ME Mictlan
 

Hmmm, loath as I am to join the group clamoring "<my_favorite_nation> is totally nerfed!" I must admit I have a hard time figuring out anything useful to do with ME Mictlan...they just seem significantly weaker than Mictlan of either the other two ages. They lose all the best things Mictlan has going for it (the best bloodhunters in the game, good cross path blood mages, cheap holy researchers) and in exchange gain...Coutails? I'm at a loss to find any really good use for this flying 3N 3S mage, as in something to build a strategy around. No real effective battle spells, no terribly interesting summons, not even any really cool items to forge. Other than the Coutail all the mages are now single path and not terribly strong, though at least (I think) they're not old anymore.

So, how to play this nation effectively? About the only option seems to be to go for a bless strategy, and good luck once the research race heats up...

It seems to me pretty clear cut that ME Mictlan is not as powerful as they are in the other two eras, obviously you'd need to play them quite differently without the blood magic... can somebody smarter than me can see a devastating way to play them?

Re: ME Mictlan
 

It is pretty clear ME Mictlan is not really as good as the other eras. However, the other eras are highly powerful and I don't think I would rate Middle Era lower than 'average'.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

maybe the only strat for ME Mictlan is a big bless F9W9 and rush.
Don't know what to do else.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

One advantage of ME Mictlan is that the dominion spread without blood sacrifice.

Another is that the mages aren't old aged and the units still good for blessing.

Sure i miss blood magic, but i wouldn't say its a weak nation now just different.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

They can site search almost every single type of magic very easily. With a D1 on the pretender only air and blood are difficult for them. That's a pretty big advantage, IMO.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

That and, if you take a Blood pretender, you can access plenty of the other ages' national summons that know Blood magic.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

IMO, this is actually a DISADVANTAGE with Mictlan's awesome sacred troops, rather than an advantage.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Well, to play devil's advocate I'll argue the points raised.

1) Dominion spread without blood sacrifice is only an advantage compared to Mictlan of other eras, not an advantage compared to other nations. If this is what they gain at all those other losses from other erras, I'll have to go ahead and say they're very underpowered in this comparisson

(the rest of these I'll take as Mictlan's strengths relative to other ME nations, as that's who they're actually going up against)

2) Mages don't have old age. That's because they're not very powerful. I think age is auto calculated based on how many paths of magic a mage has. This is not an advantage, its just a result of the fact that their mages are now sucky.

3) They have good, cheap, sacred troops. True, as I mention I think this is the only thing they have going for them and I think it's too one dimensional to be the sole strategy in multiplayer. The AI won't adjust, but just try riding that one trick pony against a group of humans...

4) Ease of site searching. I guess you could say this is a mild advantage vs some nations, but because their mages are all single path and only recruitable from the capital it takes a big hit in production time to get a group searching...at which point you've got a big group of wandering mages NOT researching. Between trying to recruit mages to search sites, mages to research, and leaders for your armies of expendable lightly armored troops, you've got quite a bit of production competition in the early game. You could use site searching spells I guess, those single path mages ARE perfect for that, but that's hardly a huge advantage to have access to 4 paths of magic gems with no good mages to use them.

5) Take a blood magic pretender and get access to national spells. Sure, except you've got no blood slave economy to cast those nice blood summons...

So, I still don't see how they're not far below average. The only thing they really have in the plus column is good, cheap sacred troops, but with the crappy mages, crappy non-sacred troops, and nothing special about their dominion (miasma, heat/cold spread, auto spawn troops, etc), they're basically stuck with only one stragegy. Plus, the sacred troops though good, are lightly armored and more expendable than plenty of the other good sacreds, so you're gonna be quite limmited if you're trying to use solely sacreds to carry your conquest as you can only recruit a handful per turn from each temple-upgraded castle.

I dunno, I've still got quite a few more to try in Dom 3, but I can't think of a single other nation in any era which is worse off then ME Mictlan. I always felt Mictlan was nerfed in other ways because they were so powerful in blood magic. ME Mictlan loses that strength, and just keeps the nerfs...

