Understanding Mictlan
 

Or, "thieves in the temple."

So I started a game with LA Mictlan, Imprisoned Oracle Turmoil/Sloth/Luck/Growth 3 Heat 1 S9W9. Turn 4, I die because merchants show up in my temple, decreasing faith and increasing profits.

I'd like some ideas on how to play Mictlan (and blood nations in general, but I thought I'd start there since it's so emblematic). Specifically:

1. LA vs. EA. I like the pretenders and mages available to LA a bit more, but the loss of blood income in the early game would seem to be of critical importance for dominion expansion.

2. When does one start blood hunting and sacrificing? I thought it could wait a while until I had a physical infrastructure to drive it, but apparently not.

3. Where does one blood hunt? Best to spread out or use one's cities with extensive patrols and tax cuts? I assume the latter but am willing to admit I don't have a clue.

4. EA Pretender. I like S9W9 with an Oracle for exceptionally durable troops and ready to go Wish for blood slaves when the pretender finally awakens, but it's not available in EA without sacrificing good scales (luck is fun with Crossbreeding and if I'm going to be lowering taxes would be a good source of income, growth because it helps address the income problems over the long term, will easily counteract patrolling losses, and large provinces = better blood hunts). I'm thinking any of N9/B9, S9/N9, B9/S9, or B9/W9. All of these have something I don't like as well as W9/S9, and in general I don't grok the usefulness of either Death Curse or Berserk (I don't doubt they are useful; I just don't get it).

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

1 - When you start serious bloodhunt, 1 vs 3 slaves in the capitol doesn't change anything.

2 - Sacrifice on capitol as soon as possible.

3 - The best are 5000+ pop provinces.

4 - Imho, F9 is a must have for Mictlan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

2) Start sacrificing at the capital with your first priest. Even 1 slave/turn will help. This is vital if you start without a pretender, since you don't have him to spread dominion.
Mictlan's prophet spreads dominion normally right? If so, make sure one is appointed as soon as possible.

3)More specifically, population over 5000 doesn't help blood hunting, so using provinces close to 5000 minimizes income loss while maximizing blood.

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

Mictlan's prophets don't spread dominion.

Thanks for the guidance on the pop size. Obvious, from the rules, yet I still missed it.

F9 more so than W9? I would think that the doubling of attacks would pay off more in the long run with sacred demons than the additional damage - you can only kill an opposing infantryman once, after all, and you're going to get through/survive missile fire a lot better with water. I pretty much have to pick one or the other in order to have even decent scales. My choices are the ones I listed above, plus I could sub fire in anywhere I have water. Thoughts?

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

You could also play with a F9W9S9 bless strategy. This works very well for mictlan. Imprisoned oracle, some spends on dominion and order and the rest negative scales and you've it.

If you keep your two 9-bless strategy with astral 9 i would go for F9 instead of W9. Mictlan has a better use from the better attack then from the defence bonus (jaguar form has 3 attacks, low defence in both forms).

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

True, the attack is more useful than the defence in most cases but your forgetting the 50% quickness. +50% move speed and a 50% chance to attack twice per turn? Yes please. With your oracle i would suggest either f9w9s9 or f9w9s3-4. If you dont plan on using your sacreds for expansion then i guess you could consider dropping f9 but i really think you should try to get it in.

The Beast With Two Backs,
 

Ok, this is specifically concerning a Bless-strategy for Mictlan, since there seem to be quite a few questions about it, and because every Colonel seems to have a secret recipe.

I'm using EA because I'm familiar with it. There are two really excellent Pretenders for EA Mictlan: Lord of the Night and the often overlooked Smoking Mirror.

Lord of the Night is great in-and-of himself, he's got titan stats plus stealthy assassin flying, a butt-load of fear, and he can see in the dark, and if the bug ever gets fixed, he'll summon Fiends of Darkness to aid him in battle. Currently he just summons giant bats, but that's ok, it's a good start. He's also got blood 2, death 1-again, it sucketh not, Horatio.

Still, the Lord of the Night is the Darth Vader to Smoking Mirror's Emperor. To paraphraise Rolling Stone Magazine: the Lord of the Night runs down the corner to fetch Smoking Mirror's ciggarettes. Here's why:

Smoking Mirror is your basic human, he's fire-retardant, but other than that he's got no special powers, EXCEPT!!! he's got 3-count them, fire, death, blood, 1,2,3! starting magic paths! AND! it'll only cost 20 points to raise other magic paths to level 1, that mean's he's a triple-bless master lich where magic is concerned. it sucketh VERY not, Horatio.

