Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Am I missing something with Mictlan? Having access to everything but earth/air/death on the mages is nice but they are no better blood gatherers than abysia and their troops are horrible.

What is the strength of Mictlan? Why choose Mictlan over any of the other blood nations?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Mictlan does have better blood hunting than just about any other nation as the Mictlan priests can be recruited everywhere at an extremely low cost. Only the Blood of humans theme for Abysia and Diabolical Faith for Marignon have hunters that are comparable in cost. Mictlan's only real weakness is that your initial expansion is hampered by the fact that your troops take many losses. If you manage to get your second priest recruiting centre up by turn 4 or 5 however, then you can quickly start blood hunting. Fiends can mostly replace your normal troops at that point. Slaves are always useful though, whenever you want to bring down the walls of a castle.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

it has good sacred troops, and hence is quite viable w/ a bless strategy; whereas abysia is quite poor w/ one.

abysia has much more limited magic, as well: fire, astral, and blood, where the micts also have nature and water.

bloody mary has the wonderful goetic masters, but forced turmoil really gives it a black eye.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Mictlan are the best blood hunters in the world bar none and they can be recruited in every fortress. 80 gold for a sacred blood hunter? Nobody else even gets close. Sure, you need to mass-produce Sanguine Dousing Rods to take real advantage of them, but you were going to do that anyway, right?

The fact that your blood income is going to be the highest in the world unless you [censored] up in a major way? The fact that your national mages are capable of casting nearly all blood spells with only minor boosts? The fact that you are very likely to get your hands on a good part of the unique blood summons? (The fact that you can horror-spam the opposition in the late-game using national mages?)

Mictlan is, unlike the other blood nations, all blood - all day, and if you do not play them that way they are indeed weaker.

The main reason NOT to play Mictlan is that it is a pure micromanagement hell later in the game.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you? And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

The Garnet Amazons are also very good blood hunters, and the priestess doesn't cost much either, just 100, and it's sacred and has one fire and fire immunity + wasteland survival to boot. It doesn't get any better than that, provided you can just find them first, that is.

Edi

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I find Mictlan very useful. But I do think its one of the nations where it is more difficult to learn to use its advantages.

For one thing... those multiple-magics units means you have fast easy access to a number of multiple-path spells and multiple-path items which others will have to work hard to get if they ever do at all. A pretender with 3 magic in a number of paths can help since it will give you easy access to magic-boosting items which can quickly give you 5-lvl mages which can summon higher level mages etc etc.

A pretender with 4 or more in a magic, even a couple of nines can really bless-boost all of those sacred units.

PLUS oh so many mages which can cast my favorite spell of HellBind. Consider a pretender with 3-5 air magic so you can whirlwind so if there are any Abysia commanders or equipment you want then just snag them.

And a nice selection of pretenders which... if you are not into rainbow pretenders consider your nice choices for a pretender ASSASSIN! A Pretender Assassin casting HellBind!!
MUHAhahahahaha

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is? Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary), then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan - which is a very serious advantage if parlayed into troops or troop generators (vampire lords/soul contracts).

Ah, equations... I like equations.

Over 30 turns, a BoH Sanguine Acolyte costs 300 gold, putting Mictlan ahead by about 88% blood for the same gold. Of course, as you mention, somebody could wipe out an entire bloodhunting squad of 4-5 hunters with SDRs with Fires from Afar.

Two things to mention. First, this costs a resource (fire gems) that is less easy to acquire than gold, second, the 10 fire gems cost could have been trasmuted to 150 gold. In other words, it is most likely only worth it to use Fires from Afar if you expect to do more than 150 gold worth of damage or if you expect it to force the opposition to take costly countermeasures.