Re: ME Mictlan
 

<I>
Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?
</I>

Well, with Mictlan you pretty much HAVE to take a very high dominion just so you can recruit sacred troops. One thing you could do when your dominion didn't spread by itself was take totally crappy scales and control where your dominion spread (as in on your border...pushing into enemy territory). With a high dominion you could play relatively close to dominion death because of the control you had (one high priest with a jade dagger could jack the dominion up righ quick if you needed to). So, you could take advantage of the points your neighbor spent getting a good domain while not being too worried about being domain killed. That way you could even swing a tripple blessing on your sacreds if you're creative.

Plus, it was just something that made Mictlan unique and fun to play.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Yea the crappy scales thing was the only thing i noticed but, aslong as you dont make any extra temples (and take an imprisoned god of course) i didnt think dominion spread would have much impact.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

The Couatls are good, but still, ME Mictlan could really use some kind of boost, assuming they are not supposed to be clearly weaker than the blood varieties of the same nation.

Since the Land is the dominant aspect of religion in ME Mictlan, it would be great if the Jaguar Warriors and/or Eagle Warriors were stronger than in other ages. Perhaps they could have regeneration, berserking and recuperation, or some other power(s) that is/are nature aspected.

Another option would be some kind of Couatl-connected sacred warrior. Either a human dressed in sacred garb imitating a Couatl, or some kind of non-human serpent creature of sufficient power.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Hmmm, yeah, I think ME Mictlan is suffering from a lack of identity. Removing their blood affinity means you really need to rethink the whole concept. I don't know that I'd make the sacreds any better, they're already pretty good. I see the theme 'reign of the lawgiver' as kind of an ascension from barbarism, so I’d see them having more modern non-sacred units, just like a lot of other nations have moving up in the eras. Maybe some poison arrow bowmen, or jaguar tamers who can recruit free jaguars like Ulm's wolf tamers (that’d be interesting as jaguars are sacred), or eagle tamers, or some type of stealthy mounted unit (jaguar riders?). It’d also be thematic for the priest caste to consolidate a bit, and perhaps have 2 different 2 path mages rather than 4 different one path ones.

Then, as they descend back into ‘the old ways’ in the LE, they naturally lose these advances.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

ME Mictlan is a communion power. You have better astral than other eras. You buy a lot of nahuali and they power a communion for your coatls, who cast enslave mind and junk. You're utterly inferior to Pythium (or Bandar Log) at this trick - but you also have powerful sacred troops, including Jaguar Warriors which grow everywhere. So, there is a point to ME mictlan.

That said, I think this is one of the few game balance complaints that is really legitimate. Here are a couple of proposals:

a) Give all of their mages an order dependent bonus on research. Lawgiver, right? Ought to encourage order somehow. Right now, the stuff is so cheap you're probably a turmoil/fortune player.

b) Better magic. Compare ME mictlan to mictlan in other eras. The only thing ME gets for -2 blood on all their mages is -30 gold cost - except the Priest King, who *pays* 25 gold to trade 2 blood for 1 holy. If all these guys got a 100% FSWN (and boot the nahuali entirely) that'd help a lot.

c) Mages everywhere. Just make those mages not-capital-only. All of a sudden you have an entire army of perfectly sized, inexpensive zot mages for when your sacred start to lose their sparkle.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

About 'taking advantage of your neghbour's good dominion'... AFAIK you don't get benefits from positive enemy dominion, so if your enemy has a turmoil dominion in your province you'll lose gold, but you won't gain any (above order 0) if they have an order dominion.
At least, I think that's how it works...

Re: ME Mictlan
 

You dont get advantages from enemy dominion but, by limiting the spread of your own you can prevent its negative effects.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

It's interesting this point is raised, because MA Mictlan was my favorite nation by far when this game released. When the Nahualli were nerfed, then they weren't my favorite any more (although I admit they were far too powerful).

The reason MA Mictlan was my favorite is because Mictlan has the best bless setup in terms of troops, which you can do one of two ways:

Take high dominion and benefit from having automatic dominion spread (other Mictlans don't have) and be able to recruit many varied national sacred from the capital.

OR

Take a medium dominion and simply rely on the Jaguars from forts and/or or summoned sacreds, leaving you more points for blessings.

