly I doubt my blood economy (started t.4 and built slowly from there) will not have contributed beyond the 11 Fiends of Darkness. These have been good but not made that much difference as they haven't been fighting long and the big battles haven't been close. The biggest problem I had was how long it took me to get to con4 - then C'tis cast BoT and I had to forgo researching blood for enchantment.

Changes to be made.

Drop the earth on the Smoking Mirror. Sure its great for battle mages but I haven't really used any and while it helps the Sun Wariors fight its not crucial as throwing javelins doesn't seem to cause fatigue.

Raise magic scale to +2. I didn't find sages so I used the native priest as researchers and with magic2 they will be top knotch researchers.

The Smoking Mirror will research longer.

All this should enable me to get the blood going early and make it more a part of the game.

The other options would be to raise productivity to +3 allowing the building of alot more javeln throwers early. This has got to be good early but I'm determined to do something meaningful with blood without having to play on a large map - to much MM for me.

The biggest question I have is what are the best supporting Javelin throwers - the mace with more armour or spear with less? In close combat the spear armed are more appealling due to resource cheapness and repels ability so slow things to give time for the sun warriors to win it but vs missiles the extra protection is big. The spear armed only cost 8 resources compared to 13 so you can build alot of them. The advantage of sticking with the mace armed is that it leaves more gold for starting the blood economy.

In MP I don't think its enough to get a big army of javelin throwers as they are not up to what another player will throw at you. This means its necessary to make the blood economy work to get serious long term power.

Cheers

Keir

General Tacticus January 4th, 2004 11:42 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Well, I am now at turn 36, and I can't say I have really played with blood yet. I have 5 nice devils, currently playing bodyguard on my pretender, who have never seen battle. I haven't used my sacred troops yet either, although I have a few. And the reason for both these facts is that I have been too busy taking advantage of opportunities to rush Pangea, then marignon. As a result, I have a nice territory, but not much else. I am currently taking advantage of a lapse in hostilities to try and organize a blood economy, build myself a real army (I relied heavily on mercs, protected by lots of cheap troops), and sort out my mages for combat.

Still, I expect the opportunity will come. Ulm has apparently been doing very well for itself in Europe, taking Vanheim's, Ermor's and Pythium's capitals. In fact, Pythium has been thrown out of the game. Ulm now leads in income, has more forts than any other AI, and still has a a few weak neighbours (Marignon and Pangea) to conquer. I expect a nice challenge when we meet. I must make magic work, preferably blood magic, or I'll be creamed. I have some time, but I must figure it out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

PvK January 5th, 2004 03:55 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
I started a Mictlani blood game too. Gurgelor the Smoking Mirror is Fire 4, Death 3, Nature 2, Blood 6, and the rest is something like Turmoil 1, Luck 3, Heat 2, Dominion 6, Dark Citadel.

I had never played Mictlan before, and think I would probably not take Nature on the pretender now that I realize there is a Blood 2 / Nature 2 Mictlani priest.

My intention is to try to try to get a fairly large amount of blood income fairly early, and try to make that my mainstay. Seems like one does want to get Construction 4 though as that adds a couple more +1 Blood items, the Sanguine Dousing Rod, and other stuff. At least with Mictlan, there are some premature blood summons available.

The pace at which you decide you've won a game is a bit staggering to me, though. We're essentially playing two different games from each other.

One thing I have had some success with is Eagle Warriors. Get a bunch, bless them, and have them Hold and Attack rearmost, wiping out enemy commanders. Mictlan has heaps of blessable national units, too - makes me think it might be a good choice for a bless bonus strategy.

PvK

Keir Maxwell January 5th, 2004 09:00 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:

The pace at which you decide you've won a game is a bit staggering to me, though. We're essentially playing two different games from each other.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm having a tougher time finishing than I anticipated to be honest. Generally when I get this far ahead of the other races its all over very shortly after but with Mictlan your native troops are so weak this is not proving to be the case.

