Various Mictil questions
 

Hello all

I decided to play as Mictil (sp?) because I wanted to experiment with the school and path of blood. I think I wanted my Pretender to do too much; a number of cool spells involve another magic Category, so I made my bat-winged Pretender have level 9 blood, level 4 death and level 4 fire. Needless to say, I had few points left for everything else and my starting fortress sucks. I may have 76 resources at best, and this is surrounded by mountains.

For starters, I find Mictil to require poop-loads of micromanaging. I need to find blood slaves (LOTS of blood slaves), I have poor researchers, I have to patrol provinces, I have to spend turns raising just a few slaves per guy, I have to tie up guys doing sacrifices and to top it off, if I have my Pretender do any spell casting, I lose more than half of my research potential. Furthermore, I am having a very hard time raising troops. What am I doing wrong? I do recognize that with my heavy magic distribution on the Pretender, Sacred troops are a must (Attack, strength, fear and curse bonuses), but money is tight. Speaking of recruiting sacred troops, I noticed for the first time on the recruiting screen there is a Category "Holy". This drops as I recruit sacred troops, so I assume it is limiting me somehow. Can I increase that with temples?

When performing blood sacrifices to raise dominion, does the level of the priest make a difference? Does proximity to the edge of your dominion border make a difference, or can you just do it all in your capital?

Despite my many shortcomings described above, I seem to be beating my opponents. I have Caelum, Arscopele and Jotun on my borders and I have nearly eliminated Aroscapel, pushed back Caelum and sent glaring looks at Jotun. I am playing the Eye of the Desert map on the "hard" difficulty (below impossible). It seems like I should be getting my butt handed to me, especially since Caelum and Jotun are ignoring each other.

The Call Lesser Horror spell requires 2 blood slaves and results in 200 fatigue. My Moon Priest, for 230 gp, has the required skills, but does not use more than two blood slaves to reduce his fatigue so he can run. Thus, I lose 230 gp and a few slaves to clean out an enemy province. I am stuck taking the loss of this priest each time I cast the spell, or do I have other options?

Okay, I apologize for the rambling text. Thank you for listening.

Jonathan

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

Mictlan

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

Lol. I got an email notifying me of a reply and I eagerly jumped to the post to bask in the informative glory of my fellow dominions players only to find..... a spelling correction. Be still my beating heart! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

Well i know nothing about Mictlan but it took me only a few seconds to start dominions and look up the correct spelling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Use a second Moon Priest to horror mark the enemy units for as many rounds your other mage needs to recuperate (this depends on the magic scale in the province you attack, and on the reinvigoration bonuses the first mage might have), then retreat.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mictlan Priests with a Sanguine dousing rod are one of the most efficient blood hunters available. Put a few of them in a province with between 5K and 10K people, then reduce the taxes to 0. You can use a scout to transfer the slaves to a lab until you feel like building one in the province. After that, you can either use the "pool slaves" button on the gem screen, or you can select your blood hunters in a group and press 'Z'.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mictlan priests are quite effective as researchers if you have a magic scale, as they are both very cheap and sacred.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You only have to patrol provinces if you want to blood hunt them very severely. Otherwise you can just set the taxes to 0.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are likely having gold problems because Mictlan goes through a lot of troops, and can produce a lot with limited resources. Order 3 is a very good pick for them for this reason. The "holy" number corresponds to your pretender's dominion rating + one fifth of the number of temples you have. It limits the number of sacred non-commanders you can recruit in a province per turn.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The level of the priest determines how many slaves can be sacrificed per turn. A jade knife will increase this number by two. The location matters, as each sacrificed slave counts as one temple in that province.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Call lesser horror is one of the "suicide" spells that are out there. You could always try send lesser horror to save the gold costs.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

Try summoning demons. You could have started out summoning Fiends of Darkness from the beginning. Enough of those, perhaps combined with blessed Eagle Warriors, set to hold and attack rear, can become very effective, especially coordinated with your other troops as decoys that don't have to do much fighting. Later, summon better demons and/or invest in a soul contract or two... then summon a flying demon leader such as with Horde From Hell (or others).

My Mictlan generally researches with Mictlan Priests equipped with research-boosting magic items.

Cross breeding can get some no-maintenance arrow-fodder and occasional interesting monsters.

Mictlan heroes are groovy. Don't accidentally set Mictlipoctli on fire with heat magic of any kind.

Mictlan has a nice variety of holy units.

There are some fairly powerful combat spells in Blood, too.

