EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I'm playing around w/ Mictlan for my next MP game, and it does look like a whole lot of fun, and I've got a few Q's regarding setup. I'm generally thinking of a cheap pretender w/ uber bless (WF+? - I know, rather unoriginal, but its just too much fun!), and the following questions arise.

1) On Dominion strength, I'm thinking 5 or 6 - is that enough for Mictlan?
In my first few MP attempts I tend to go for Dom=3, paying for more than that always seems to waste the potential to spend cash and bring your dominion strength up later on w/ temples. OTOH, I have experienced some opening game difficulties due to low dominion. And, of course w/ Mictlan you need to recruit as many of those sacred units as possible.

2) On scales, it really seems that you can get away w/ quite negative scales, sloth 3 seems like a no brainer, since your troops are low resource, Death 3 likewise seems affordable, and drain 2 seems affordable since your researchers are so cheap.
I'd appreciate comments on the above, but the big question I have is whether or not to go order 3/misfortune 3, or even both out. You're essentially trading 21% boost in income for misfortune 3, and I don't know if that's a good idea. I've played w/ EA TC & Luck 3 a lot, and going the other way into misfortune seems like it might not be worth the 21% boost in income.

3) The other downside of going misfortune 3 is the reduced chance of getting heroes - can someone tell me if there is zero chance of getting heroes on misfortune 3? Also, I'm thinking of playing w/ worthy heroes mod, but iirc, even the worthy heroes for Mictlan didn't seem so great...

4) OK, even though what I've already described is some truly awful scales, I have to push it still further and ask if it is completely ridiculous to contemplate going order 0, misfortune 1, or turmoil 1, misfortune 0? I don't see myself myself doing this, but I had to ask.

5) How do you best get access to earth magic, as Mictlan, if you don't take earth magic on your pretender? Do any blood summons not requiring earth magic yield a mage w/ earth magic? Also, in the conjuration school, are there any summons that would allow you to jump over to earth from nature, death or water?

6) While my main interest has been in doing an uber bless, I also notice the Lord of the Night pretender seemed pretty cool. However, based on the limited testing I've done, it seems he's maybe not quite strong as I thought from my first impression. It seems that he'll need a bit of buffing to be proficient at taking out indies - anyone out there w/ experience w/ the Lord of the Night care to comment?

7) I'm primarily looking at EA Mictlan, but LA Mictlan looks nice as well. I noticed the amphibious units, I don't suppose its the case that LA Mictlan can put in PD in the ocean provinces (like Agartha can)?



TIA,

Hellboy

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Well, I’ll preface this with the obvious comment that there are several different ways to play any nation, and there are several opinions on most of these questions, so these are just mine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

1) I REALLY like to have quite a high dominion score when I play Mictlan for two and a half reasons. One, your non-sacred national troops are all complete crap. I usually don’t recruit ANY non-sacred troops (other than occasional arrow-catchers) and instead save up as fast as possible for more castles to buy jaguar warriors. The second, as you guessed, is dominion push. With a low dominon score early on you’re at the mercy of an aggressive dominion push by somebody else, while with a high dominion score you have to option of very rapidly pushing your dominion in an unexpected direction. 3 or 4 priests of the sun wielding jade daggers can absolutely trample over anybody who is not expecting it’s dominion if you’ve got a high dominion score. I don’t remember the exact formula, but 4 priests of the sun using jade daggers will sacrifice 20 blood slaves per turn, which is I think something like having 20 temples per turn….which you can deploy very rapidly and unexpectedly if you happen to see somebody with a weak dominion. (that’s the one and a half reasons.. protect yourself from dominion death and have the chance to dominion kill somebody else potentially)

2) Sloth is a no-brainer. Death & drain, not nearly so much. Almost all your good mages are old, so picking a death scale will really impact their lifespan until you can research to construction-6 and get the boots of youth (or the more expensive blood ritual that makes them younger). Death also eats into your long term blood hunting prospects. Drain I hate because I use the heck out of the cheapo Mictlan priests. They’re cheap as hell, and sacred, but have only a research of 3 (working from memory here, maybe it’s 4). If you want to use them as your primary researchers (because the more expensive ones are all old) then taking a drain scale impacts your research by a whopping 33%. It cuts the other way too though, taking just one point in magic really helps out. Now, what is more of a no-brainer is taking turmoil/luck. This is because you’re going to be having a decent number of your provinces used for blood hunting – thus not generating gold income. So turmoil will hurt you less, but luck will help you just as much and get the benefit of it’s synergy with turmoil.