Now, wiping out 4-5 hunters with SDRs will certainly do that, which is why I tend not to let hunters stand around alone. As you mention, one can buffer them with troops. Time to start up with those equations, right? Fires from Afar seem to target troops and leaders indiscriminately, and the single best counter as Mictlan is to have some 40+ slave troopers standing around ready to soak up damaging spells. These, of course, cost no money to recruit but they do cost upkeep. 40 of them cost ~5 gold per turn, and assuming one tribal king per group of hunters worldwide to keep them fed with slaves (probably overkill, but who cares) he will cost about 1.3 gold per turn. Assumine a bloodhunting group size of 4 rather than 5 for the sake of argument (I usually use 4 or 5, but 5 favours Mictlan even more in the following equation so 4 it is) and sticking with a 30 round effectiveness, the Mictlan cost is 4*(80 + 30*80/30) + 30*5 + 1*(40 + 30*40/30) = 870 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 30*100/15) = 1200, an advantage of nearly 38% in blood for the gold piece, with a typical Fires from Afar (say path 6 for 13 shots) killing an average of 1.16 priests, 0.29 Tribal Kings, and 11.55 slaves for an estimated cost of around 105 gold and 5.8 blood (cost of a 1.16 SDR). Add two rounds of blood income (the priest does not deliver blood slaves the round he is slain, nor does he gather any new ones the round a replacement priest is recruited) and we reach a cost of around 105 gold and 10-20 blood slaves (depending on unrest in the province affecting potential gain had the 1.16 priests not been slain).

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters; Realistically, it would cost me more resources than it would him. As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests, knowing that the best you can reasonably expect to achieve with it is to reduce his blood advantage from nearly 90% to around 40%.

...Of course, a Mictlan that chose NOT to devote slave troopers to guard priests should be burned out as a fool, but that is another matter.

Now, one can of course reasonably challenge the 30 round life expectancy of a blood hunter that I chose somewhat arbitrarily and achieve other results, but even reducing the average life expectancy of a lowly bloodhunter to a lousy 10 rounds will result in 4*(80 + 10*80/30) + 10*5 + 1*(40 + 10*40/30) = 658 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 10*100/15) = 666 gold, and one could, to argue Mictlan's side, suggest using larger Groups of slaves to lower the odds of priests being targeted without impacting the upkeep in a major way. I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money (I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders), but I guess it could happen.

One thing to note, I have not counted the population loss from mass slave trooper creation. My gut instinct - always a dangerous thing to trust - says that the economic impact of this is minimal compared to the bloodhunting going on, but if anybody is willing to do the maths, and can show that they affect the cost ratio of Mictlan significantly enough to wipe out that 38% blood advantage, feel free to do so.

So, yes, purely from a mathematical point of view I find that in almost any situation I have encountered the Mictlan bloodhunters will be the best in the world bar none (though I prefer fireproof ones for less micromanagement), and THAT said, should I - unthinkably though it might seem http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif - have overlooked something glaringly obvious in the calculations above, I can only quote one of my old teachers: "Never compute in public!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Compared to what? Two times zero equals... a rather unimpressive number in my book.

I won't buy this, never. Marginal effects scale up to marginal effects - unless you assume your income over a long time is the same as your income over a single turn, which of course is wrong.

It does - I'd make these 30 turns 15-20ish. But that's unimportant.

Whatever, these numbers numbers aren't as meaningful as you imply, since this extra 50% apply only to a small fraction of your total expenses each turn. I'm a diehard smoker, and I couldn't care less if I had to pay my matches 50% more as long as tobacco prices remain unchanged.

BTW, if you want to scale everything up, remember you need temples to recruit more Mictlan priests, that's 200 gold Diabolical Faith can save when setting a new Diabolist production center up.

In a perfect world, maybe. But I guess you won't tell me you always have these 40 Mictlan slaves ready in the right place for each bloodhunter pack? It takes time to raise them. It takes time to move or relocate them to new bloodhunting grounds because of their low mobility. It takes time to gather them again after they routed to nearby provinces. As long as they aren't all where they're supposed to be, at least part of your bloodhunter parties collect slaves with a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

Are you saying that, if the Mictlan player refuses to do just that, Fires from Afar failed to achieve its goal and thus shouldn't be used? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Really, the strategical aspect of spells like Fires from Afar far outweights these economical concerns. In this case its primary goal is to disrupt the bloodhunting if the targeted player is lazy and doesn't defend his bloodhunters. If the same player isn't lazy (eg, uses 'troop buffering' - or resistance gear), then Fires from Afar becomes irrelevant and won't be used - thus costing no gems. This is proof enough that including the 'cost' of Fires from Afar in the 'equation' is, at best, a specious argument. You simply forgot the THREAT of Fires from Afar doesn't cost anything.

The original point was Fires from Afar WILL be used against a 'lazy' Mictlan (as long as it efficiently dispatches the bloodhunters), and not otherwise (after the Mictlan player realized he'd better divert valuable resources to protect his bloodhunters - but then, he actually diverted these resources). BoH hasn't this concern.