Caelum has counter attacked with lots of Spring Hawks and it has seesawed back and forth with me happy to hold my lines while finsihing Pythium. Pythium is gone (t.35) but Jotun got some of it and is looking my way now - nowhere else to go. This means I will get to use some serious blood. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I'm up to hordes of Hell but I'm a couple of turns from Ice Devils as I need more water gems for empowering.

At this point I'm at least 10-15 turns away from victory (656dom score) and thats only if things go well. With the difficulty I'm finding making any headway with my native troops the demonic ones are going to be needed. Ice Devils work a treat vs Jotun and Caelum.

My next design is looking like.

Fountain of Blood, blood5, dom10
order3, prod1, growth3, heat1, misfortune3, magic3
Castle

This should provide a good start plus the research for getting blood up and running earlier. I'd like to get blood6 for the extra +1 str but i'm struggling to get a good points balence.

Cheers

Keir

PvK January 5th, 2004 09:41 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Interesting.

Curse Internet Explorer! I posted a nice turn-10 report on my game, but the connection failed and infernal Internet Explorer decided to forget the contents of the form, so it's lost. Excuse me while I cast Send Greater Horror on the Redmond province...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Ok, that's better. The abbreviated Version is I was doing fairly well on turn 10, but on turn 11 my neighbors hit back and I went from 8 (low-quality) provinces to 5. Getting into a two-opponent war (against Pangea and C'tis) by turn 10 is probably going to adversely affect my results.

However, I think the Mictlani Air Force seems to have potential. A bunch of blessed flying Eagle Warriors mixed with Fiends of Darkness (I have 3-4 by turn 12) often can cause havoc on AI armies by using Hold and Attack Rearmost.

I got my main conventional army cut off and starving though. Somehow, my heroic commander became diseased - looks like maybe they are not immune when their army starves. Contagion from hunger-sick troops?

(OT: Re: The Death and Taxes thread:
Since he was cut off next to the C'tis home province, I decided to try setting tax to 200 AND pillaging with his 30 men - they killed over 500 population (about 15%!) and confiscated 26 gold, while the taxes were only going to yield 12. Unrest is up to 99 in one turn. Looks like pillaging is much more effective that just turning up the tax - looks like reasonable effects to me.)

PvK

PvK January 5th, 2004 10:40 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Turn 15:

Fighting back, forth, and through (my cut-off army managed to fight its way back through C'tis, and half of them even made it back without afflictions), I have been keeping at 5 provinces. I was fortunate that Caelum showed up complete with maticore pretender and started mopping up the desert with Pangea.

I'm now the lowest nation in all the stats except research. I've got four Fiends of Darkness, a Jade Athame, and a Sanguine Dousing Wand, a general, 4 mage/priests, my pretender, 55 troops and 36 slaves. In these wasteland provinces, one must be careful with the slaves or risk starvation - I'd think the slaves would be the Last ones to receive food...

I lucked out and FOUND a soul contract that would ordinarily require 80 blood slaves to create.

I think though that part of the hard time I've been having, is due to the tough start of 12 near-impossible AI enemies on a fairly small map.

PvK

PvK January 5th, 2004 12:31 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Turn 17:

Doing a lot better. That contract brings one devil per turn - not bad at all. Had a conflict with a major C'tis army of over 50 lizard men and wiped them out with the Air Force. Two castings of Summon Imp hit a side unit, which wouldn't be a big deal except it split their army in half as half of them went to kill imps. Then 6-7 devils & fiends with about 16 Eagle Warriors descended and within a turn or two their whole army broke and ran, without even having killed any commanders. I had a ground force there too which wasn't even needed.

Oh, both "gem" income and research have remained in the running in the stats throughout the game. I think I can get 2-3 demons or fiends per turn at this point, and I don't think I've lost any so far, so I think things are looking up somewhat, as long as no one's uber army shows up too soon.

