EA Mictlan Setup - Q's from a noob

[Hellboy]

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

[Baalz]

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.

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.

[Hellboy]

Thanks for the quick (and thorough!) response.

Baalz said:
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.

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.

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.

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

[Baalz]

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.

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.

[NickW]

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.

[Shovah32]

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 ) 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

[PvK]

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