I never argued against that, on the contrary I even agreed with you here. But remember, you said - 'nobody else even gets close'. And you failed to convince me on this particular point. I never argued about anything else.

Same here! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

They have the following strengths:

1) The most cost efficient blood hunter in the game. However the margin is not huge between them and 2nd place.
2) The Tribal King. 40 gold. Sacred. Great leadership. And be can recruit super cheap slaves that are great on partol.
3) A wide variety of moderatly useful scared troops.

However they have some pretty serious disadvantages. Without a heavy bless effect they have substandard troops. Sadly heavy bless effect means less than optimal SC pretender which may be a serious disadvantage. The required blood sacrifice can be a heavy drain on both blood income and upon preist turns.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Whereas B/30 != 0 for B!=0 in my book, and is hence of consequence. Especially when considering costs over n turns, as the difference in price between a sacred unit with purchase price B1 and a non-sacred with purchase price B2 is B1+(n*B1/30) vs B2+(n*B2/15) and gets nastier the larger n is, rather than just B1 vs B2.

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more. I mean, you are discarding a 36% price difference because you choose not to count upkeep, considering it a marginal effect? I could understand discarding effects less than 5% (standard practise http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) - but 36% is a heck of a lot more and not marginal.

Hehe. Yes, I conveniently ignored this one, as I tend to build a lot of temples as Mictlan anyhow to be able to mass blood sacrifice, but it should be at least be partially included - IF that is, one assumes that DF will not likewise be setting up temples for dominion spread. E.g. one would have to consider the issue of surplus temples needed to ramp up priest production rather than just total temples.

In the not entirely hypothetical world described above, you end up with one Tribal King in each province and (in practise) way too many slaves. Yes, you do always have sufficient slaves within at least one province distance and, for those guarding bloodhunters in a castle, no retreat is going to happen. Sometimes accidents do happen, but you can significantly reduce the odds.

I am saying that if a Mictlan player does guard his priests, he should be harried every once in a while to make sure he continues, but that I shouldn't expect the spell to garner me a strategic or economic advantage of significance that scales with its use.

Oh, no, I did not forget any of that. The cost of the Fires from Afar part vs the damage inflicted is important, as it is the thing that shows that just scaling up (using more and more of them as gems become available) does not pay because it hurts your economy more than his.

And the THREAT alone, as shown, will at best reduce his blood advantage from ~90% to ~40%.

The spell can still be used to strategic advantage in trying to draw the enemy's attention somewhere by somebody with lots of fire gems to burn, but it is not going to alter the equation with respect to how good the Mictlan priests are at bloodhunting compared with the opposition.

And as I have stated, I too much prefer managing fireproof bloodhunters - it is less time consuming and allows you to commit more errors. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif That does not make the mathematics of good bloodhunting wrong, however, assuming a player with a low error margin.

Ah, well. And since my best calculations still puts Mictlan at about a +40% blood advantage, I guess I will just have to disagree with you: That is not close. A shame I did not manage to convince you, but then, it would not be fun if we all agreed on everything. And at any rate you made me question some of my assumptions, and that is always good.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Do I understand correct, basically after 15 turns Mictlan would have payed $121 for its bloodhunter while the cost for the Sanguine Acolyte would be $201, ie the Mictlan could comparatively hire another bloodhunter "for free", if costs for protection etc are not counted for?

Or to put it another way, if both are recruiting one bloodhunter for a turn, after 6 turns (assuming every turn a new bloodhunter is recruited and upkeep is paid for all) the Mictlan player could build another temple "for free" (because (6x20)+(21x4)=204>200)?

It would seem to me the Mictlan player has thus early on a clear advantage, as the killer spells (like Fires from Afar) are not at use yet. Later on the need to divert more attention (ie micromanaging) to the protection might not be very pleasing (at least to me), but the economic "lead" acquired early on does not disappear (entirely).

Did I get it right?

Edited computing error

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

It never gets 'nastier'. Sure the absolute difference gets bigger and bigger as times goes on, but it doen't mean what you want it to mean - your accumulated income over the same amount of time will get bigger too. What is 10 gold to 100 gold? Only 10%. What is 100 gold to 1000 gold? Again, only 10%. These % numbers are the ones that really count, much more than the accumulated absolute upkeep difference.