Here's what I get when I dump scales and go for a maximum bless strategy with an Imprisoned Smoking Mirror. I keep Luck set at 0, not that it matters all that much, but it will keep you in the game where Misfortune 3 can easily eliminate you early and hurt you late.

Every other scale I set to -3, Heat 3, etc. Now, looking at magic paths, I set Fire to 9, Blood to 9, Astral to 4, Death to 2 (because a little added affliction would be nice, but we really aren't going to need it, are we? no we are not.) Nature to 4 (just to cut down on pesky enemy afflictions), and Water to 9.

Dominion we leave alone. Perfect Efficiency.

Now, we don't care so much that we can only buy 2 sacred troops at a time, because even though we've got 3 choices of national sacreds-and they're all lovely in their own special ways-2 a turn is plenty for early expansion with the kind of Bless we've got on them, and what we really are after is National Summons.

And we've got great National Summons for Mictlan. A dozen of them, each one-as far as I know, sacred.

Each one of which now recieves Attack +4, Fire Weapons, Defense +4, Quickness, Magic Resistance +1, Regeneration +5%, Strength +4, and Death Curse.

We've also now got a Pretender with to Cojones to summon up every single Mictlan national summons, blood or conjuration. And he's got atleast a decent head-start on Wish, so it's not impossible to empower him up by mid-game or so, with clam-spam.

And if that aint Shakespeare, I don't know what is.

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

The other thing to consider to, is that Jaguar Warriors are cheap, holy (cheap to maintain) and not capital only, so there is something to be said for taking only a single bless and good scales (turmoil, sloth, growh, luck, magic) so you can castle up and mass them more readily. This has the added advantage of letting you crank out the cheapo priests who are pretty cost effective researchers in addition to being good blood hunters (particularly with magic-3 scales)....which has a synergy there in that they're available to blood sacrifice in all your templed castles and spread your good dominion (with a high dominion score and a bunch of blood sacrificers a dominion push can be carried out against any other nation). Sloth is pretty much a given for this nation, I find turmoil is as well because it hurts you proportinally less as much of your gold income is going to be lost to blood hunting anyway.

Jaguar warriors are plenty deadly with just a single bless, and don't overlook the 4th level blesses. I find just the +2 attack from a 4th level fire bless is enough to make a significant difference as it gives them a reasonable chance to hit the higher defense units if they can outnumber them.

I find the key to jaguar warriors is to remember that they have low armor and low defense, so no matter how you bless them they're gonna be expendable to a certain degree. So rather than trying to squeeze out a tiny bit more survivability with a third (or second!) bless, I'm more inclined to focus on being able to have more of them. Wouldn't you rather have twice as many than have the double attack of a water bless?

PS.You HAVE to start blood hunting by the second turn for exactly the reasons you describe. Either your prophet or a priest you recruit on the first turn, but every turn you go with just a single dominion candle is a turn you're just asking to lose.

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

Oh yes good point, I should add that Smoking Mirror with starting Dominion 2 gives you just a little edge on the normal Dominion 1 rainbow pretenders, for free, helping you avoid Dominion-Kill for the first round or two, so you can start blood-sacrificing.

Baalz, I tend to avoid national troops for just that reason-because you're going to lose population and income eventually anyway due to blood-hunting, no matter what scales you have, so you aren't really hurting youself badly if you dump most scales and aim for summons which are independent of gold income.

By the middle of the game, you should actually have less of an ability to generate new national troops due to attrition than you will the stronger summons, if you choose to concentrate on troops instead, especially compared to someone clam-spamming with Mictlan (and you should be, because Wish becomes very important, especially since there seems to be a bug with blood-hunting and Mictlan where you stop getting bloodslaves even when you're supposed to, after a while-and the ability to summon up a few Lords of the Night (and Gorgons and Ancient Krakens, etc.) by end-game doesn't hurt anything, either).

And they will be FAR weaker on a 1-1 basis, both as basic chassis and from bless.

Re: Understanding Mictlan
 

Badger, i really think you could drop astral there. Doing so should let you get some extra dominion (maybe up to 4-5) and maybe a slightly better death scale so the blood dosnt stop running too quickly.

blood noob question
 

I haven't played with blood at all, but it doesn't seem like national troops and summons should be exclusive. Does blood hunting really nuke your income to the point where you have to completely give up on normal troops?

Re: blood noob question
 

No, it doesn't. It will reduce income by what ever amount you'd get from the provinces where you hunt, but you'll still have gold.

Re: blood noob question
 

Yes, astral could be dropped, but it does have a lot of advantages. I really think that, with clam-spamming, spell diversity, and MR for demonic sacred summons, it's worth the cost.

