ME Mictlan

[Baalz]

Hmmm, loath as I am to join the group clamoring "<my_favorite_nation> is totally nerfed!" I must admit I have a hard time figuring out anything useful to do with ME Mictlan...they just seem significantly weaker than Mictlan of either the other two ages. They lose all the best things Mictlan has going for it (the best bloodhunters in the game, good cross path blood mages, cheap holy researchers) and in exchange gain...Coutails? I'm at a loss to find any really good use for this flying 3N 3S mage, as in something to build a strategy around. No real effective battle spells, no terribly interesting summons, not even any really cool items to forge. Other than the Coutail all the mages are now single path and not terribly strong, though at least (I think) they're not old anymore.

So, how to play this nation effectively? About the only option seems to be to go for a bless strategy, and good luck once the research race heats up...

It seems to me pretty clear cut that ME Mictlan is not as powerful as they are in the other two eras, obviously you'd need to play them quite differently without the blood magic... can somebody smarter than me can see a devastating way to play them?

[quantum_mechani]

It is pretty clear ME Mictlan is not really as good as the other eras. However, the other eras are highly powerful and I don't think I would rate Middle Era lower than 'average'.

[mathusalem]

maybe the only strat for ME Mictlan is a big bless F9W9 and rush.
Don't know what to do else.

[calmon]

One advantage of ME Mictlan is that the dominion spread without blood sacrifice.

Another is that the mages aren't old aged and the units still good for blessing.

Sure i miss blood magic, but i wouldn't say its a weak nation now just different.

[Ighalli]

They can site search almost every single type of magic very easily. With a D1 on the pretender only air and blood are difficult for them. That's a pretty big advantage, IMO.

[UninspiredName]

That and, if you take a Blood pretender, you can access plenty of the other ages' national summons that know Blood magic.

[KissBlade]

calmon said:
One advantage of ME Mictlan is that the dominion spread without blood sacrifice.

IMO, this is actually a DISADVANTAGE with Mictlan's awesome sacred troops, rather than an advantage.

[Shovah32]

Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?

[Baalz]

Well, to play devil's advocate I'll argue the points raised.

1) Dominion spread without blood sacrifice is only an advantage compared to Mictlan of other eras, not an advantage compared to other nations. If this is what they gain at all those other losses from other erras, I'll have to go ahead and say they're very underpowered in this comparisson

(the rest of these I'll take as Mictlan's strengths relative to other ME nations, as that's who they're actually going up against)

2) Mages don't have old age. That's because they're not very powerful. I think age is auto calculated based on how many paths of magic a mage has. This is not an advantage, its just a result of the fact that their mages are now sucky.

3) They have good, cheap, sacred troops. True, as I mention I think this is the only thing they have going for them and I think it's too one dimensional to be the sole strategy in multiplayer. The AI won't adjust, but just try riding that one trick pony against a group of humans...

4) Ease of site searching. I guess you could say this is a mild advantage vs some nations, but because their mages are all single path and only recruitable from the capital it takes a big hit in production time to get a group searching...at which point you've got a big group of wandering mages NOT researching. Between trying to recruit mages to search sites, mages to research, and leaders for your armies of expendable lightly armored troops, you've got quite a bit of production competition in the early game. You could use site searching spells I guess, those single path mages ARE perfect for that, but that's hardly a huge advantage to have access to 4 paths of magic gems with no good mages to use them.

5) Take a blood magic pretender and get access to national spells. Sure, except you've got no blood slave economy to cast those nice blood summons...

So, I still don't see how they're not far below average. The only thing they really have in the plus column is good, cheap sacred troops, but with the crappy mages, crappy non-sacred troops, and nothing special about their dominion (miasma, heat/cold spread, auto spawn troops, etc), they're basically stuck with only one stragegy. Plus, the sacred troops though good, are lightly armored and more expendable than plenty of the other good sacreds, so you're gonna be quite limmited if you're trying to use solely sacreds to carry your conquest as you can only recruit a handful per turn from each temple-upgraded castle.

I dunno, I've still got quite a few more to try in Dom 3, but I can't think of a single other nation in any era which is worse off then ME Mictlan. I always felt Mictlan was nerfed in other ways because they were so powerful in blood magic. ME Mictlan loses that strength, and just keeps the nerfs...

[Baalz]

<I>
Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?
</I>

Well, with Mictlan you pretty much HAVE to take a very high dominion just so you can recruit sacred troops. One thing you could do when your dominion didn't spread by itself was take totally crappy scales and control where your dominion spread (as in on your border...pushing into enemy territory). With a high dominion you could play relatively close to dominion death because of the control you had (one high priest with a jade dagger could jack the dominion up righ quick if you needed to). So, you could take advantage of the points your neighbor spent getting a good domain while not being too worried about being domain killed. That way you could even swing a tripple blessing on your sacreds if you're creative.

Plus, it was just something that made Mictlan unique and fun to play.