Now of course, if you tell me in a typical turn with Mictlan, half of your income is spent to pay for your bloodhunters' upkeep (and I mean upkeep only - not recruiting new ones), I'll agree about these 'marginal' effects not being marginal in your case.

Correct, if you assume the Acolyte loses all his usefulness as soon as the Mictlan priest reaches the end of his own life expectancy. Otherwise, it's pretty bad maths, and since living Acolytes are more useful to me than dead priests, I'd be glad to keep on paying the former's upkeep. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Anyway, what we are really comparing is the relative (blood output/gold investment) ratio for both nations, right? Then, assuming I agree with your 30-turns average life expectancy, and the Mictlan priests gets 10 less because of their lack of immunity, it just means you can expect to get as much blood from 2 Acolytes over 30 turns than from 3 Mictlan priests over the same amount of time. That's 480 gold paid on the priests, and 400 on the Acolytes. Fact is you'll get part of these bloodsdlaves earlier with Mictlan, which is an advantage. But then again, I never argued that Mictlan was worse than Abysia as long as it comes to blood harvesting.

That's bad math again. Assuming U is the upkeep/turn spend on bloodhunters, I is the total income/turn, and assuming this 36% figure is correct, we're comparing (U / I) to (U * 1.36 / I) here, which is definitely not the same thing, unless U is big enough when compared to I.

Marignon spreads its dominion thru Inquisitors, not temples. Marignon doesn't need to push its dominion as hard as most other nations, BTW, and DF even less so.

The important word here are is the 'end' in 'you end up'. Guess I didn't put enough emphasis in my repeated 'it takes time to...'. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

(OK, that's nitpicking...) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Usually you can expect a decent player not to spend his fire gems aimlessly.

Except these 40% only exist in your calculations, and your calculations don't take into account many factors which drastically reduce it.

The most important of these by far is this blood advantage actually comes from a gold advantage, which comes from the lesser upkeep paid on Mictlan priests. Now, assume you have 30 Mictlan priests bloodhunters, thus spending 80 gold less than, say, DF on your hunters' upkeep. After 5 turns you have recruited 5 new hunters and send them to a new hunting ground (say, 8k province yielding 40 gold at 100% taxes, a reasonably average figure IMO). If, like most players, you decide to drop the taxes to 0% to avoid unrest coming in the way of your hunters' efficiency, your 'gold advantage' is cut in half. Repeat this after 10 more turns, and your 'gold advantage' is gone. And your 'blood advantage' amounts to only 2 more bloodhunted provinces, and this doesn't scale up.

Then there is the fact that pop isn't an unlimited resource, and your alleged 40% blood advantage will the same kind of wall pyramid schemes do.

Then there's the need for temples, which DF or Iron Woods don't need to recruit more cheap bloodhunters.

Then there's the fact that bloodhunters don't hunt 100% of the time. When unrest comes out of hand (and this may happen even in heavily patrolled provinces), it may be a good idea to have your hunters perform magic research for a turn or 2 if there's a lab in the place. The point here is that a 40% advantage over a degraded value isn't as impressive as a 40% advantage over an ideal value.

Then there's the fact that Mictlan has to divert some of its priests and slaves to push its dominion, a concern other nations ignore completely. Something that will eat up a significant part of this 40% blood advantage, I guess.

And I have a feeling I could add more to this list if I spent a few more minutes thinking about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

To your credit, I have to say you're probably the poster (or one of the few -) I feel most often in agreement with on this board. Except not this time - everything happens eventually. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Wow, someone taking Peter on in a battle of math. Have they no fear http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Interesting discussion regardless. I prefer to play DF or Abysia, but I hate the forced turmoil of DF more and more which really kills their startup.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Mictlan-san! I choose you!

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Thanks for all the info.

What is the differance between a 1b with sanguine rod blood hunter and a 2b with sanguine rod blood hunter? nobody has discussed that and from my observations, the 2b with SR bloodhunters do much better.

If the primary advantage of Mictlan is the efficient bloodhunting, do people play by creating a strong early bloodhunting economy and quickly getting the devil factories going and ignoring their substandard troops? Maybe using a SC pretender for initial expansion?