No, blood-hunting doesn't totally destroy you or anything, you can do it and still have an income, and the sacred troops are nice, so you can do fine with a high scales strategy. I'm just suggesting my own personal strategies, and I'd rather get every last drop of blood-for soul-contracts, if nothing else, since that's a good way to do without national troops, also, and Mictlan certainly has what it takes to contract-spam.

Wreaking scales has another advantage too, in that it becomes more difficult for other nations to invade you, because their provinces-for a while, until they're fully in control-have the same scales you do, which means population could take many years to fully recover.

What I have listed above are ways to get around the fact that I'm totally wreaking my nation's economy in almost every way. You can instead choose to carefully nurture your blood-cattle (aka your population) and by the end of the game have a generous self-perpetuating blood supply.

You would just do things differently than I would, that's all. That's one nice thing about this game, there's always lots of choices and lots of different strategies.

Re: blood noob question
 

Your dominion shouldnt harm enemies too much. With a max dominion of 2 and only spread coming from blood sacrifices...

Re: blood noob question
 

Actually, you could play around and try to add some Earth to Smoking Mirror when you're creating him.

I personally wouldn't trade astral for earth, but giving him enough to forge a Dwarven Hammer will really help you out, and even 1 point of Earth is useful, because it can be hard for Mictlan to get an earth mage.

I'd rather empower him with Earth-even though it'll cost a lot of gems you don't usually have, but it is something to think about. Air magic isn't nearly as big of a deal because EA Mictlan has an air-mage hero, and because air isn't as directly useful for Mictlan as earth.

Hammer of the Cyclops isn't a terrible target for Wish, using a clam-spam and soul-contract-spamming strategy with Mictlan.

Oh and when you put a contract on someone, GUARD HIM!. Put 5 of your summoned devils on each contract-carrier, or atleast 5 good troops. It will keep him alive through atleast lesser horror assassination attempts, and if you fail to protect a contract-carrier, you're out 65 bloodslaves and 5 fire gems.

If the carrier is able to bless, give him 5 eagle warriors, and script him to cast bless, that way they can track the horror down and kill it before it can ice your carrier. Try to research Returning spells, as that is another good way to guard your carriers.

Ring of Warning is good too, because that's an extra 5 troops or devils or whatever guarding your carrier, with the added bonus to Patrol-another plus when you're Mictlan.

By the way, you'll also have the ability to create both fever fetishes and rings of regeneration with Smoking Mirror. It costs a little more, but equipping say a scout with a fetish and a ring will give you fire gems for a while, which will make your soul-contracts even easier to produce in large amounts.

If you're fetish-spamming, you probably want to research and cast Gift of Health at some point. Don't be afraid to wait on it, but it's a good spell, and it'll cure afflictions for both fetish-victims and your aged high priests.

Re: blood noob question
 

You're right, Shovah, it's a good tactic if you can somehow get lots of stealthy commanders who can bloodsacrifice while they're hidden (I believe that's possible, please correct me if I'm wrong), or else just lots of provinces spread around the enemy's territory and damage the enemy Dominion that way. It's, as Gandalf would say "another tool in the toolbox", but it's really not something that's going to win the game by itself for Mictlan.

It can be better for Lord of the Night with a high Dominion, since he's got all the necessary requirements, and can assassinate enemy priests along the way.

Re: blood noob question
 

I dont think thats possible as you need a temple to preform a blood sacrifice and i dont see the enemy lending you theirs... What i was trying to say is that i wouldnt expect that dominion to do much to your enemy because with max dom2 and no temple/prophet spread your dominion wont get far.

Re: blood noob question
 

Yeah, I didn't think of needing a temple.

Re: blood noob question
 

One other thing, there are some really good blood magic sites if you plan on doing a lot of blood sorceries. There are a couple that reduce the cost by 40%, and one (I think) that reduces it by 60%. That's a huge difference if the bulk of your army is blood summons....

Whooo man, I'll say I'm way too scared of dominion death to go with a 2 dominion! A couple of stealthy preachers, or a stealthy/tough enemy god and it doesn't matter how tough your sacreds are. Is this something you use against other players, or against the AI?

As you say, different strokes for different folks, but I find I usually pour all my efforts to researching rather than blood hunting until I get up to the pretty good summons around blood-5 (I just feel like it's a waste of resources to summon bats...they're barely better than my nationals). For my play style at least, I've got plenty of time to get up at least 3 castles well before my blood economy gets going, and 25-30 jaguar warriors, even moderately blessed, coming out every turn go a long way towards buying me the time I need to get the good stuff. I'll take 25 fairly strong jaguar warriors over 2 uber blessed ones (or even 6) every time. Plus, as I mentioned, having extra castles lets you build up a whole lot of the cheapo priests which you can very rapidly switch from research to blood hunting when the time is right. PLUS having castles over a decent percentage of the provinces you plan on blood hunting in gives you a whole lote more resiliance to all the crap that the enemy is gonna try to do to your blood economy.