PvK

Keir Maxwell January 5th, 2004 12:33 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
I think though that part of the hard time I've been having, is due to the tough start of 12 near-impossible AI enemies on a fairly small map.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh yeah thats tough. I'm being somewhat more cautious and taking on 8 impossible on the Desert Eye which leave a fair amount of room.

A huge part of playing Mictlan seems to be not getting into early wars - they just haven't got the grunt. This is scary for MP when everybody knows it.

cheers

Keir

ywl January 5th, 2004 06:30 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Mictlan gets some nifty heroes also.

Mictlipoctli the King of Legends: a mummy with Death 3, Blood 3 and Unholy 3.

Quetzalcoatl the Feather Serpent: a couatl who has Astral 3, Nature 3, Blood 2 and Holy 4 and can assume human form.

Keir Maxwell January 5th, 2004 09:51 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by ywl:
Mictlan gets some nifty heroes also.

Mictlipoctli the King of Legends: a mummy with Death 3, Blood 3 and Unholy 3.

Quetzalcoatl the Feather Serpent: a couatl who has Astral 3, Nature 3, Blood 2 and Holy 4 and can assume human form.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very nice - thanks for the info. I'm tempted to go to misfortune 2 so I get a chance of getting these guys.

Cheers

Keir

PvK January 5th, 2004 10:43 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
I think I've found at least one rather strong Blood technique, though it requires something Mictlan doesn't come with originally. Hmm.

PvK

SurvivalistMerc January 5th, 2004 10:50 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Does misfortune 2 really give you a chance at the heroes? Because I have tried it and never seem to get a hero unless I'm misfortune 1 or better.

Keir Maxwell January 5th, 2004 11:00 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
I think I've found at least one rather strong Blood technique,
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">. . . and?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Keir

Keir Maxwell January 5th, 2004 11:04 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Does misfortune 2 really give you a chance at the heroes?
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As I understand you have a 3% chance, cumulative, per turn of getting a national hero at luck0, -1 per level of misfortune, +1 per level of luck. This resets when you get a hero.

So at misfortune 2 you have a 5% chance by of getting a hero, by turn 10 10%. If you haven't got one by turn 20 you would feel rather unlucky. Considering how good they are this is worth thinking about.

cheers

Keir

Graeme Dice January 5th, 2004 11:15 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
[QB] I think I've found at least one rather strong Blood technique, though it requires something Mictlan doesn't come with originally. Hmm.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would that involve the combination of dwarven smithing hammers and soul contracts?

General Tacticus January 5th, 2004 11:23 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
[quote]Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
Quote:

So at misfortune 2 you have a 5% chance by of getting a hero, by turn 10 10%. If you haven't got one by turn 20 you would feel rather unlucky. Considering how good they are this is worth thinking about.

cheers

Keir
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">At misfortune 2, you have about 50% chance of getting your first hero by turn 11, and 90% by turn 20.
Misfortune 1 means 50% by turn 8 and 90% by turn 14
Fortune 0 : 50% by turn 6, 90% by turn 11
Fortune 1 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 10
Fortune 2 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 8
Fortune 3 : 50% by turn 4, 90% by turn 8

Of course, misfortune 3 means no hero. As you can see, going over fortune 0 will give you your heroes only marginally faster (on average).

PvK January 6th, 2004 07:29 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by PvK:
[QB] I think I've found at least one rather strong Blood technique, though it requires something Mictlan doesn't come with originally. Hmm.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would that involve the combination of dwarven smithing hammers and soul contracts? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep - Graeme wins the psychic contest!

Basically, I was thinking if you get some construction bonuses, preferably stacked, then suddenly the soul contracts could become very cost-effective, particularly the 80-slave one I found. The good part is the contract says one demon per "season", but it is in fact one demon per turn (I thought one season was more than one turn). Those demons or similar generally cost about 5 blood each to summon, but the contract gives 1/turn as long as the contractee stays alive, and the contractee can continue to do other stuff while the demons are appearing every turn.