What are the succesful strategies for Mictlan?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

a 1b + sanguine rod will have a 90% chance of getting 1d6OE+2 slaves in a turn, given no unrest and 5000 population

a 2b + sanguine rod will have a 100% chance of getting 1d6OE+3 slaves in a turn, given.

basically, a sanguine rod counts as +1 blood for the purpose of bloodhunting. the chance for a hunter is 10% +blood*40%, if unrest is rolled above on a 1d400 and population is rolled below on a 1d5000. results are then 1d6 open ended +blood lvl (i think sanguine contributes to this as well, but i'm not absolutely positive).

so a 1b +sanguine is only minorly inferior to a 2b +sanguine. the real advantage of 2b bloodhunters is that you can send them out efficiently w/out first researching and forging sanguine rods.

Mictlan has many disadvantages, but gathering blood is not one of them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Be nice. You have not done anything to show that the Acolyte should have a longer average life expectancy than a priest save the hypothetical "if an average Priest lived 10 turns shorter than a 30 turn average Acolyte due to fires from afar", which is almost certainly not the case in practise as that would require an immense number of Fires from Afar assuming a decent mass of priests and lots of slave troopers (as postulated earlier), since most blood hunters that die tend to be either a) wiped out by mass casualty spells (like murdering winter) or battle (and an Acolyte will not be able to retreat from a castle defense any more than a Priest will) You could argue it based on better hitpoints and fire resistance, and could then assign an arbitrary increased average life expectancy to stuff into the cost equation but I reject the 30 round vs 20 round until I see some voodoo mathematics to support it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


No it isn't - bad math, that is. I just happen to be measuring a different quantity than you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was not saying it was a 36% differential of your upkeep compared to income (the calculations you are making), but a 36% differential of blood per gold. I.e. I was measuring the relative usefulness of investing gold in order to get blood (which can then be scaled by however much gold you want to invest), not the impact relative to your income.

Your actual income does not factor into the blood/gold relationship - it is only truly releveant when you want to find out how much to scale by or in case you want to make specific examples (e.g. including extra temples purchased to find out what is best in a specific situation).

True. On the positive side, it gets some research done that would otherwise have required somebody else (who also cost money to recruit and maintain) to do it, so it is certainly not wasted. In fact, under magic 3 the Mictlan priest is one of the best researchers in the game in terms of RP/gold, nearly matching the sage - you can never have too many priests - there is always a use for them.


Why should they? Nagot Gick Fel makes some very good points regarding income reduction that I have conveniently ignored. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just as I ignored the long term income reduction from hard blood hunting early in the game, he ignored that Mictlan can run Order 3 while Diabolical Faith has a forced Turmoil 1. In all likelyhood, not only is it cheaper to get priests in the early game for Mictlan, but Mictlan will also have more money to do so and will continue to have a massive advantage in provincial income until such time as provinces are laid waste.

(The thrust of this discussion is so funny because both of us started out only discussing unit vs. unit, but as it is obvious that the entire theme is important for a thorough investigation, we have both begun selectively to use the facts that support our case. Hey, it happens, and the nice thing is that I learn things about Marignon that I hadn't thought of, since it is not a favourite nation of mine.)



This will to some degree be countered by the "but Marignon will preach via inquisitors instead of building temples" issue, though an inquisitor is 110 gold (plus upkeep of 3.67 gold/turn) vs a temple's 200 gold cost and 0 upkeep (and requires a lab, a temple, and a fortress to be recruited just like the Mictlan priest). Of course an inquisitor is mobile and a more useful general purpose unit than a temple, but then again, he does not count towards boosting the maximum dominion either. So while using inquisitors instead of temples is certainly a useful advantage for targeting of dominion, I am not certain that it is a great saving in money and doubt that it is enough to make up for the significant difference between turmoil 1 and order 3.

As for the very real need of mass sacrifice for Mictlan, I really ought to have included it though it is hard to get a good estimate since. The best guess would be about 1/2 priest output per turn per province in a very competitive game where everybody else is dominion pushing, but that is certainly not the sort of massive sacrifice I would do for the major part of the game. Still, it certainly does reduce the advantage - I am just unsure how much in practise.