Interesting how different people's take on the same nation is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: blood noob question
 

Dominion of 2 is a risk, yes, but if you're careful, it can certainly be playable.

The thing about Dominion 2 is that it only has to last you through a turn or two, unless you're very unlucky and have a close human-run neighbor who happens to have a sneaky Pretender with a high Dom, and she decides to target you, specifically.

In an MP game, I definitely would devote atleast 3 Priest-Kings with jade knives to maintaining my Dominion, in and around my home province, and maybe have a well-guarded spare castle or two with a similar set up close by, just as a fail-safe, for a total of 6 core provinces with temples, but a well-maintained Dominion, even if it's 2, is pretty resilient. The key is to both maintain it, and to spread it out so it can't all collapse at once around you.

Once you've got your blood-economy up and running, concerns about Dominion are going to ease very quickly,

You'll even want other Dominions in outlying provinces you own, because they'll generally be better than yours, and as long as your borders are tight and you keep sacrificing, it'll become steadily harder for enemies to Dominion-Death you.

Re: blood noob question
 

I thought only 1 priest a turn could sacrifice at a temple? How do you have 3 doing it?

Re: blood noob question
 

Baalz, you do have a good point about the value of early expansion. Especially in MP but in SP too, you would probably do well using your starting cash to suppliment your initial army with enough troops to form a hard core, and then recruiting Priest Kings and using them to capture slaves.
That way, you'd have the numbers in an average fight, and with enough real troops, you should be able to take a good sized expanse of territory.

You wouldn't really need tons of Sacred troops for that, though, just lots of feathered warriors to give your slaves some backbone.

Example Strategy: I'm playing a game now with gold, resources, and supply all set to minimum.
I combine my starting army and put them all at the right side of the screen so they can charge together when they're done firing slings. The Tribal King in charge I put in the back because he's expensive and I want to be able to use him to capture slaves in the future. I set Magic to Construction because I want those clams, fetishes, Sanguine Dousing Rods, Skull Mentors, and Brazen Vessels.

I'm only able to recruit a couple of Feathered Warriors per turn, and I want to move fast, so I'm only going to wait a couple of months before I send them out.

By the second turn, I've recruited a Priest King and have a total of 10 Feathered Warriors recruited or in the quewe. I choose the Priest King for 3 reasons-1 he can blood-sacrifice, 2 he doesn't start out old, and 3 he can always act as a back-up slave levier if my tribal king dies.

Additional funds go towards Sacred troops, for the first 3 months. After that, I'm buying Priest Kings as often as I can afford them, which will depend mostly on luck.

As soon as I recruit the first Priest-King, I set him to sacrificing. I'll do this for atleast the next 5 Priest Kings I recruit, but after that, additional Priest-Kings will become my core researchers.
One will stay at home, while the other five will spread to neighboring provinces. If I happen to have more than 5 provinces connecting to my home province, then I'll put a Priest-King and a temple in as many as connect to me. I'll raise the defense of those provinces to atleast 25, as quickly as funds allow. I'll set up two castles-as you suggest-close by and put a temple in each one, again with a sacrificing Priest-King. Defense for these, and for my home province, I'll raise to a minimum of 40. That should be enough to give me a nice stable Dominion.

Spreading my priests out makes my Dominion a little more stable, while keeping a bunch close by helps assure that any major loss can be quickly recovered. It also helps spread my Dominion. I just have to make sure my temples are protected, but what else are sacred demons for?

I've got 2 fire gems coming in every turn, that's an extra 30 gold if I alchemize them-and that 30 gold is completely independent of scales. I use that to purchase troops, province defense, and Priest Kings until my Pretender shows up and starts making Soul-Contracts. 12 alchemized fire gems equal 1 Priest King and change.

I don't worry too much about taking the early hit in gems, because I'm going to be setting up a fetish-farm soon enough, and because Mictlan doesn't use a lot of fire gems anyway. Large amounts will come in handy later on when I'm making contracts or casting globals, or when I need lots of cash for province-defense, and that's what the fetish-farm is for.

If I ever get my Pretender empowered in Earth, I'll set up an earth-blood factory too, but right now, fetish-farm is easier (and it sounds more evocative).

