Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[PDF]

Sunray_be said:

After some tests on Mictlan some time ago I came to the conclusion that the chance to gain a white candle with a sacrifice is 4 times less than an ordinary temple check.
If the chance to get a candle is 10% * maximum dominion, the chance to get a candle with a slave is only 2,5 % * max dominion.

I dont know if the devs are fully aware of this, I think I've never seen an official post on that question...

Cheers

It makes sense - as a bug : isn't sacrifice supposed to be 4 times MORE efficient than Temple check ?

[Boron]

PDF said:
It makes sense - as a bug : isn't sacrifice supposed to be 4 times MORE efficient than Temple check ?

Yeah makes sense . I remember in my first mp game i was ermor and Aku was mictlan . Only 1 of my provinces bordered one of his provinces and he sacrificed with a jade knife in all provinces close to my border and i had only 2-3 temples close + my prophet and still the dominion stayed at +1 for me for 10+ turns .

[Yossar]

Here's some advice I learned the hard way. Don't attack Marignon early. Holy Pyre > Fiends of Darkness.

[Boron]

Yossar said:
Here's some advice I learned the hard way. Don't attack Marignon early. Holy Pyre > Fiends of Darkness.

Hm i think unless you are abysia attacking marignon early is always extremely dangerous .

[cydius]

quick question for mictlan.

when selecting scales, does mictlan gain any benefit from Restless Worshipers???

thanks

[Graeme Dice]

cydius said:
when selecting scales, does mictlan gain any benefit from Restless Worshipers???

They don't, which is why you can't select it.

[The Panther]

Some more random thoughts on the subject of Mictlan.

1. It seems the above consensus from several folks is that a slave sacrifice is worth 1/4 that of a temple from any other race. In my experience, this seems correct to me. Whether it is a feature or a bug, I can't comment of that one. But it sure seems to work this way, for spreading dominion as Mictlan seems almost impossible to achieve against any decent player. Most especially Ermor.

2. The population loss from blood hunting is supposed to be fairly simple. For each captured slave, you lose a minimum of 2 population. For each killed brigand from patrolling, you also lose at least 2 population, and this is compounded on top of the blood slave loss. I believe the way it works for real is that you lose 10 population for 1-5 of either brigand or blood slave, 20 population for 6-10, 30 loss for 11-15, and so forth.

3. Losing 1000 people in a single turn is farfetched to me. I think there is an accidental added zero in there. Using the Huzur method of having your free slaves patrol with lots (meaning more than 3) of blood hunters, you lose on the order of 100 pop per turn, just as he has stated above. So, if you intend to rape your capitol, it will Last quite a while indeed. But I believe that you really need the capitol income to spread your watch towers in order to protect your other hunters and sacrificiers, and also pay upkeep for all your priests.

4. Mictlan has the highest level of micro-management of any race. I can fully attest to the truth of this, for I am currently playing 5 different races in 5 separate MP games. My Mictlan game definitely does, on average, take the longest time to move of the group. All games are approximately in the mid-game phase with 1 closer to the latter stage of the game.

5. In my next MP move as Mictlan, I will conduct an experiment. I will sacrifice only ONE slave per temple on this next turn and see if my dominion drops down on the graph. I will report the results in the next few days. I am hoping that 1 sacrificed slave works as well as the 4 I have been doing each turn, for I have invested a ton of slaves in this game for so little apparent benefit in dominion spread.

Cheers

I am hoping that 1 sacrificed slave works as well as the 4 I have been doing each turn

Unless your base dominion is high, the chance to get +1 candle with one slave is very small. For exemple if you've a max_dom of 6, the chance is probably 15%. Curiously, I've sometime seen a new candle in an adjacent province and not in the sacrifice province [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]! So it's very hard to compute. If you want an higher %, build more temples... you get +1 max_dom for every 5 temples.
And remember that your pretender gets a free temple check every turn, and this one is a "true", standard check. Personaly I dont sacrifice slaves in the beginning of the game, the pretender alone is enough to reach 4-5 candles in the capitol.
Cheers

[The Panther]

OK, I have tested this sacrifice thing. And I believe there is no bug. It works exactly as advertised - each sacrificed slave equals one temple check.

What I did was start a game with Marignon and Mictlan on the map Symmetry. That map is a tiny two-player map where there are 11 provinces on each side of a central one. The two sides start on opposite ends. I gave both sides the same 5 base dominion.

I didn't do anything with Marignon, just let him stale every turn. I took three provinces with Mictlan and built 3 temples and labs in them. I built some priests, did some blood hunting to get slaves and built 3 jade knives.

It took maybe 12 turns to get this all going. By that time, the Marigon dominion was spreading deep into Mictlan territory because of the 3 extra temple checks per turn (2 for the god and 1 for the temple). Meanwhile, Marignon got the event which increased dominion in his capitol, so he got bumped to 7 dominion at home. This seemed to have no real effect on the overall dominion spread, though, for the god and temple checks were still listed at the base 5 level.

Once I got the blood slaves rolling and the 12 sacrifices per turn going, it was very easy to reclaim the Mictlan dominion towards the Marignon side of the map. When the dominion spread hit the middle province, I quit doing the 12 per turn.

I then proceeded to experiment with 1, 2, 3, or 4 sacrifices per turn. And the 3 seemed fully balanced, exactly as it should be. The middle province changed hands a time or two, went up, then down, exactly like a good random number generator ought to behave.

At 4 slaves per turn, Mictlan started winning the dominion fight for the central province. And the dominion even eventually started to lower in the adjacent province on the Marignon side. It was clearly working, albeit very slowly.

I then sped up the process by going to 12 sacrifices per turn. Within maybe 20-30 turns, Marignon died to dominion. It definitely seemed to work exactly as the developers have said.

In my Mictlan MP game, my problem must simply be the fact that I started right next to Ermor who had 10 dominion and built temples right off the bat. Bad luck, in other words, for all my provinces adjacent to him are dead now, even two of them which border my capitol.

Did you removed your Mictlan pretender from the game ? If not, he still made an extra temple check every turn...
Cheers