As for the ever increasing income from the example, that does not continue to hold in Dominions 2 once the independents have been killed and it is time to face organised opposition. In fact, what with population reducing spells that can make the world end up a wasteland, it is a pretty safe bet that the wealth of the world and most realms within it will decrease over time once independents have been killed.* In fact, if one was bloodminded enough, one could argue that it was better for a player to kill his population by himself for personal gain than wait for somebody else to do it with a few gems and a targeted spell. (Which is why I am always tempted to choose death 3 in MP because my projections suggest it is the best allocation of points in nearly all circumstances, but it is just too damn unthematic for my tastes)


* Except at such time in the late game when excessive clamhoarding and a fever fetish fetish completely dominates the economy. However, when that becomes the case the arguments concerning the long-term economic damage done by mass bloodhunting becomes even less compelling.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

And the same to you. I look at it as a win-win situation. Whether I am right and you are wrong or vice versa, or even in the case that we are both "somewhat right under the right circumstances", I am guaranteed to learn something that I had not before since I have neither played much BoH Abysia (I find straight Abysia much more to my taste for thematic reasons) nor Marignon DF. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Do you get more bloodslaves per gold invested with the 2b? I doubt it. Although ultimately, it depends on how much gold a bloodslave is worth to you, but usually it's not worth the extra expense.

Well, it's the main point of the theme.

They're poor quality, anyway don't ignore them completely - there are a few battle enchantments you can use to augment them. I've seen someone use an emergency levy of the crappiest slinger type once, about 80 of them, and annihilate an AE army 5 times its size (mostly soulless and longdead infantry, though) with only minimal priestly support - 4 or 5 mage-priests I think. Flaming Arrows did most of the killing. Not sure if Mass Protection was also up, anyway Mictlan had something like 20 or 25 casualties. Not bad for crappy slingers.

That's common practice.

Many, as long as they're bloody strategies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

Your fault - you shouldn't have brought these voodoo 56% into this debate first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Fair enough, pardon the poor wording. I should have written "good maths put to bad use". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

I understand what you were saying, but it doesn't make it any more relevant as a factor to consider when comparing Mictlan's bloodhunting to other nations'. Well, to me at least http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. And that's because this differential is only marginal when compared to your income, and you pay new bloodhunters with your income. Basically you're telling me I should stop smoking because the price of matches has raised by 36%. I can imagine far better reasons to stop smoking - eg, tobacco prices raised by 36%, or: smoking shortens my life expectancy by 36% - these ones aren't marginal effects.

Of course it doesn't. Where did I say that? I'm just saying that as Mictlan, your gold savings haven't a big enough impact on your upkeep (thus, indirectly, your income) to support your claim that 'noone else comes close'.

Of course it isn't wasted - but the situation is exactly the same for Diabolists, and they're better researchers than Mictlan priests. The disadvantage seems to be Mictlan's here.

True, so what's new here? Nothing, it's still the same upkeep issue: Mictlan priests vs Diabolists (for instance), whether they bloodhunt or research. The fact remains that, when both are forced to research while unrest is brought down to bearable levels, the blood/gold differential narrows, and the Diabolist is still worth 1 more RP.

Of course - but it's not due to the merits of Mictlan's priests. Order 3 isn't required for Mictlan anyway, I know a few players who are enamoured to Mictlan's heroes enough to pick Luck+3 instead. Not that it's a strategy I'd recommend, but still...

In all likelihood... Hmmm, I've run dozens of tests with both Mictlan, Diabolical Faith, and both Abysias themes, and never found evidence Mictlan had the sharp edge over the other nations you want us to believe it has. My own experience tells me all of these are rather well matched when it comes to bloodhunting. Initial conditions (the map, neighbours, easy early expansion or not) have a far greater impact than the nation itself. Even Diabolical Faith's forced turmoil isn't that painful when compared to an Order 3 Mictlan. Mictlan will have to divert resources (sacrifices, temples) to push its dominion and reaps the benefits of its order scale in other provinces than the capital - a painfully slow process in my experience. DF on the other hand can alchemize its early fire gems for a +60 gold early income, almost matching Mictlan's initial income - and use its 200 'free' design points to buy other goodies.

It's a favourite of mine, especially DF. OTOH, I really hate Mictlan because of the MM issues (don't pool these sacrificial bloodslaves - PLEEEASE!)

No, so what? Unless I'm playing with dominion VCs (which I never do), why would I want to increase my max dominion as long as my Inquisitors negate the enemy's just fine? For pushing my dominion farther into enemy territory to get the morale bonus? Marignon doesn't really need that: its sacred troops have awesome morale already, its crossbowmen don't have to check morale as often as melee troops, and for DF - its demonic troops don't care.