I'm surrounded by a lot of tough independents-I set Independent strength to 9-but it looks like the weakest is a local tribe of Lizardmen. I could really use those heavy troops, not to mention lizard shamans, so I send my scout in to get the lay of the land.

It's now mid-fall of the first year.
I've got two Priest-Kings (one of which I bought with alchemized fire gems), and a decent army of 10 feathered warriors, 2 jaguar-warriors (with more on the way) and 40 or so slave warriors. I now Prophetize my second Priest King.
Yes, I could wait and make somebody else my Prophet, but he'll do for now, and I can always get him killed off later on if somebody better comes along. Besides, he makes a decent commander, able to handle 120 troops at a time, and I'm playing a numbers game. It also won't hurt to spread my Dominion.

That's something else you can do to help ease a 2 Dominion-on the first round, make your Tribal King or your Scout your Prophet. You can always switch whichever one out with a better unit once your Dominion is more stable.

My Prophet can cast Divine Bless and Sermon of Courage, and that's what's important right now, because I have a handful of sacred troops and also because all my troops could use the morale boost.

I see an opportunity and I take it. A neighboring province is ruled by a Mound King and held by 30 or so undead horsemen. I've got 3 Priest-Kings by late fall, including my Prophet, and that means lots of banishment opportunities.

It takes me two turns to capture it, but I beat them and the first province is mine! YAY

Re: blood noob question
 

In and around his home province, not all in the one province. In theory badger that should work but, iirc, each slave sacrificed causes a temple check and at dom2 that dosnt mean much.

Re: blood noob question
 

Sorry Stranges Sanctus, et all. I wrote that last post wrong the first time. It's corrected now, atleast I hope it is. What I meant was I'd have atleast 3 in provinces neighboring my home province and 3 outside of that, but close by.

Re: blood noob question
 

Well, Dom 2 is definitely a tradeoff then, but if it wasn't then my strategy might make Mictlan too powerful, and that wouldn't be good either. If you want to use the above suggestion, then you might want to consider Wishing your Dominion a little higher when you're able to, and maintaining a vigilant program of temple-building and blood-sacrificing.

I'm actually happy to be able to say that it's not perfect. It's not meant to be.

Wow...
 

Some good feedback here. Not a unified response, but good food for thought.

I play entirely single player games, and I like long games. I'm definitely going for a sustainable blood economy, so I'm thinking at least Growth 2 to offset patrolling losses and to drive compound interest. I'm also entirely behind Turmoil 3 / Sloth 3 / Luck 3 - the cash and magical profits derived thereof (allowing for both more rapid expansion, and the upkeep of more mages to balance the myriad roles of hunting/casting/forging/searching/researching/sacrificing), plus the added enjoyment of better Crossbreeds when you want your Priest Kings to summon in bulk, seem useful enough.

That said, the Smoking Mirror is a nice base for a sustainable approach as well, and I missed out on how good he could be as a bless base when looking at him earlier. Lots of mixed options with F9, Dominion in the 5-6 range, Turmoil/Sloth/Luck 3 and Growth 2-3, including water/blood/astral/death 4 for nice well rounded boosts or dropping death to 2 and taking earth 2 for forging utility. While I like W9 as a blessing, Mictlan lacks any pretenders able to really take advantage of it and still have a breadth of options.

Other queries
1. Does Nature bless give regeneration to all your blessed troops? I thought there was a bug that it only added to spell based regeneration.

2. Can you assume that you're going to have empowered a Moon Priest with Earth before an imprisoned Pretender can wake up? Can Onaqui or Nahuali end up with Earth as a random pick? (What does the Nahuali ?0 pick even mean?) Someone needs to make the tools necessary to bootstrap pretender astral levels higher and to kick off the Blood Stone creation.

3. Why does a Nahuali want to be a turkey?

Re: Wow...
 

Nauhatli wants to be a turkey because everybody likes turkey, especially around Thanksgiving! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Nature bless does give regeneration to all sacred blessed troops, it's mighty fine.

Earth empowerment (you can empower any commander), if I were doing it, I'd empower a Priest-King or better yet, my Pretender. Pretender because many items and spells must combine with other magical paths before you can create them. Priest-King because Moon Priest can suffer from old age, and the paths of earth equate a bonus to natural protection per level.

?0
 

It shows ?0 in this case because it's only a 10% random. If memory serves, if you get that 1-in-10 one-point bonus, there are four possible paths -- click on the question mark to find out which ones.

Re: blood noob question
 

Random fact: No matter what forge bonuses you have, a soul contract still costs 65 blood slaves and 5 fire gems. Why? Game balance. And it's fairly thematic.

