ME Mictlan

[Shovah32]

Yea the crappy scales thing was the only thing i noticed but, aslong as you dont make any extra temples (and take an imprisoned god of course) i didnt think dominion spread would have much impact.

[Teraswaerto]

The Couatls are good, but still, ME Mictlan could really use some kind of boost, assuming they are not supposed to be clearly weaker than the blood varieties of the same nation.

Since the Land is the dominant aspect of religion in ME Mictlan, it would be great if the Jaguar Warriors and/or Eagle Warriors were stronger than in other ages. Perhaps they could have regeneration, berserking and recuperation, or some other power(s) that is/are nature aspected.

Another option would be some kind of Couatl-connected sacred warrior. Either a human dressed in sacred garb imitating a Couatl, or some kind of non-human serpent creature of sufficient power.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, yeah, I think ME Mictlan is suffering from a lack of identity. Removing their blood affinity means you really need to rethink the whole concept. I don't know that I'd make the sacreds any better, they're already pretty good. I see the theme 'reign of the lawgiver' as kind of an ascension from barbarism, so I’d see them having more modern non-sacred units, just like a lot of other nations have moving up in the eras. Maybe some poison arrow bowmen, or jaguar tamers who can recruit free jaguars like Ulm's wolf tamers (that’d be interesting as jaguars are sacred), or eagle tamers, or some type of stealthy mounted unit (jaguar riders?). It’d also be thematic for the priest caste to consolidate a bit, and perhaps have 2 different 2 path mages rather than 4 different one path ones.

Then, as they descend back into ‘the old ways’ in the LE, they naturally lose these advances.

[DrPraetorious]

ME Mictlan is a communion power. You have better astral than other eras. You buy a lot of nahuali and they power a communion for your coatls, who cast enslave mind and junk. You're utterly inferior to Pythium (or Bandar Log) at this trick - but you also have powerful sacred troops, including Jaguar Warriors which grow everywhere. So, there is a point to ME mictlan.

That said, I think this is one of the few game balance complaints that is really legitimate. Here are a couple of proposals:

a) Give all of their mages an order dependent bonus on research. Lawgiver, right? Ought to encourage order somehow. Right now, the stuff is so cheap you're probably a turmoil/fortune player.

b) Better magic. Compare ME mictlan to mictlan in other eras. The only thing ME gets for -2 blood on all their mages is -30 gold cost - except the Priest King, who *pays* 25 gold to trade 2 blood for 1 holy. If all these guys got a 100% FSWN (and boot the nahuali entirely) that'd help a lot.

c) Mages everywhere. Just make those mages not-capital-only. All of a sudden you have an entire army of perfectly sized, inexpensive zot mages for when your sacred start to lose their sparkle.

[Nick_K]

About 'taking advantage of your neghbour's good dominion'... AFAIK you don't get benefits from positive enemy dominion, so if your enemy has a turmoil dominion in your province you'll lose gold, but you won't gain any (above order 0) if they have an order dominion.
At least, I think that's how it works...

[Shovah32]

You dont get advantages from enemy dominion but, by limiting the spread of your own you can prevent its negative effects.

[BigJMoney]

It's interesting this point is raised, because MA Mictlan was my favorite nation by far when this game released. When the Nahualli were nerfed, then they weren't my favorite any more (although I admit they were far too powerful).

The reason MA Mictlan was my favorite is because Mictlan has the best bless setup in terms of troops, which you can do one of two ways:

Take high dominion and benefit from having automatic dominion spread (other Mictlans don't have) and be able to recruit many varied national sacred from the capital.

OR

Take a medium dominion and simply rely on the Jaguars from forts and/or or summoned sacreds, leaving you more points for blessings.

Either way, having the automatic dominion means you don't have to spend cash on labs and spare mages who are doing nothing but blood hunting and sacrificing. This cash can be spent solely on sacred troops. I'm not going to defend the Couatl, because I don't think I even saw any reason to use it when I played before. However, the Nahualli is still a very good addition to Mictlan and is easier to afford and field with MA Mictlan simply because the gold economy is not distracted by supporting blood and religion.

Finally, the appeal of playing Mictlan without micro-management is more or less important depending on who you are. It's important to me, but someone who plays a very disciplined and focused game may be willing to accept the micro-management to acquire a small gain in advantage. Yes, I said "gain in advantage" because I can see how EA Mictlan has an advantage, but I think it's fairly small when you consider all things.

Also note something important which befuddled me for a long time. I used to think that the manual blood spreading of Mictlan was supposed to be their national advantage. I looked at the numbers in Dom II and saw that they could potentially be a powerhouse in Dominion. In Doms 3, their effectivity was greatly reduced, and I spied a comment in the game manual which implied that the correct notion is that Mictlan faces a disadvantage by having to spread their dominion manually.

So, this is traditional Mictlan in a nutshell: Superior Bless and Blood with the handicap of manual dominion spread. MA Mictlan would then be: Superior Bless without Blood, and non-handicapped Dominion spread.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[mivayan]

BigJMoney said:I used to think that the manual blood spreading of Mictlan was supposed to be their national advantage. I looked at the numbers in Dom II and saw that they could potentially be a powerhouse in Dominion.

Several nations have both blood sacrifice AND automatic dominion spread. LA abysia has cheap blood hunters too.

[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.

[calmon]

Baalz said:
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?

They can shapeshift into a turkey and in this form they fire 5 times a special hypnotic (charming) attack. Very nasty