It depends widely on the circumstances. Sometimes you need lots of Inquisitors, sometimes you don't - in that case, the gold savings can be everything except negligible. Sometimes I DO build a few extra temples, besides the ones I need to recruit my priests, but it's extremely rare. Heck, with DF I'll pick Luck +3 and just wait for these temples to pop up! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me. I.e. in both cases, I was assuming that Acolytes and Priests had essentially the same average lifetime, but, since the longer life expectancy one examines the more the equations favour Mictlan, I chose to consider the special case of an insanely low low life expectancy (10) compared to the one I usually use (30). In other words, even in a heavy spell and battle environment where you can only expect a blood hunter to survive for 10 turns, you are still getting significantly more blood for the buck as Mictlan.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I think I recall that victory point spread dominion like a temple. Do victory point owned by Mictlan spread dominino like Mictlan temple (i.e. not at all) or like everybody else's temples?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

more like a half temple, but they work for mictlan.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

On a similar note, what do "Restless Worshippers" and "Ceremonial Faith" do for Mictlan? Dominion is really hard to spread since blood sacrifices seem so weak. Do those special dominions help?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I think Panther did a series of tests a while back that proved the power of blood sacrifice. I'm playing an SP game as Mictlan myself, but I agree that it's really powerful. Give Jade Knives to your priests and don't stint on the slaves. There's more where they come from.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Something I just noticed about Mictlan. A large disadvantage for them is that they cannot preach a pretender to death inside his castle. Thats kindof a large game-theme strategy to lose.

Well maybe they could but they would have to conquer all of the surrounding provinces, build temples there, and sacrifice like crazy hoping for an overflow effect. If they bought into a blessing strategy then they might not have a high dominion setting. I was abit disappointed that independent priests also were not able to preach.

I havent come across it yet but if their pretender dies do they have to sacrifice it back again also?

EDIT: Hmmm added thought. Maybe we could add a sacrificial knife which allows them to use it in the field. Do sacficies without the need for a temple.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

[/quote]
My bad - I completely forgot that a Sanguine Acolyte was sacred as well (was thinking in terms of the non-sacred diabolist) and calculated 100 + (10*100/15) = 167!

This changes the situation completely and you may just have a discussion-winner.

The 56% was based on the mistaken assumption that an Acolyte was not sacred. When one is sacred and the other non-sacred, things do not cancel out as nicely as they do when both are sacred, i.e. I was looking at

BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) vs. BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/15 * T)

where, for T = 10, BaseCost(MictPriest)=80, BaseCost(SangAcol)=100, you get

80*(1 + 1/30 * 10) vs 100*(1 + 1/15 * 10) i.e. 107 vs 167 which you can use to see either 107/167 = 0.64 (i.e. a Mictlan priest being 46% cheaper over ten rounds) or 167/107 = 1.56 (i.e. given that you get the same amount of blood from each priest/acolyte, you get 56% more blood from the Mictlan priest per buck).

Anyhow, you just won this discussion hands down for the Sanguine Acolyte (but not for the Diabolist yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif). With both being sacred the advantage is indeed a fixed 20% in cost or 25% in blood, which given the slightly higher vulnerability of Mictlan's priests and the fact that blood sacrifice is essential for Mictlan it is likely to be parlayed into a meager 0-10% advantage in each Category.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Duh - I should have thought about this, no wonder I was completely lost about what you were trying to demonstrate!

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Well, you could hardly have been assumed to guess that I had not looked up the Acolyte in the unitattributes.xls recently and thus was discussing based on an incorrect assumption http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

So. The verdict in this point in time is that the Sanguine Acolyte does indeed come close - very close - to the effectiveness of the Mictlan priest. You now have a 100% victory on the original question (does anybody come close to the Mictlan priest?) and at least 50% on the combined Acolyte+Diabolist ticket. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I am more doubtful of the Diabolist, since the arguments regarding him were based more on overall economic performance and savings on temples, which is alleviated by Mictlan being able to earn much more money per moneyearning province via the order scale.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I don't believe that you can select either of those themes with Mictlan.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

no, you can't.

as to the debate, personally I hate the diabolists. not being sacred, combined w/ bloody mary's forced turmoil really ratchets up the economic pain. I far prefer the wonderful goetic masters, who have pretty well the same upkeep, are good for hellfire, research, bloodhunting w/out a sanguine rod even, and get a random. their versatility and power more than makes up for the initial expenditure, IMO.