Random fact two: You always need more (on average) blood sacrifices to spread dominion if you started with dominion 2 than if you started with 6, even if you have 100 temples. This might be a bug since the manual disagrees.

Re: blood noob question
 

Honeybadger - I was more asking about whether people bother empowering someone with earth before an imprisoned pretender wakes up, since it takes some time and in the meantime I'd like to be working some better forging mojo. There's some decent earth/astral mixes, so that's where my mind went.

I'll keep that in mind about the regeneration. Not a huge deal for rank-and-file if you're only pushing 5%, but probably a nice boost for the larger nationals and the affliction prevention can't hurt. While we're on the topic, can you or someone tell me how the game handles fractions? Are they kept, rounded up, or rounded down?

Seriously, man - some part of me wants to play an uber-broken turkey-mage strategy, and if you've any guidance I'd love to hear it.

Mivayan - someone was saying in another post (possibly my newb undead post) that high initial dominion is always stronger than low initial dominion, no matter how templed. I can't verify that for sure, but when I play LA Ermor with Dominion 10 I definitely run roughshod over the dominion of my enemies, even when they have lots of temples.

Re: blood noob question
 

Thanks for the information, Miyavan. It actually helps because it's just as efficient for Mictlan to produce Soul Contracts before or after obtaining a forge bonus.

Aleph, I was just thinking earth for the Dwarven Hammer. Miyavan, I think forging bonus still applies to gem-producing items, doesn't it? If so, then it's still a really good idea. I don't know where my manual is but if I did, I'd post the types and costs in path levels and gems of the various gem-producers and how these could be applied efficiently to Mictlan.

Re: blood noob question
 

Certainly the forge spell works for clams, it drove my whole LA R'yleh economy.

Re: blood noob question
 

So boosting up to dwarven hammer is definitely worth the time, gems, and trouble.

Re: blood noob question
 

Here’s an alternative strategy, lean & mean. I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, so it’s a rough sketch.

Take turmoil, sloth, growth, luck, magic (magic at least should be 3). An imprisoned pretender with one 9th level bless and one 4th level (your choice) and a dominion of at least 8 (higher is better). First turn get a cheap priest and make the tribal king your prophet, recruit maximum number of your favorite sacred troops (I like Jaguar Warriors). Second turn, prophet recruits slaves, priest begins blood sacrificing, get another set of sacred troops and about 10 cheapo warriors (note: do NOT buy more soldiers just because you haven’t spent all your resources, you’re saving every gold piece at this point). 16-20 sacreds should be plenty to start conquering indys with a screen of disposable warriors to catch arrows.

Continue this pattern, every turn recruiting as many sacred warriors as you can, with just enough non-sacreds to catch arrows. You should have an indy-conquering force every other turn, be expending very little gold (you’re recruiting an average of about 12 cheap units every turn, and almost all your troops are sacred so your upkeep is low). You should have enough for a second castle very quickly, put it up as soon as possible, then repeat sol you have a third castle, which should also happen very quickly (particularly if you’re lucky in your random events. At this point your research has been going kinda slowly because you’re only recruiting a researcher every other turn (the other turns your recruiting priest kings to lead your armies), but now you’re cranking out around 30 jaguar warriors a turn, and 2-3 researchers who are so cheap they’re practically free (but are giving 5 research points apiece because of your magic scale). Now your options start opening up, you’ve got a fairly tough offensive ability if any of your neighbors are looking shaky this early in the game, but all you really need to do is maintain a holding pattern as you leverage your low upkeep (your army is relatively small and sacred and your researchers as well) to plop down several more castles as you research straight towards construction-4. Put the castles on provinces with at least 5000 population.

If you manage to get the national hero with death (not unlikely with a heavy luck scale) forge some skull mentors, and if any of your neighbors has a weak dominion creating a few jade daggers will ruin their day, but the real prize here is the sanguine dowsing rod. Immediately upon hitting construction-4 forge as many of them as you have blood slaves for. In each of your non-capitol castles set up 3 of your cheap priests with sanguine rods to blood hunt, and put the tax rate to 0. At this point your income is going to drop a bit, but again you’ve got a nice, low-upkeep army. Keep recruiting cheapo priests every turn, as many as you can get, and switch all research to blood. You should have sufficient cheapo priests at this point (plus the capacity to recruit them every turn) that the research goes a lot faster, so your sacred national troops should be enough to defend your borders long enough for you to get to blood 4, 5 & 6, which you’ll hit with several hundred blood slaves in the bank. Make sure you have a couple dudes doing bowl of blood, as some of the blood sites really cut your casting cost by a lot.