PvK

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

@PvK

Agreed with the crossbreeding! I have used that extensively this game, with some neat effects, but it really eats away at that high BS need. Those Mictlan priests are the way to go for research, its just that you have to blow 80 gold every turn for just 3 research, and you can't recruit another commander from the province that turn. I have not had the research to devote to construction yet, emphasizing the Blood school for my Pretender. I have been experimenting with demons (that just sounds wrong) but again, the BS supply/demand.....

@Graeme Dice

Thank you for spending so much time to reply! I agree about the Sanquine Dousing Rod, but it is *very* high up the construction tree, and research for me has been slow. I will try your other tricks to get slaves and work it out.

I don't have the best Order and Magic scale because of my heavy Pretender picks for Magic. Perhaps next time!

@Nagot Gick Fel

I will try that when I reach that level of the research tree

@Torvak

I am glad you were able to meet your needs without much fuss.


Jonathan

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Any magic school can be researched to level 4 fairly easily for Mictlan. Recruit a priest each turn, and you will be at the required 220 total research by turn 12.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

If you edit the first post, you can also edit the subject. Fix the spelling.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have memorized the spelling of every nation. This is from Memory. I had to look at the flags to remember all of the nations.

Man
Ermor
C'tis
T'ien Ch'i (and in the book it is T'ien C'hi)
Pythium
Marignon
Jotunheim
Vanheim
Pangaea
Mictlan
Abysia
Caelum
R'lyeh
Machaka
Atlantis
Ulm
Arcoscephale (ooh i dunno if i spelled that right) [actually i spelled it right]

[ March 28, 2004, 02:07: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ooh, ooh! An ORDER! Let me see..... no.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I am truly speechless. My jaw is agape. Not because I am impressed, but because the implications on your social life and priorities (that you felt compelled to share that) simply overwhelm me. Oh, and btw..."memory" isn't capitalized in that setting. You should probably edit that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif


Moving on, lets get past spelling semantics and stay with the topic. I sincerely appreciate the members of this board who take the time to help those of us in need.

Thank you

Jonathan

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Since Fiend of Darkness is available from the start, it makes some sense to hit Construction first to get a research booster and maybe some blood power boosters or whatever fun toys you like, while building up a Fiend force. Construction can also allow Soul Contracts, which can be very very potent to have. I got one by finding it with Luck-3, and it broke a stalemate and got me hundreds of blood slaves' worth of potent devils. Quite worth making an effort to forge, especially if you can also get a dwarven hammer first to cut the cost. Then once you can put some research items on priest-researchers, switch to learning blood while Fiends and Eagle Warriors do the conquering. Hopefully you will be able to summon nastier demons by the time the fiends are wearing thin. Often, fiends are tough enough when used in large enough numbers, that they don't take many losses anyway.

PvK

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oooh, thank you for noting my ingenious!

Edit: I had to type out every nation a buncha times so I naturally remembered them. Not because I sat at my computer quizzing myself.

[ March 28, 2004, 06:15: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

One of the secrets of Mictlan lies locked away in the otherwise nondescipt unit called the "Tribal King".

Otherwise unremarkable he has the Capture Slaves ability, as does the Priest King - but the latter costs 250/4, while he costs only 40/15 - and both are sacred, halving upkeep. This is one of Mictlan's most helpful abilities. Every turn you gather about 2-3 slave warriors, which while dubiously known as perhaps the single worst unit in the game, is completely free to raise. I'm just about certain Slave warriors have no upkeep cost either, though ill have to check.

You can make 'Tribal King' factories fairly early on and have them reliably churn out these crap troops by the dozen, greatly enhancing your armies' ability to soak up damage. Should you really like them, later on add a +1 Nature item to the Priest King and have him cast Mass Protection, which is just about the same as the Mass Maenad start for Pangaea, although slaves are way weaker.

Remember to add slave warriors to every major battle, arrange them at the front of your army, and let them take all the initial damage, saving your sacred troops. Add Feathered Warriors to slave armies if morale is a problem.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hm, they are for free? I always thought they reduce population like blood hunting. But maybe I'm wrong about that

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

I'd definitely reconsider your pretender. Mictlan has a cool variety of sacred mages, so you can rely on them to allow you to cast lots of funky spells.

Mictlipoctli, for example, is a very accomplished necromancer, and can summon more, so why have a pretender with death magic?

Personally, I like a pretender with Earth and Blood magic. Earth is one school missing from those normally available to Mictlan, and the ability to (eventually) summon demon knights plugs the lack of heavy cavalry in a nicely thematic manner. Additionally, the reinvigoration blessing from Earth magic is far more useful to your sacred mage than Death's fear aura effect. If you want fearful troops, just summon them.