Sanguine acolytes are good, but that is payed for through the relative troop weakness of the theme, and, especially, the inability to take magic scales. Blood of humans is good for rushing the arch devils, or some such, but early expansion is more difficult and research will always heavily lag.

Mictlan has good magical diversity, to my mind excellent sacred troops, and the best combined economic/research/blood ramp-up in the game. what's not to love? (other than their early game crap dominion)

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I would say that head-to-head the Blood of Humans theme has much better troops than Mictlan.

Mictlan has plentiful scared troops I do not know if I would call them excellent.

Don't forget that the magical diversity of Mictlan has a couple of limitations: all of those wonderful casters are capital only and they have no randoms at all. That is a pretty heavy price.

Mictlan's negatives are that their troops are very fragile to missle fire, their excellent ( but costly ) casters are capital only, and their dominion costs an additional resource ( this also has the side effect of making their micromanagement quite difficult ).

To compensate for these negatives they get the best blood hunter in the game ( by a percentage which I think has been painfully calculated by now ), the ability to take both the magic and order scales, and the excellent, terrific, awesome Tribal king.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

What Im seeing is that we have 2 nations which are built for blood being compared. But one which works for people who prefer to take armies to war, and another for people who prefer a more defensive/research path? Sounds like decent balancing

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Unfortunately i didn't read forum a lot the Last week . So sorry if already answered above cause i only skimmed the current discussion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Have the slaves needed to be sacrificed as mictlan been included in the comparison of costs between mictlan priest + BoH alcolyte ?

Abysia BoH has heat 2 instead of heat 1 as mictlan + they can go death scale if they want to so they can take magic + order scale even easier + do a better SC pretender then mictlan cause their troops are a bit better .


I never used the slaves as mictlan personally so could you please explain why the tribal king is so excellent ? For using slaves to patrol ?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

He's cheap! He has a great command rating! He's sacred to boot! If it were just that he would be a fine leader. But he can also levy slaves and patrol like a mad man for little cost. What's not to love!

He allows you to blood hunt in those farm provinces with a minimal loss of gold ( I *think* that the order is bloodhunt->unrest from blood hunt->get gold income->patrol so you do lose some gold but it's better than what you would lose without the patrolling ).

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

With how many blood hunters do you hunt in a farm province ?
How many slaves do you use for patrol ?
A slave costs 0,067 upkeep iirc .
And finally does a slave count as normal or poor patroller ?

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Well I can tell you what I did but I never figured out if what I was doing was the most efficient. I simply loaded up a Tribal King with 50 slaves and patrolled. They were easily able to keep two B2 hunters going with 0 increase in unrest while keeping 100% taxes. Is it worth it? Well the upkeep is only ~ 5 gold for that patrolling force and you still get most of the income from the farm province so it *seems* to me to be a pretty good deal.

Now of course your patrollers can be jacked pretty easily by your neighbors if they are into that kind of thing so it's not concequence free, but what is?

I thought that only mindless and some animals were poor patrollers but perhaps these slaves are lobotomized ( if so it was a piss poor job they still have poor moral damn it! ). Anyway 50 of them covers the unrest from 2 blood hunters.

I've always thought that it was the tribal king who was/is the unsung hero of Mictlan. The cheap blood hunter is nice no doubt but being able to have 2 blood hunters in every province and still get ( maybe? ) 80% of your normal taxes seems damn nice to me. And it worked out quite well in the one multiplayer game where I tried it, but to be honest we were all n00bs so it does not really count.

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

Mictlan is a blood super-power.
By turn 60 in a favorable MP game I've had over 300 blood income by using 4 hunters with rods and 90+ slaves patroling.
For 10 gp upkeep in each province, my empire is free of spies, Assassins and wolves. (100 slaves will find spies)
-Yc

Oh, and the Sacred troops are Excellent! Try a fire 9 blessing on the flying guys who cost 15 gp 3rp. They have two attacks and are deadly the whole game.

r try a Rainbow hag with 4 in most paths with the other holy troops!

Re: Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?
 

I just checked; you can pick Restless Worshippers, but not Ceremonial Faith.

RW seems to help a little, but the turmoil probably isn't worth it.