The difficulty is if the contract goes to lab or straight to the creator when built. The found one I was able to slap on a Blood-1 priest. If the created ones go on the creator and are one per creator, then it becomes rather harder. The forge bonus could help make a cheaper-than-usual suite of portable Blood-empowering items, too, though two of those are Construction-4, and the contract I had in mind, is only Construction-2 but Blood 5.

If you can manage to crank out these contracts on relatively cheap units (like Mictlan level-1 blood priests) then it could really start to snowball into a wicked maintenance-free demon army generator.

PvK

apoger January 6th, 2004 07:52 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
>the soul contracts could become very cost-effective, particularly the 80-slave one I found.

They are cost effective over time even at full cost.


>Those demons or similar generally cost about 5 blood each to summon,

They cost 7.


>The difficulty is if the contract goes to lab or straight to the creator when built.

It goes to the lab.
It's a cursed item, once held you cannot transfer it.


At full cost it takes 12 turns for the contract to pay back it's cost. After that it's effectively an income of 7 blood slaves per turn (in the form of a Devil). This is one of the classic ways to make blood magic pay off economically.

Saber Cherry January 6th, 2004 08:25 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
If you can manage to crank out these contracts on relatively cheap units (like Mictlan level-1 blood priests) then it could really start to snowball into a wicked maintenance-free demon army generator.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">...are they blood-only now? In Doms I any commander could have a contract. Just give them to scouts=) Then the demons appear in the garrison instead of under a leader.

PvK January 6th, 2004 09:37 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Not sure what you meant to ask exactly, Cherry. The contracts seem to require blood power 5 and construction research 2, and 80 slaves. The cheapo Mictlani priest is blood 1, but they have several very nice (though initially expensive) other priests with varied powers.

Wow, ok, so if you can just put them on scouts (or even blood one priests) while the pretender churns them out, then you can start as soon as you hit construction 2. Get a Dwarven Hammer at the same time, a good place to blood hunt, and hmm, this could be rather effective.

Quote:

Originally posted by apoger:
...
>Those demons or similar generally cost about 5 blood each to summon,

They cost 7.
...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I was comparing to the Fiends of Darkness I had been summoning for 5, and they seemed to be pretty equal in strength, though a bit different. Maybe the Devils have an advantage I didn't notice - oh I see, they do - mainly heat and immunity to heat.

PvK

Endoperez January 6th, 2004 01:27 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
(edit: I think that) Cherry meant the the one getting the devils does not have to be a blood mage. IIRC the text says something about blood mage writing his name on it, so it might not be clear...

[ January 06, 2004, 11:53: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

Truper January 6th, 2004 06:19 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
[quote]Originally posted by General Tacticus:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
Quote:

So at misfortune 2 you have a 5% chance by of getting a hero, by turn 10 10%. If you haven't got one by turn 20 you would feel rather unlucky. Considering how good they are this is worth thinking about.

cheers

Keir
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">At misfortune 2, you have about 50% chance of getting your first hero by turn 11, and 90% by turn 20.
Misfortune 1 means 50% by turn 8 and 90% by turn 14
Fortune 0 : 50% by turn 6, 90% by turn 11
Fortune 1 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 10
Fortune 2 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 8
Fortune 3 : 50% by turn 4, 90% by turn 8

Of course, misfortune 3 means no hero. As you can see, going over fortune 0 will give you your heroes only marginally faster (on average).
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There must be something wrong with these numbers, or I've set some sort of record for unluckiness. In my current SP epic (Oriana all ai at difficult), I took misfortune 2 rather than 3 with the hope of getting heroes. Its now turn 77, and none have shown up. Perhaps order has some effect as well?

atul January 6th, 2004 07:28 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by Truper:
There must be something wrong with these numbers, or I've set some sort of record for unluckiness. In my current SP epic (Oriana all ai at difficult), I took misfortune 2 rather than 3 with the hope of getting heroes. Its now turn 77, and none have shown up. Perhaps order has some effect as well?
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've gotten the same feeling also. Been playing quite a lot with luck3 (MP game playing a nation/theme with enforced turmoil coming up, gotta practice) and by those numbers I think that I'd usually have all three of my national heroes quite soon. Often by turn 30 I've gotten only one, rarely two, never three and on some tries none.