Edit: I forgot your other questions, and I thought I'd add that even if your starting fortress sucks badly, you can save up to cast "Three Red Seconds" or "Wizard Tower" to get another kind of fortress on a particularly juicy or vulnerable province.

When sacrificing, the level of your priest limits the number of slaves you can sacrifice. Each slave sacrificed spreads Dominion like a temple, so sacrificing two slaves is twice as effective as sacrificing one. The priest will sacrifice as many slaves as he has in his inventory, up to his maximum level - so a level 4 priest will sacrifice 4 slaves if he has at least 4 slaves in his personal magic gem supply. If he only has 3, he will only sacrifice 3. The nice thing is that if he is in a province with a laboratory, he will then replenish his supply of slaves from the ones stored in the laboratory. So a level 4 priest who is started off sacrificing with three slaves in his inventory will continue to sacrifice three slaves every round until you tell him otherewise or he runs out of slaves (there are none in the lab, or you use the 'pool' facility to pool all bloodslaves, including his).

Dominion will spread symmetrically (more or less) out from where the sacrificing is taking place. So if you want to push dominion into a particular area, sacrifice in or near that area.

Search on this bulletin board and you should find a very informative document about how dominion and dominion spreading works.

[ March 28, 2004, 16:30: Message edited by: GavinWheeler ]

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What if Mictlipoctli doesn't show up in your game? I wouldn't advise someone to not pick a particular magic school for his pretender if it's available only on heroes. I like to pick death, air and earth on my Mictlan pretenders for this reason.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

Well, I tend to go for Turmoil and Luck with nations where I really really want the Heroes to show up. Also, a (reasonably good)chance of getting a hero with Death magic, or even independant death mages, is still better than (as far as I recall) no chance of getting a hero or recruitable unit with blood and earth.

Nor is the availability of Death magic elsewhere the only reason I like Earth magic on a Mictlan pretender. The reinvigoration of my sacred mages is probably the biggest bonus.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just checked - they do take 5 pop for every slave. Since i always max growth with Mictlan i didn't notice. It does mean though, even if you take growth, to focus slave raids on high pop provinces. Levying slaves causes no unrest and densely settled provinces can recover pop faster.

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">BTW original poster. Come on a forum asking for help than personally insulting a respondent for having more knowledge than you is, as the Koreans say, "bad manner". If you went on a political forum writing Bush as "Busch" and refused to edit it (which only takes 5 seconds) you'd get called on it i think. Manner plz.

[ March 28, 2004, 20:44: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

Re: Various Mictil questions
 

SelfishGene, this forum is no less mine than it is his. To "order" me to fix some aspect of my post is demeaning and suggests he holds some superior position over me, and neither of us holds anything of the sort over the other. Please reconsider who you are calling rude, as I was not the first to throw a stone. Thanks!

I did not know that recruiting slaves cost population, but I suspected it. Just not enough time in the day to test all the depth (or, not well documented) aspects of this game!

As for the first game, I eventually had to ditch it. I stopped receiving stern looks from Jotun and instead was stabbed with a strong drive through my territory, all the way north of my position to Arcoscephale's old fortress! Those giants were starving, but still nigh unstoppable. In one turn, Jotun was seiging two of my bases and Caelum was seiging the third one! Fortunately, I was able to break two seiges and repel the storming on my main (weak) watchtower the next turn. However, despite my best efforts, I kept losing ground. The Last straw was having all three of my Mercs leave me for other nations on the same turn. I guess they saw the writing on the wall too.....

The next game was with the same Pretender 'class' but only Blood 6, Death, Fire and Astral 2. My fortress was better off, as was my dominion, but my starting position was on the small island continent on the Eye of the Desert map. Now I had resources, but gold was slow in coming. Plus, the Atlanteans were essentially *right next to me*, and they kept assaulting my coast with no way for me to retaliate. Naturally, I am closely surrounded by three other nations as well. What is saving my bacon is: 1)I got a lucky tax break with 500 gold! 2) My Pretender can summon Fiends in battle (I know, I know... it says that in the text, but I misunderstood) and 3) finally, I took a province to my south with a DemonGate! It gives me a fiend each turn (with a blood mage occupying it) for free. I am slowly building up that province both for defense and to recruit the Ichthyids which inhabit the province, so I can stick it to the Atlanteans. I still have lots to learn with this Nation, but I am feeling a bit better about this round!

Thanks for all the help thus far!

Jonathan