3) Yes, you have a 0 chance of getting heroes at misfortune-3. I think it’s a 3% per turn chance +- 1 per luck scale. The Mictlan heroes aren’t great, but they do give you access to new magic paths you otherwise can’t easily get. The death hero lets you forge skull mentors, cast dark knowledge, summon vampires and generally start up the death machine. If you can get the air guy up to air-2 he can haruespex for awhile and build up enough gems to empower him up and start forging robes of the magi (expensive, but not a lot of other uses for air gems for Mictlan)

5) Earth magic is a pain, but if you can get it (either by a non-national mage, or through your pretender) you can easily start cranking out blood stones and create quite an earth powerhouse (make sure you make a dwarven hammer to). I seldom put earth on my pretender since it doesn’t really help the sacreds, but I do keep an eye out for any earth mages I can grab (keep hellbind heart and succubi in mind, you might be able to snatch an enemy earth mage). I can’t think of any good summons that will give you earth if you don’t already have it.

No comment on the other questions. I will also point out that as popular as an uber bless strategy is with Mictlan I’ve had some pretty good luck with more conservative blessings combined with good scales. Something like single bless, Turmoil-3, Sloth-3, Magic-1, Growth-3, Luck-3. Even single blessed Mictlan sacreds are pretty good because they’re cheap enough to throw many of them around, and the nice scales let you more rapidly get to Mictlan’s middle/late powerful blood summons.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Thanks for the quick (and thorough!) response.


Of course, I don't do a bless strategy every time around, but I've a mind to go that way this time. In another game I think it would be fun to have a go w/ a toned down bless and either an SC pretender or a broader and more long term magic strategy.


So in the example above, would you care to throw out a number as to how high you might put your dominion level at?

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Well, it kinda depends on what pretender you're going with. I seldom go below a 7 on dominion, but where to go above that? Depends on how many points I have left over after getting the paths I want for blessing, and also if I want a SC god (to get the awe at 9 or 10).

The levels above 7 are generally pretty expensive so you've got to balance them against what you could have for the same points. Having 30% more jaguar warriors is nice, but is it worth the price to go from 7 to 10? Well, there are a couple ways to go. I like to get 2 extra castles up as fast as possible, and 30 jaguar warriors a turn is a pretty potent rushing force with a decent bless. But if the other choice is to have an awake pretender to back up 21 jaguar warriors a turn? Or a second bless for those 21 jaguar warriors? On the other hand, if your choice is to move your dominion from 7 to 10, or to move one of your imprisoned pretender's magic path from 4 to 7, or drop sloth from 3 to 1...well you've got to decide where the best bang for your buck is. I seldom plan to try and dominion push when I'm building my pretender, but if I end up with a 10 for other reasons I'm much more eager to look for the opportunity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

One of the reasons I like to have nicer scales is because until you get to the decent blood summons you're going to be relying heavily on jaguar warriors (only non-capital troop worth recruiting), and they're pretty viscously counterable once people get a chance to respond strongly. I try to get some demonic backing before that happens. With that in mind, it's often worthwhile to see what sacrifices you need to make to get your pretender to be awake and researching from turn one, and dominion above 7 is often a good place to cut. All THAT being said, if you take one of the immobile pretenders like the blood fountain getting your dominion to 10 isn't nearly as expensive since you start at 4.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I always recommend to people new to EA Mictlan to take a balanced approach. Dominion 8, scales Order-3, Sloth-3, Heat-3, Growth-3, and an imprisoned blood fountain pretender with F9/B5 isn't a bad starting point.

With dominion 8 you can get a lot of sacred troops for a good early push and with order-8 you can afford all those troops plus the castles and researchers and blood hunters you'll need for late game power.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

My post(made around 4 hours ago) appears not to have worked so i'll summarise it:

This is one way to play Mictlan, probably most suited to a middle length game because your pretender is imprisoned so blitzing hurts and the death scale will hurt alot in very long games.

Moloch
Dom10
Order3, sloth3, heat 3, death3, misfortune2, drain2
Fire9, Water9, Blood 4
Imprisoned

Nice bless for your sacreds, a standard f9w9 with +2 strength. Your scales are terrible and your gods imprisoned but your sacreds are nasty and when your god gets out he is great.

55 Health
15 Prot
18 Strength
24 Attack
22 Defence
Flying
Fear
Awe
2 Attacks

This is him unequipped and unbuffed in neutral dominion.
He has full slots, can quicken himself(and then his foot slots are free for reinvig http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) and can cast fireshield(15ap damage iirc) and phoenix pyre

Your cheap sacreds, even with your terrible scales, should keep you fairly safe from most things(unless your teamed up on) until your god comes out and, hopefully by then you will have fireshield and personal quickness researched and some equipment forged. just as an example: frost brand, lucky coin, dragon helmet(morale boost), robe of shadows/rime hauberk, boots of the messenger, ring of regeneration, another misc item(amulet of resilence/anti magic, cat charm, resistance rings ect) All those items can be forged by your national mages iirc

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I always preface my comments saying I don't play MP. I don't play MP.

I like Turmoil/Sloth/Luck 3 Heat 1 Growth 2 Magic 1 for Mictlan. I think with an Imprisoned Smoking Mirror this lets you have Dominion 5 and a F9 B4 + your choice of 2 other 4's + death 2. I generally take either W4E4 or W4N4. Either way, your blessed troops hit like trucks (magic/flaming/+2 strength/+4 attack) and have good defense. The former is nice if you're thinking of playing around with blood communions or more battlemages. The latter helps your mages ages very gracefully (bring diseased mages into combat to bless/regen them back up to full health) and makes your troops a little more survivable (even Jaguar Warriors will thank you for the affliction avoidance). You can also go W4D4 and hit even harder while saving some points for higher dominion, although that's really not necessary except against pretenders and the like.

I like turmoil/luck for mictlan because I usually end up with most of my provinces with 5000+ population at 0 tax/blood hunting. Provinces with lots of mines (found by luck) are the exception. Under luck, every province gets a chance to provide random boosts to income, even with 0 tax, and I also net heroes/extra gems (which, if nothing else, can be alchemized into astral to empower your moon priests)/extra magic items. Turmoil/Sloth also makes your dominion quite hostile to other, more gold/resource dependent forces even if you can't force a dominion kill.

Growth offsets blood hunting losses and lets you groom provinces for the 5000 pop mark. Magic, as mentioned before, gives you one of the most efficient gold/research conversions in the game.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Thanks shovah32, that was quite detailed and helpful. If that's a summary, makes me wonder what the original post was like!

More general questions on Mictlan:

1) While testing I saw a number of jaguar warriors auto-healing afflictions every turn, but I had no healing priest or GoH up, or anything of the like. Do jaguar warriors have (in effect) recuperate? Or is it possible that there was some hidden site I didn't know about?

2) Does anyone recruit sun or eagle warriors? It's odd that they are the ones that are capital only, when they both seem less useful than jaguar warriors.
If you have a few fortress up and recruiting your jaguars, then I can see some value in recruiting eagle warriors (for mage/archer attacks), but otherwise it seems better to stick to jaguars.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Eagle warriors are deadly. They get to attack first most of the time, can fly to attack archers, and get 2 attacks. Best to recruit as many of them as you can every turn, IMO.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I dont know about auto-healing but(and i could be wrong) they may auto-heal when turning back from were-jaguar form.

I dont use sun warriors but i use a combination of jaguar and eagle warriors, the flight from eagle warriors useful for quickly hitting an enemy be they archers, elephants(who go down fairly quick to f9w9b4-6 eagle warriors) or even minor thugs.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I use Sun Warriors and Eagle Warriors.

Sun Warriors give a decent heavy sacred unit which has different strengths from the Jaguars.

Eagle Warriors' flying ability is useful for various things, and they can be grouped with other flying units (e.g. summoned flying demons without auras) to provide critical mass and fodder for the flying component.

PvK

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

No hidden sites and nothing peculiar. This is a feature of the game, if rather obscure and unadvertised. Units with more than one shape have a fairly good chance of healing afflictions when they change shape. This only works for involuntary changes, such as jaguar warriors, skinshifters and Machaka Black Sorcerers and Sorceresses have and is checked at the end of each combat where the unit changed to its secondshape.

It does NOT work if you give a unit the change shape command in the main interface. I am not even sure if it would work the same way for units capable of voluntarily changing shape.

You need to use jaguars first until you get a second fort. After that it's jaguars from the others and eagles from the capital. Using eagles very early on will get most of them massacred when they attack archers, kill commanders and then start tangling with the heavier infantry units.

Edi

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Sounds like good advice - thanks Edi!

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Personally I love EA Mictlan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

The advice above sounds very good to me, but here is my take on Mictlan anyway... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I usually play with a F9W9B4 bless since the added defense and the quickness from the W9 add quite a lot of staying and hitting power to my units. D4 is nice vs. high HP and/or regen units like Niefel Giants with a N9 bless http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif and IIRC it helps with the old age.

I would go for Dom8 (lacking points for more) due to the cheap sacreds.

Mainly this means an imprisoned pretender (cheap/magic heavy) and bad scales, but since your troops are fast and hitting very hard in addition to being hard to hit I don't think that you need an early pretender or a combat pretender for the late game (which is fairly based on magic anyway).

Due to point contraints I usually go for very bad scales:

turmoil 3
sloth 3
heat 3
growths 2-3
luck 2-3
magic drain 2

I like growth for the old mages and in order to get more time out of my bloodhunting provinces.

Due to the drain I tend to go for construction 6 ASAP in order to get boots of youths for my old mages since they are the only means to get decent research. But due to the growth scale (at least when combined with D4) I don't seem to get very many diseased mages till I get to construction 6 anyway.

I waste a lot of blood/research for building those boots, but this might lead to some interesting tactics with a global enchantment later on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And I love my eagle warriors, with a heavy bless like this they tend to kill 1 unit each turn due to their large number of attacks/high damage.

One thing to keep in mind with Mictlan is not to mix your (rather low HP) sacreds with ranged units since you tend to get lots of casualties due to friendly fire.

CharonJr

PS: I tend to recruit some Sun Warriors (despite their poor speed) as frontline troops due to they decent protection. They are often able to stop cav charges and soak up arrows. Their high encumberance usually is no problem since the eagle warriors usually end the fight before enc becomes a real issue.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

I think I might come to, but I've done enough testing now to see that it is not the easiest nation to master. One question upfront: are you using this setup in MP?

I'm slightly confused: you list F9W9B4, but comment on how D4 is nice - is B4 a typo? I'm playing around w/ both B4 and D4 on my test pretenders, and it does seem like both are worthwhile, but I may have to choose between them (its possible to get both, but many you really have to bork up your scales to get there).

So, also on your scales you have two things that surprise me. One is the drain (which I'll post a question on separately), and the second is the turmoil/luck combination. I guess I was thinking of order/misfortune as being the better combo because you're going to want to build lots of units, and lots of forts (complete w/ labs & temples) and lots of labs for your bloodhunting provinces. Are you ok w/ the economic downside of turmoil?

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

A question for either Shovah32 or CharonJr (or anyone else who cares to comment):

I noticed both of you took drain 2. I've done a bit of testing w/ drain2, and I find it very scary. Your Mictlan priests are down to 2rp (as opposed to magic 1, where they're 4rp). I know we're talking about 120 build pts here, but still at 2rp it seemed to take forever to build up a decent research rate.

Now from my limited experience w/ blood nations I think that blood nations don't need to research the full tree as fast as other nations, since blood offers good payoffs all on its own. Still, I tend to go for construction 4, before I start my blood research and construction 6 before I go way high in blood level. And even though you can probably get away w/o pushing broad research as fast as some nations, you will still need get some high levels in non-blood magic for the end game. So, when all is said and done, don't you find drain 2 to be rather a serious handicap for Mictlan?

Now one thing I've done in the past to get around drain 2 is to go for skull mentors and lightless lanterns asap. However, it seems to me that this is rather difficult for Mictlan, since skull mentors look impossible (no death mages), and lightless lanterns take all the way to construction 6 before you can build them.

Re: EA Mictlan Setup - Q\'s from a noob
 

Hello,

yes, I use this setup in MP (well, actually in a 1vs1 here atm).

And it depends on the enemies I expect to face if I use a D4 (actually 5 here) bless in addition to B4 (I am doing so vs. Niefelheim atm with a N10E9 bless).

I just took a look at my scales in this game and they are turmoil3, sloth3, heat3, luck2, drain2 with growth at 0 due to the points needed for D4 and Dom8 with a imprisoned Smoking Mirror.

Concenring death you have basically to either hope for an indie mage with it (dark knowledge jsut needs D1) or that you get some death gems by events and/or from non death sites.

You can hope for a hero (D3, B3 IIRC), too. Otherwise you have to wait for your pretender to break free or go for Blood7 (Onaqui) or Conj7 ASAP.

6RP from the High Priests are not that bad, too and losses due to old age have been fairly light for me with this setup (IIRC Death on the pretender lowers the chance to get diseased).

You might get lucky with events and get some sages to help you with research.

And finally EA with its decent number of magic sites has a fairly good chance to have one that lets you recruit death-mages.

But, yes, due to the number of options I listed for getting death mages you can see that I am worried about slow research in the beginning.

Btw, in my current 1vs1 we are at turn 48 and I generate about 500RP each turn, 600 if I were not looking for magic sites/forging items and casting ritual spells each turn. About 12 High priests are bloodhunting here atm for about 80 slaves each turn (with 3 more High Priests getting ready to open up a 5th province soon).

Not that great, but not bad either I think.

CharonJr

PS: I don't tend to build castles, but rather try to conquer them. But in a full MP game without any AIs this will be much harder and I would surely save for a 2nd castle). But since all my units are sacred (low upkeep) and the speed of expansion is fairly fast this is not that hard IMO even with turmoil3.