Is it certain that the chance to get heroes is cumulative?

apoger January 6th, 2004 07:43 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

Graeme Dice January 6th, 2004 09:24 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by apoger:
>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That can't be correct, or I wouldn't almost always be getting R'Lyeh heroes in the first few turns of the game.

Keir Maxwell January 6th, 2004 10:59 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by apoger:
>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That can't be correct, or I wouldn't almost always be getting R'Lyeh heroes in the first few turns of the game. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My understanding is that your chance of getting a national hero is not affected by order. On the whole I seem to have got hero's very fast playing luck (2 by turn 10 is not uncommen). Otherwise i mostly play misfortune3 so I don't get them.

PvK the Dwarven hammer is con4 and you also have to get the earth gems. I gave an Abysian contracts race a whirl Last night and never found any earth gems with my earth9 fire4 Scorpian King so didn't get to make the hammer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Once I gave up looking I did massacre everything in sight making the whole blood thing redundant again.

Cheers

Keir

PhilD January 7th, 2004 09:21 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
PvK the Dwarven hammer is con4 and you also have to get the earth gems. I gave an Abysian contracts race a whirl Last night and never found any earth gems with my earth9 fire4 Scorpian King so didn't get to make the hammer.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">With Iron Faith Ulm, you get Black Priests with a Forging bonus and a random magic pick, so some of them will be Blood. With enough research, you'll be able to give one a Brazen Vessel and Blood Thorn, and then are two Empowerments away from being able to make Contracts for 40 slaves each (the Dwarven Hammer is easy: any Black Priest with Earth as his random pick needs just Earth Boots to make it).

The only problem with starting this "snowball" effect, is of course finding the slaves. With no native Blood mages, you have to rely on random Blood picks, or lucky finds, for your hunters. I've got a World War game going on, where I get about 14 Devils each turn, but that's 160 turns into the game and I've been mostly toying with the AIs for a long time.

January 8th, 2004 02:11 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by atul:
Is it certain that the chance to get heroes is cumulative?
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">2 months ago Johan wrote that "It is not cumulative, turns out though that I was way off on the numbers. Which became obvious after I thought about how often you do get heroes even with negative luck scales. Base chance is 3% +1% per luck scale. So with luck 3 you still have 0.94^30 appr.=29% to not recieve a hero after 30 turns".
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000081

Cheers

Correction: 0.94^30 = 16% instead. So after 30 turns with Luck 3 you have about 84 % to see at least one hero, 60 % with Luck 0 and 26 % with Luck -2 (0% with Luck-3).

[ January 08, 2004, 15:13: Message edited by: Sunray_be ]

PvK January 10th, 2004 01:29 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Ah, I have been playing Ulm, so I didn't realize others needed to get to Construction 4 before getting hammers. I still sense potential from the devil contract - one just needs to overcome a few hurdles. Ulm (multiple forge bonuses) and Mictlan (cheap blood priests) both have some nice advantages for this, each unique and not entirely breachable by pretender design, though you can of course solve part of the difficulties with pretender magic. Which is all as it should be. It's good it's not easy to make a devil generation factory.

PvK

Bowlingballhead January 10th, 2004 05:00 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Re: Soul Contracts

I've been playing around with building them on the cheap recently, so I can answer these questions.

Yes, the contract goes to the lab when made, and can be slapped onto any commander at all - who then gets a Horror Mark (bwa!) and becomes a devil factory. Obviously, if you can get this going with decent forging bonuses, you can produce an immense army of devils for really cheap. It's not that easy a circumstance to set up, but if you're playing a strategy you can fit it into (construction-heavy, say, with some access to blood magic) it's definitely worth your attention.

