[Baalz]

"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.