At this point you’ve got too many options to list, but that’s when it gets fun.

Re: blood noob question
 

It would be interesting to test several different styles of Mictlan against each other and find out how they play against each other.

Re: blood noob question
 

I'm in my first non-losing game as Mictlan, using a 9F 4S/W/B 2D Dom 5 Turmoil 3/Sloth3/Luck3 Growth 2 Magic 1 Heat 1 approach. Some things I've learned:

Around turn 40, Moon Priests have become my capitol only heroes of choice. Pop a starshine skullcap on one and ready to either teleport to your front line labs and start cranking out Tzitzimitl or send a lesser horror at an enemy province. Tzitzimitl only need B2 S2, so you can send the hat back and repeat next round.

Civateteos have become one of my favorite in field leaders, since they can control much greater amounts of demons than most Mictlan heroes, can reanimate fallen dead as Soulless, and have both Ethereal and Life Drain. Unfortunately, thus far only my Pretender can summon them, but I'm setting up staves for Tlahuelpuchi to take over.

Re: blood noob question
 

I have been reading this thread with great interest, as I just started my first SP game with LA Mictlan. (and my first taste of Blood). I think I went with a mix of the strategies listed above in terms of dominion/pretender design: Shadow Mirror, imprisoned, F9S4N4B4E1, Dom6, Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 2 (should have been 3), Growth 3 (should have been 2), Luck 3, Magic 1 (would have liked Magic 3).

What still puzzles me from some of the stuff listed earlier in this thread:
What is a fetish farm?
How do you define a Blood economy ?
What is an earth-blood factory?
What is a Soul Contract? I searched the manual for a spell or item named liked that and didn't find it...
This thing with clams (?) and uber globals seems to be aimed at a very late game, which I never reach in SP but so far I have always won the game by year 6 or so...am trying to make it harder now with 10 AI's all set to Impossible, on Dawn of Dominion map.

Re: blood noob question
 

It's about massing the fever fetish (fire and nature construction item). The fetish diseases the commander you equip it with, but generate fier gem almost all turns.

In dominions 2 , it was usually equipped on undeads, as they don't die from disease, but to prevent that, now it still works on undeads but the gemsare produced less often than with a living commander.

Fetish farming is just trying to amass a large fire gemproduction by micro-managing fever fetish (don't forget to remove the fetish on diseased units with only 1 HP left as they will die the next turn)


Choose a province with ideally 5000-6000 population, and no money producing site.

Drop the tax level for this province to 0 (to reduce the unrest to come)

build a lab in the province (so you don't have to move your commanders to get the blood slaves)

put 3-5 blood mages (with the item "dousing rod" equipped as soon as you're able to forge them) set to "blood hunt" in the province.

If the unrest grows too fast even with 0 tax, you eitheir have too many blood hunters in the province, or need to start using other commanders to patrol (fast or flying units are best for patrolling)

Warning : blood hunt lower the population (not much, but still ...), and patrolling too. That's why having at least growth 1 or better is good for blood nations. If you have enought income and province, just put less hunters on the province so 0 tax rate is enough to keep the unrest down, and create another blood hunting province.

A lone hunting province can be enought to produce ~20-30 blood slaves per turn, more thant what you probably get from any of your gem incomes.



Thee's an intem forged wth earth and blood magic (blood stone) that increase the earth magic of the wearer, and create one earth gem each turn.

If you have access to both earth and blood magic, it's a good way to create a massive income in earth gems (more stable that the fever fetish, as you don't have the diseases to manage, but earth + blood is a more rare combinaison)


Soul contract is an item (well, sort of ...) that once equipped on a commander (warning : it's cursed and can't be removed) start producing one devil / turn.


This is because those tactics/strategies are mainly done for the late game in Multi Player (MP) games, where the increase incomeor units is what can give you the edge against other humans players.

But it can be fun too in SP games : you can make a nation that is harder to play from the start, but with the objective of a late game come back.

Re: blood noob question
 

Soul Contract also exposes your commander in question to horror attack, so be sure to hook him up with some bodyguards (Devils come to mind), and possibly some cheap survival items granting luck, protection, or an attack with paralysis (Vine Bow makes sense as a cheap item but I rarely hit with it at any range).

Playing against the AI on a large map, there's definitely a long lag between "I've effectively won" and "I've actually won." I tend to use this lag time as a sort of workshop for experimenting with SC combos (through Wish/Gift of Reason) and attack based globals. So far I find the most utility in the gem producers (especially Maelstrom, Well of Misery, and Arcane Nexus), Forge of Ancients, and Strands of Arcane Power, but get far more enjoyment out of Ghost Ship Armada and Lure of the Deep, at least until I own all coastal areas.