Either way, having the automatic dominion means you don't have to spend cash on labs and spare mages who are doing nothing but blood hunting and sacrificing. This cash can be spent solely on sacred troops. I'm not going to defend the Couatl, because I don't think I even saw any reason to use it when I played before. However, the Nahualli is still a very good addition to Mictlan and is easier to afford and field with MA Mictlan simply because the gold economy is not distracted by supporting blood and religion.

Finally, the appeal of playing Mictlan without micro-management is more or less important depending on who you are. It's important to me, but someone who plays a very disciplined and focused game may be willing to accept the micro-management to acquire a small gain in advantage. Yes, I said "gain in advantage" because I can see how EA Mictlan has an advantage, but I think it's fairly small when you consider all things.

Also note something important which befuddled me for a long time. I used to think that the manual blood spreading of Mictlan was supposed to be their national advantage. I looked at the numbers in Dom II and saw that they could potentially be a powerhouse in Dominion. In Doms 3, their effectivity was greatly reduced, and I spied a comment in the game manual which implied that the correct notion is that Mictlan faces a disadvantage by having to spread their dominion manually.

So, this is traditional Mictlan in a nutshell: Superior Bless and Blood with the handicap of manual dominion spread. MA Mictlan would then be: Superior Bless without Blood, and non-handicapped Dominion spread.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Several nations have both blood sacrifice AND automatic dominion spread. LA abysia has cheap blood hunters too.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

"When the Nahualli were nerfed, then they weren't my favorite any more (although I admit they were far too powerful)."

Ah, see that's why I love this game so much. I had no doubt that someone would have a diametrically opposite opinion to mine. I still disagree with you though, Big J. Jaguar warriors are good but they’re far from the best sacreds in the game, and they’re not enough to carry you all the way through the game by themselves (thank goodness!). What do you do (for example) against a good sized mass of archers? What about when SCs and good combat mages start showing up? Eagle warriors can help with the archers, but you can’t defend a whole nation with capital only (low protection/hp) sacreds.

Also, I’m not familiar with what numbers you’re looking at for the blood sacrifice, but anecdotally I can tell you that with a high dominion 3 or 4 high priests with jade daggers can push a dominion kill like nothing else and they can do it as a surprise before your opponent can react. That’s an advantage, in my book.

Can you explain why you think the Nahualli is so good? I never use them myself, I think they’re SNN non-sacred, right? What can they do that your priests can’t do better? You mentioned communion slave, but I’d rate them as fairly mediocre in that capacity.

I don’t follow your logic that removing the blood affinity is a good thing because now you don’t have to blood hunt so you can have more money for sacreds. You can certainly choose to forego blood hunting in either of the other ages, the amount of blood slaves you need solely to keep up a medium-ish dominion is trivial. In most cases you can do it with just the blood slaves you get automatically from your capital if you’ve got a high dominion score.

But, be that as it may, the real question is not how ME compares to Mictlan of the other eras, but rather how they compare to other ME nations. I’m just not buying that they’re powerful just because of the jaguar warriors. Lots of other nations have sacreds as good or better plus other advantages. Can you give me an example of any other ME nation which is not stronger (or from any era for that matter)? I guess that’s a pointless question since you seem to feel that ME Mictlan is more powerful than most, but I just still can’t see that.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

They can shapeshift into a turkey and in this form they fire 5 times a special hypnotic (charming) attack. Very nasty http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: ME Mictlan
 

and to hurt ME Mictlan even more, Jaguar Warriors are now cap only and Eagles are everywhere.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

This makes Mictlan more powerful.

Jags are great early on with a bless, however by midgame, they are dead usually before they close in on the enemy.

However, Eagles that have the same bless can fly. So they are on top of the enemy straight away and inflicting serious damage. Eagles are far more dangerous. Try a death 9 bless on them now or a death 9/fire 9 bless like Kristoffer himself had...ouch! Damn things take out thugs/SC's with ease.

Is it just MA Mictlan that had the sacreds reversed? Or does it effect all 3 ages?

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Just ME

Re: ME Mictlan
 

I can see the benefits, but it was still upsetting to lose them. I hope they work for me.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Now if only the MA Eagle Warriors could fly out of battle too (ie: with sky priests)..
Would be very powerful(and probably over-powered with a large bless) but so much fun.

Re: ME Mictlan
 

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!