Re: Mictilian Mages
>(my most sucessful attempts rely on massed eagle warriors with fire 9 and water 9 or astral 9). They are also quite slow on expansion, rarely I managed to capture another province before turn 5.
I use the eagle warriors a lot as well. For expansion I rely heavily on a strong combat pretendr.
In fact my "formula" to squeeze any effect from Mictlan has been:
1: Strong pretender for expansion. Option available to anyone, but needed by Mictlan since you can't expand well with own troops. I take a dragon with fire-9. This is usually good for fast expansion, and gets me good effect for the eagle warriors.
2: Quick building forts. This is needed so I can pump out blood-1 mages and tribal kings.
3: Blood-1 mages go heavy on hunting.
4: Tribal kings make slaves (junk troops). Slaves good for patrols (while hunting) and marginal for a free combat boost. Can't complain too much about "free" troops.
5: I take a high dominion and crank Eagle Warriors. I also take fire-9 on the pretender. Since the Eagle Warriors fly in battle, and now do good damage, they can slam through enemies as long as they have superior numbers. Take care, if you attack enemies that are more numerous that you, it can lead to heavy losses.
6: I make blood-2 mages as needed to summon Fiends of Darkness.
7: I try to exlploit troops from captured provinces. Archers and 15-prot HI make passable armies. I look hard for "raptor" provinces so I can get harab seraphs who can command/fly my fiends.
8: As soon as I can spare it, I put together a squad of each level-2 mage and send them site searching. They cover fire/water/blood/nature/astral/holy. Not bad, just expensive to get started. This will have a good chance of uncovering sites that can expand the nations potential.
9: If I find sages I makes some and research blood magic and thaumaturgy. The blood magic is for Hordes from Hell. The thaumaturgy is for Paralyze.
10: If there are good mercs available, I hire them. Even if it costs me mages/forts. Mictlan needs the expansion boost.
So for expansion:
- The dragon takes a province a turn for a while
- Every 4-6 turns I send out an army of Eagle Warriors
- Once the blood magic is in gear, I send out armies of Fiends.
- When possible I mass "conventional" armies from new provinces that I have conquered.
- When possible I hire merc armies.
In total, I have found Mictlan somewhat slow to ramp up. If cultivated with care it can make a showing, but it's hard work that makes other nations look easy. IMHO.
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