All you have to do then is find either a demon or somebody with necromantic leadership (WHY demons count as undead I have no idea) to guide your gigantic army into battle! Yay, demons!

PvK January 10th, 2004 05:04 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Seemed like all my Mictlani commanders were able to lead the devils around, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.

How often do horror marks generate a spontaneous horror attack?

Is there a good way to protect against those?

PvK

Truper January 10th, 2004 05:40 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Horror Marks don't, so far as I know, generate spontaneous Horror attacks. But if a Horror gets called/sent, you can guess where it will head 1st http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 10, 2004, 03:41: Message edited by: Truper ]

apoger January 10th, 2004 05:46 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
>How often do horror marks generate a spontaneous horror attack?

During battle I have only seen it when using the spell Hellpower.

As an "assassination" type attack between turns, the horrors strike pretty rarely. I'd bet it's somewhere around a 5% chance for each marked character.

Bowlingballhead January 10th, 2004 06:17 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Yeah. They will show up spontaneously as between-turn events, and attack a specific horror-marked character. Generally lesser horrors, but it doesn't matter much. No matter who you are, you're history. You've got to be a real monster to survive a horror attack. You've got to be really tough to survive one round of a horror attack.

PvK January 10th, 2004 09:02 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
When the horror attacks, is it an assassination against the one target and his bodyguards, or against the whole province?

If against the province, and there is a castle with some patrollers and some defenders, who gets attacked?

I was wrong about Mictlani units being able to all lead devils - it's only those with blood who can lead the devils, presumably because the blood gives them some undead leadership.

PvK

P.S./edit: Er, actually, it looks like the devils require magical unit leadership, not undead leadership.

[ January 10, 2004, 07:10: Message edited by: PvK ]

PvK January 10th, 2004 10:02 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
...
I got my main conventional army cut off and starving though. Somehow, my heroic commander became diseased - looks like maybe they are not immune when their army starves. Contagion from hunger-sick troops?
...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Aha - I think I figured this out. C'tis must be the Miasma flavor in this game - egad, that's nasty. I just got my prophet diseased by them. Grr. Miasma C'tis must be destroyed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Taqwus January 10th, 2004 10:51 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Horrors pick on just the commander (guards too?), not the whole army, unless it's due to something else like a "Send Horror" spell.
Certain items seem to generate more/nastier horrors than others. Contracts are fairly mild, Gift of Kurgi seems pretty bad, and from the description, the Forbidden Light should be _very_ bad.

PvK January 10th, 2004 11:47 PM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Interesting and useful to know. Thanks!

I got to turn 20. Fought C'tis; realized they were diseasing my humans; sent the healthy humans and demons back, while my diseased troops formed a suicide offensive which did rather well, taking three provinces including the C'tis home province (not the castle) - they're probably going to be chased around the far side of the C'tis empire by their army of 150 or so which includes some horned serpents and other nasties.

While my army was fighting C'tis, Pangaea took a break from getting killed by Caelum to take a couple of my provinces, but my returning army with demons and devils showed up and stomped them.

Built some bone devils - not very impressive compared to Fiends of Darkness or Devils, though you can summon 3 at a time.

I also built a skull mentor to aid research.

A very nice heroic winged serpent mage showed up to volunteer.

I think I really need to do whatever is possible to stomp C'tis to get rid of the annoying miasma dominion.

PvK

apoger January 11th, 2004 01:05 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
>You've got to be really tough to survive one round of a horror attack.

It's an assassination type attack. If you have some guards and the marked character can cast a good damage spell there is a reasonable chance that they'll survive the smaller horrors.

PvK January 11th, 2004 09:44 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Turn 23 - I cast Crossbreeding for the first time. Ooo, fun! I may have a new favorite spell... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

PvK January 11th, 2004 10:40 AM

Re: Some joy with Mictlan
 
Turn 25 - OMG Mictlipoctli!!! Cool!


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