Re: Mictlan Pretender
Having played Mictlan once in MP (and losing handily), I can one thing about them: they are abysmially weak in the beginning. Because of the intense need to sacrifice slaves early if you want dominion spread, my VQ did not work very well at all. Maybe I was too scared to fly into enemy or neutral dominion with her, but the dominion spread was so horrid early on that I was unable to properly expand with my VQ.
I therefore came to the interesting conclusion that the VQ was much too expensive for Mictlan. The Ghost King would be the superior choice if you want a pretender SC. But I would never take so many different schools as Boron proposed, since you need more than 4 dominion and also some decent scales. My GK pretender for Mictlan probably would not get more than air, water, and earth. This, along with the inherent death, is enough to make a powerful SC pretender anyway.
However, I think a fire 9 or water 9 bless on a cheaper pretender would work quite well because of all the inexpensive sacred troops. But be sure and save some pretender points to get a high starting dominion, though. I think 6 is rock-bottom minimum and 7 is better. You want your sacrificed slaves to work hard for you early on to try and decently expand your dominion.
Another problem with Mictlan is that it MUST blood hunt the entire game to stay alive. Other blood nations, like Abysia and Vanheim, hunt by choice. Not Mictlan, as he hunts for survival. This means a death scale is particularly harsh on Mictlan. When your population is dead, so are you, for your temples are totally useless without blood slaves to sacrifice in them. Taking a death scale means that you are relying on expanding into your neighbor's territory who took growth. This is not a very pleasing strategy to me.
One big advantage to Mictlan is the ability to take sloth 3 without blinking an eye. Their sacred troops don't need resouces in the slightest. They are also cheap, plus you are getting free fodder with the slaves, so Order 3 is not an absolute requirement like it is for most other nations. This means that a turmoil/luck strategy just might work for them. I was thinking of testing that out, but have yet to do so.
The cheap Mictlan Priests are pretty good at researching, they are cheap, and you get them everywhere. Magic 3 is therefore also not an absolute requirement like it is for the poor researching nations.
One thing about my Mictlan game was that I first researched Alteration 3 for my VQ (not needed for a non-SC strategy), then Construction 2 for the essential Jade Knives, then on to Construction 4 to get the required SDRs and Brazen Vessels. I then put everything into blood research and managed to get all 6 Ice Devils before Abysia could. I also got 2 of the Arch Devils before he could.
So, what does this all mean? I dunno...
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