Re: blood noob question
 

One area where EA Abyssia has a leg up over EA Mictlan is in the body of it's devil assassin commanders. They make ideal chassis for soul-contract, since they have long lifespans, can fly (retreating very quickly) and are relatively tough, for only 100 gold a piece. In addition to being contract-carriers, they also make great last-ditch defense for your home province, and they can fly with stealth, so you can quickly stash them anywhere, keeping your human enemies from targetting them.

Re: blood noob question
 

Yeah, the Abyssian demon breds are one of my favorite units. Another cool trick is that since they are also priests, can fly, and Abyssia can blood sacrifice (in addition to it's dominion spreading normally), if you have the foresight to take a high dominion (which helps push your heat anyway) you can fly in 3 or 4 blood slave laden demon bred to strategic locations (with jade knives if you've managed to get some nature magic), each build a temple and start blood sacrificing and in 3 or 4 turns you've pushed your dominion so aggressively and unexpectedly that it can be a quick kill if your opponent has a low dominion. Hmmm, as I write that I'm now not sure if that's true of EA Abyssia, or if the MA demon bred are different. Anyway, that strategy works well for MA for sure.

With EA/LA Mictlan you can do something similar with their national summons. I don't remember if one of the cheaper summons has priestly powers and flying, but that bad boy (sorry don't remember the name) at blood-7 is a level 3 priest and can forge his own jade dagger, as well as pretty effectively defend the temple all by himeself while auto-generating summons every turn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: blood noob question
 

Unfortunately, EA Abyssia Rhuaxians aren't flyers. They are powerful priests though. The demonbreds are rather weak, but their commanders are fine assassins. I'm going to create a mod which adds some more national summons to Abyssia, and maybe a couple of these will priests.

Re: blood noob question
 

I don't think any of the Mictlan summons have Holy 3; at least in MA, they Blood-7 one (requires B4 to cast, costs 101 slaves, autogenerates sacred flying demons) is only Holy 2 (pretty important since it's the difference between Blessing and Divine Blessing).

At least in SP, I've found that a pretender with Blood can be used to turn MA Mictlan into a decent Blood nation, even though none of the national mages have Blood (OK, one of them has something like 2.5% chance of having B1). And, you get the benefit of normal dominion spread, plenty of Sacred summons and national units; yummy!

Re: blood noob question
 

Ah yes, that's what I get for posting from memory. Assuming the manual is correct, the blood-7 summon (Onaqui) is just holy-1 (he's blood-3 which is what had me confused), but on the up side as I mentioned he can definately have a jade dagger for this strategy, wheras that can be pretty hard for Abyssia to come by. The Onaqui is just all kinds of awesome for a number of other reasons to. They're flying, stealthy badasses who make great leaders for your demonic troops (they can cast blood lust and blessing among other things...if you've got a blood magic pretender that's plus 8 or 9 to strength for all your holy demons). Even better I find they are great to equip with a brazen vessel and armor of twisted thorns, then plop them down on one of the blood summoning sites you've hopefully found by the time you can summon them and have them cast ritual of the five gates every month. When you figure in their auto summons if you put 2 or 3 of them doing this you get a ready bake, diverse demon army every other turn for about 80 blood slaves (depending on what, if any, blood site you've found).

Re: blood noob question
 

I like having the Onaquis hang back and just research or summon. The auto generate sacred bats things is awesome, especially if you park them in high dominion. Backed by a nice bless (say F9) those bats are nasty and they an ugly surprise to someone who wasn't expecting Mictlan to show up with flying sacreds.

I've won some big battles I shouldn't have in MP because I had a squad of those bats set to hold and attack archers. They got in the backfield, ate all the archers, and then ate all the commanders for routeriffic goodness http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: blood noob question
 

Have I misunderstood something, but I am curious why manual (and some other sources) suggests death scale for Mictlan? Should't that run you of stock in somepoint?

Re: blood noob question
 

I don't think death scale makes much difference for blood hunting unless you're in a really long/big game.

The reason you might well take it is to drop a really heavy bless on micts crazy sacreds.

Re: blood noob question
 

Just one point: playing Mictlan, turn 47 (not so long) a province near my capitol with death 3 from a magic site has gone from >6k to 3k people wihtout events, patrolling or overtaxing. This converts a suitable blood hunt province to an unusable one.

Re: blood noob question
 

You are not expanding fast enough http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

If you take more province pop each turn than you lose by scales and blood hunt you are good. Compensate unlucky events with another players capital. That should do the trick http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: blood noob question
 

Good tip! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif