My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

It seems I see everyone say that Mictlan isn't good for aggressive Dominion, but that just didn't jive with what I read about them, so I decided to see what I could do.

Pretender:
Blood Fountain 10 Dominion
3 Order, 3 Growth, 3 Luck, 1 Heat
6 Blood, 4 Astral
Watchtower

I picked Astral because I wanted to be able to craft rings of sorcery and wizardry to enhance my mages if need be. Also, there are a lot of ritual spells that use astral/blood that I thought could be beneficial.

My basic strategy was to use all the income to mad castle/temple/lab my provinces so that I could blood hunt and defend myself. I would then defend those provinces with buffed Priest Kings who could cast things like Haste, Mass Protection, Blood Rain and Rush of Strength on hordes of slaves. Eventually, it would be the H3 priest kings who would perform the sacrifices once their province was filled with troops.

The blood hunting seems to work. It turns out I've encountered a major bug, too. None of my provinces have my growth 3 scale!! They never did since the beginning of the game, but I never noticed. Still, I use 2 hunting priests in any province that doesn't have lots of gold. In provinces with gold, I simply build a lab and use the slaves from it. I have sacrifices all OVER the place and still have blood left over. That's the good part.

The defense armies suck. It turns out that capturing slaves takes forever. I'm nearing turn 50, and only a few of my provinces are filled with slaves. At this point in a MP game, I imagine I would be steamrolled right about now. The only thing going for me is the fact that the AI is either battling each other, or got a slow start versus the level 6 Indies, because my meager armies are still larger than theirs.

For offense, I use mainly blessed Jaguar and Eagle warriors, who get only +2 Str and +1 MR, but it helps. I also use a lot of light inf to absorb damage. Fanaticism typically wins my battles, because I take heavier losses, but manage to rout my enemies. I also have a Black Servant who is taking down whole armies by himself with a Wraith Sword, Horror Helmet, Dragon Scale Armor, Boots of Quickness, Bane Venom Charm, Dancing Trident. I'm tempted to make another, it's working so well. He got 5 stars his first turn in enemy lands. I'm not certain why, but I think the bane venom charm got him a lot of free kills.

So here is the deal: My economy is okay, but my plan to protect it with massive amounts of slaves seems flawed. I might supliment my castles with weak troops from cross breeding now and fiends of darkness later.

I'd like to find a good use for Hellbind Heart. It looks like a great spell, but I'm not sure when to use it. Also, I can't seem to get my mages to use reinvigoration. I had one mage go completely fatigued and get killed because he would not obey the script and cast reinvigoration! Also, I've never seen a mage use it automatically. It's a freaking AWESOME spell, considering how expensive battlefield blood magic is, but they don't use it! I'm also thinking about arming the blood hunters with a few slaves and setting them to sabbath slave. This is CB, so it's doable.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

- Bane Venom Charm : Killed pop counts as .. kills. Bug - Exploit.

- Use F9 bless with Jaguar Warrior, they will kill anything short of 100% fire resistant SC in the first combat turn. No need to take losses!

- reinvigoration is (partly?) broken in Dom2

- you need 5000 pop to hunt blood with 100% effectivity, but not more

- to get growth to +3 will take quite some time. There might be sites which give negative modifier, or ememy dominions encroaching

- research blood, summon Devils

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

There's a bug where +3 scales will sometimes disappear in the first or second turn of a game; not all scales are affected, and it doesn't always happen, but the game I played Mictlan I lost my Growth and one other scale and it took a while for them to come back. They did come back, but it was a shame to have missed out on them for much of the early/mid game.

Hopefully fixed in Domoinions 3... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

how to use hellbind heart: load a mage up with a rune smasher and a penetration charm (also sorcery or wizards ring if you can spare it) then send them in against bogus the troll and his party or single SCs.

alternatively alot of weaker mages with plenty of bloodslaves and some light armies to act as a human shield, placed towards the front for range and hellbind to your hearts content.

(runesmashers and penetration charms still a plus)

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Ah, darn. The AI already got to Bogus and took him down, although they didn't finish the job. The Great Mother is actually in that province right now, guarded by 2 legendary lions. I guess I could settle for her, hehe. I wonder if she picked up his magic items. I know this because I set up a spy in that indy province permanently.

@Arrelen
It's interesting you say I need 5000 pop, because I seem to be doing fine right now when about half the provinces I hunt in are ~3000. The other half are maybe 5000-6000. Maybe it has to do with the amount of hunting I'm doing, overall. If a province doesn't have hoards of gold, it gets hunted.

I'll try to figure out how to get that F9 bless next time. I'll probably need a 0 point pretender that starts with 4 dominion and 3+ fire magic. I can't remember off the top of my head if Mictlan has access to that, but I'll look for it.

Is there any use at all for Mictlan's slaves? I thought I had a pretty good utility strategy for them, but they just aren't working out. Should I spam hire Tribal Kings now and hope I live through the next 25 turns? I do have towers everywhere.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Mictlan gets the moloch for f9 bless and also you cannot hellbind pretenders if I recall. Another thing is, it's inefficient to hunt below 5K provinces and slaves are used for patrolling blood hunt provinces =).

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

hunting at 4k is fine. if necessary, down to 3k though then it does start becoming noticibly inefficient.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

BLOOD HUNTING (since 2.11)
Kristoffer O:

Basically:
Successful if 1d100 less than (10 + 40xblood) and 1d5000 less than population and 1d400 less than unrest

effect is d6(oe)+blood

Thus lvl 2 blood mages are probably the best deal.


F9 bless
You don't need Dom-10 to start with, you're wasting design points there. IMHO 8 should be sufficient.


Slaves
Mictlans potential is in 'blood slaves', not 'slaves'. Research blood, conjure a bunch of demons and you don't really have to worry about defense. Btw, demons do not require upkeep, as 98% of all summons.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Bane Venom Charm = kills population = less population to bloodhunt O:

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Lol, good point. If the daggum scales would come on, I'd have my growth-3 working. I only use the venom charm to kill my enemies' castles, anyway. Speaking of which, what the flip fo you guys do when someone(s) stealthy with bane venom charms come knocking on your door in MP? It seems there isn't much someone can do. I kinda wish the AI would use them, because it would be a nasty trick.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

When you notice a bane-venom charm in your territorys? Patrol like mad with your huge masses of slaves and flying demons. In any province (preferably low income) with 5000+ pop get 3 lvl 1 blood mages, give them all dousing rods, set tax to zero and make them all hunt. Very efficent blood hunting. F9 isnt a requirement but it is immensly powerful, try f9, b4, d4 (minor fear rocks+you get vampires) with a decent dominion (atleast 6) and try to get 1 growth (maybe heat 1, growth 1, sloth 2, order 2).

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I'll use these suggestions in my next game, though I'm still very enamored with the idea of a Dominion Powerhouse Mictlan strategy. I'm thinking maybe I can get away with bringing Dominion down to 8, scales down a bit, no astral, and going for a better war setup. Then, maybe after I've taken 35%-50% of the world, I'll shift focus to making money and cranking out temples and priests. At that point, I'll try to use expensive priests in every territory to make 3 sacrifices a turn...that's the equivalent of 3 temples in every territory. Even late game, with a serious deficit in Dominion, I should be able to turn things around.

I'll still keep everyone posted on how my current game is going if things start turning out more like I had originally planned.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

you can, iirc make better sacrifices than that. A high priest of the sun (holy 4) with a jadeknife rocks, make one your prophet if you really wana push it.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

This may be obivious but you do know that Mictlan's Dominion doesn't spread, right?

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Ummm... Doesn't spread? Mictlan God, and their temples don't spread dominion, but Blood Sacrifices do, and I think prophets and juggernaughts do. I'm not sure if their capitol does. Mictlan probably wont be winning through dominion killing, but blood sacrificing is powerful enough to make your dominion 'safe' from enemy dominion, and to get your scale benefits (except perhaps buggy growth 3;)) I certainly find that I can do ok in dominion terms, and I think thats a fairly common sentiment, though if victory was set to dominion I probably wouldn't play Mictlan.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

...and that's what I'm hopefully going to prove wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I'm telling you, the numbers say that Mictlan is the best possible late game Dominion spreader, bar-none. With the capability of having at least 3 temples per province (more with a better economy and magic items, but I'm trying to be conservative), I think it's just waiting to be discovered. It's funny; when I first read about Mictlan after buying this game a good while ago, I immediately thought, "Wow, the purpose of this Nation is purely for spreading Dominion." I was very surprised to see that everyone's strategy with them had nothing to do with Dominion killing.

Of course, the difficult part is making it to that late game in a position where you can win.

=$=

PS -- According to the Dominion Spreading Bible, the prophet does not spread Dominion for Mictlan. He'd have to make sacrifices, too. My guess is that Juggs don't, either.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Bear in mind that to "have 3 temples per province" you'll also need to blood hunt every* province, and set the taxes to minimal in every* province.
The gratitious blood sacrifices would also be probably better spent on uberkilling mass murdering demons, or maybe a soul contract or a hundred...

Me, I'd rather have one Devil every turn than 40 temple checks.

* - well... most.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Actally your wrong, any-one, with enough of an economy can outspread mictlan because of 1 little fact: They can have multiple priests working per province. I agree they caan spread dominion well but, imo other races do it better (and cheaper)

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

But priests can only raise dominion up to a small positive level, and not nearly as effectively as temples (or blood sacrifices). From my own (limited, certainly) experience, a Mictlan nation with a medium-dominion pretender can push dominion just as effectively as anyone else - and if you made it a priority, with a high-dominion pretender and jade knives, it would be pretty astonishing. It also wouldn't be that expensive. Spending 50 or even 100 blood slaves (if you have a *massive* frontier) a turn isn't a big deal for late-game Mictlan; you're probably making 20+ per province your hunting in, so you can easily have plenty more for those devils etc.
Is 100 temple checks better than 14 extra devils? Maybe not, but depending on the circumstances...

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Yes, they can push up there with the big boys, i was simply pointing out (as a counter to BigJ's post) that even at full force they can be out pushed.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Isn't the dominion produced by preaching unable to spread to nearby provinces? If thats the case Mictlan might be better - sacrificing/temple checks can spread it to nearby provinces.
Am I missing something here? AFAIK Mictlan is no better than anyone elese at blood hunting. They have blood mages of course, but Abysia is just as good. Granted, ulm isn't as good, but I don't think mictlan has a bonus to blood hunting do they? Other thatn a bigger incentive that is.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Mictlan has blood priests for 80 gold who are sacred so they cost half-upkeep and so are I think the best blood-to-gold ratio unit to use for blood hunting. Not that gold is necessarily the limiting factor.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Abysia and Vanheim can both sacrifice slaves to spread dominion, and get normal temple checks, so with a sufficient blood slave supply, they would both be better than Mictlan at spreading dominion.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Abysian warlock apprentices are just as effective at getting blood slaves as a Mictlan priest with a dousing rod, but are 110 gold more expensive (IIRC), and are capital only. On a smaller map, Abysia can compete. On a larger map, it's hard to compete with Mictlan priests.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

True, my question was more about Mictlan having an intrinsic bonus to blood hunting. AFAIK they don't, but it sounded kinda like they might.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Dominionkilling someone is extremely difficult also.
As Graeme says i would give Vanheim or Abysia the best chances if they manage to get enough of a blood income.

But normally it is easier to kill an enemy with force instead.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Do not take this as an offense, because it's purely surprise. I'm very surprised you don't know one of the most basic aspects of the game. Priests do not spread dominion; they increase it within their current province only. Not just that, but they can only raise it to a point equal to their priest level (plus temple bonus). Thus, only stealthy priests ever have the power to take your dominion into enemy territories. Even then, 10 holy2 stealth priests would have less of a chance of spreading dominion than 1 Mictlan holy2 priest performing a blood sacrifice for a god with 10 Dominion. This is because 1 level 10 Temple check (sacrifice) is better than 10 level 2 preach checks that have to fight against enemy dominion. In fact, if the enemy dominion is 8 or higher, level 2 priests cannot even lower it.

However, Graeme brings up a valid point. Even though Mictlan has the best potential for utilizing blood sacrifices, the fact that two other nations can make blood sacrifices plus have the normal dominion spread makes it seem less appealing. I'll look into those other nations very soon, actually. What I'll be comparing between these nations is a three-part economy: Blood, Priests and Time.

This thread has turned interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

I'm not concerned here, because I've already proved to myself in my current game that this is not reality. I currently "have ~1.5 temples per province" and I only blood hunt in territories that do not make me gold. I also only hunt with 2 hunters in each of those territories. I am slightly positive in my bloodflow surplus. In the provinces I hunt, I have taxes set to 50 (which I could set to zero, I don't care) and usually do not need patrols. Don't forget this is why I took Order3, Luck3.

If this can be true for a dozen provinces, I believe it will also hold out for the end game if/when I have many more. At that point, I hope to "turn on the switch", and go for level 3 priests in every province. At that point, I will not use gold for anything ever again, hopefully.

Sorry to double post, but I had a few things to reply to. It's just easier for me to focus this way.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

There is upkeep to take into consideration.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

I have a question regarding the f9 bless and jaguars and what I am doing wrong..

I wanted to check it out so I made a moloch pretender with f9, built a pile of jaguar warriors on the first turn and on the second turn sent them and my whole army at an independent (set at level 9 as thats the game I am practicing for is at) which only had medium infantry.

My jaguars got blessed, charged at the enemy, killed a few of em and were then annihilated to a man with no problem by the indy infantry.

What am I missing/doing wrong? Is it that I only had 8 or so of them and thus need a few turns of build before I have an effective pile or..? I mean, flaming weapons are cool and all but protection 4 is well, weak!

Or perhaps it is that for this game we are not using the CB mod? Yes yes we are dorks for not using it but thats the way its going to be.

Any advice would be handy!

Rathar

Oh and also.. Htf does one make a moloch an independent province killing machine? My experience is that he enters a battle, makes 2 imps, they charge and die and he retreats every time.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Don't send pure jaguar warriors, keep some slaves around the front to soak up hits. Moloch cannot solo. Your best bet is to keep some slow units near the very back on hold and attack and thus he won't rout.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Jaguar warriors are not the best troops for expanding due to their tendency to die, they are at their best used against other players, where the massive casualties they can inflict matter. However, if you throw on another bless (like n9 or w9) and build up a critical mass of them they can expand ok too.

As for the moloch, either use him for fire darts army support early, or if you want to solo him stick a crippled infantry in the far back on hold and attack (single archer squads set to fire can also be used).

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Thank you. Those are both excellent answers!

Rathar

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

FoB with f9w9b4 (or b9 if you like) can beat nearly any independants with 10 jags and some slaves to distract archers and/or lance equipped troops.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Also some eagle warriors set to hold and attack (or just attack if you have alot of them) archers can help. To make the moloch a true indy smasher alone is very hard but with just 2 or 3 archers deployed very far back set to fire closest he is less likely to rout. Boots of quickness (or water 1 if you have points) really help as do reinvig. Just script him to fire darts, fire darts, fire darts, fire darts, fire darts, cast spells (replace first darts with quickness if he has w1) and scale up to falling fires later on. Th reason for fire darts is extra shots with each level.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Man, w9 is such a powerful bless. I was going to try and argue that e9 would be better because I believe protection is better than defence (in most cases), but that quickness bless is just too useful. Also, the reinvig bonus would be wasted on Mictlan's lightly armored troops. They don't live long enough to use it.

I guess others explained it well already, but f9 blessed Jaguar warriors are not good for taking on larger armies, because they are vulnerable. They are good for killing things quickly, but you still need a large number of them. All it means is you pick a watchtower as your castle, so you can start building lots of them. I prefer the eagle warriors, myself, but I'm always getting the Air Priest or the Quetzicoatl heroes to lead them into battle, because of my high luck.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Extra protection would be worthless on jags/eagles anyway due to their low base prot.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

I recently made a f9w9a6 mictlan bless with horrible scales (can be a little worse) but I didn' spread my dominion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.
Even eagle warriors kick *** they attack archers and routers exterminating what jaguars left.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Yeah, it's true that Mictlan is set up beuatifully for a bless strategy. Their holy units are cheap enough that you can crank them out with poor scales. Imagine what it will be like in Dom3 when the economy is doubled...

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Keep in mind sacreds are still limited by dominion strength and building another fort to pump sacreds is much harder.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Hm but my experience with the eagle warriors was a bit bad. They tended to take losses and to rout.
I somehow normally preffered sun warriors and jaguar warriors pumped from additional castles.

But they get blood sacreds to compensate for the harder to build castles. And those blood sacreds are decent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Wow, I haven't even gotten to the blood sacreds yet. I'll tell you what, Mictlan isn't great for researching, but I took someone's (I think shovah's) advice and made f9d4 for the blesses. Well, d4 has come in real useful for those Skull Mentors. It has allowed me to take drain and still have decent research. It won't be long before I have the lightless lantern, too. I think in the future I will always consider taking full drain with fire and death magic.

I guess I'm not too concerned about my national sacreds because I'm using a watchtower and never have less than 8 Dominion with Mictlan. Add in all the temples I build and it becomes even less of a problem. 10 jaguars and 10 eagle warriors a turn is quite enough for me.

=$=

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Try not to go abve drain 1 and never (unless playing ulm or a pure bless(ie no magic ect)) go past drain 2. For research build a lab in every sage province you have.

Re: My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work
 

Never say never, shovah... Never say never. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif