Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Nappa]

Am I missing something with Mictlan? Having access to everything but earth/air/death on the mages is nice but they are no better blood gatherers than abysia and their troops are horrible.

What is the strength of Mictlan? Why choose Mictlan over any of the other blood nations?

[Graeme Dice]

Mictlan does have better blood hunting than just about any other nation as the Mictlan priests can be recruited everywhere at an extremely low cost. Only the Blood of humans theme for Abysia and Diabolical Faith for Marignon have hunters that are comparable in cost. Mictlan's only real weakness is that your initial expansion is hampered by the fact that your troops take many losses. If you manage to get your second priest recruiting centre up by turn 4 or 5 however, then you can quickly start blood hunting. Fiends can mostly replace your normal troops at that point. Slaves are always useful though, whenever you want to bring down the walls of a castle.

[archaeolept]

it has good sacred troops, and hence is quite viable w/ a bless strategy; whereas abysia is quite poor w/ one.

abysia has much more limited magic, as well: fire, astral, and blood, where the micts also have nature and water.

bloody mary has the wonderful goetic masters, but forced turmoil really gives it a black eye.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nappa said:
Am I missing something with Mictlan? Having access to everything but earth/air/death on the mages is nice but they are no better blood gatherers than abysia and their troops are horrible.

Mictlan are the best blood hunters in the world bar none and they can be recruited in every fortress. 80 gold for a sacred blood hunter? Nobody else even gets close. Sure, you need to mass-produce Sanguine Dousing Rods to take real advantage of them, but you were going to do that anyway, right?

What is the strength of Mictlan? Why choose Mictlan over any of the other blood nations?

The fact that your blood income is going to be the highest in the world unless you [censored] up in a major way? The fact that your national mages are capable of casting nearly all blood spells with only minor boosts? The fact that you are very likely to get your hands on a good part of the unique blood summons? (The fact that you can horror-spam the opposition in the late-game using national mages?)

Mictlan is, unlike the other blood nations, all blood - all day, and if you do not play them that way they are indeed weaker.

The main reason NOT to play Mictlan is that it is a pure micromanagement hell later in the game.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Mictlan are the best blood hunters in the world bar none and they can be recruited in every fortress. 80 gold for a sacred blood hunter? Nobody else even gets close.

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you? And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

[Edi]

The Garnet Amazons are also very good blood hunters, and the priestess doesn't cost much either, just 100, and it's sacred and has one fire and fire immunity + wasteland survival to boot. It doesn't get any better than that, provided you can just find them first, that is.

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

I find Mictlan very useful. But I do think its one of the nations where it is more difficult to learn to use its advantages.

For one thing... those multiple-magics units means you have fast easy access to a number of multiple-path spells and multiple-path items which others will have to work hard to get if they ever do at all. A pretender with 3 magic in a number of paths can help since it will give you easy access to magic-boosting items which can quickly give you 5-lvl mages which can summon higher level mages etc etc.

A pretender with 4 or more in a magic, even a couple of nines can really bless-boost all of those sacred units.

PLUS oh so many mages which can cast my favorite spell of HellBind. Consider a pretender with 3-5 air magic so you can whirlwind so if there are any Abysia commanders or equipment you want then just snag them.

And a nice selection of pretenders which... if you are not into rainbow pretenders consider your nice choices for a pretender ASSASSIN! A Pretender Assassin casting HellBind!!
MUHAhahahahaha

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you?

Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is? Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time.

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary), then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan - which is a very serious advantage if parlayed into troops or troop generators (vampire lords/soul contracts).

And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

Ah, equations... I like equations.

Over 30 turns, a BoH Sanguine Acolyte costs 300 gold, putting Mictlan ahead by about 88% blood for the same gold. Of course, as you mention, somebody could wipe out an entire bloodhunting squad of 4-5 hunters with SDRs with Fires from Afar.

Two things to mention. First, this costs a resource (fire gems) that is less easy to acquire than gold, second, the 10 fire gems cost could have been trasmuted to 150 gold. In other words, it is most likely only worth it to use Fires from Afar if you expect to do more than 150 gold worth of damage or if you expect it to force the opposition to take costly countermeasures.

Now, wiping out 4-5 hunters with SDRs will certainly do that, which is why I tend not to let hunters stand around alone. As you mention, one can buffer them with troops. Time to start up with those equations, right? Fires from Afar seem to target troops and leaders indiscriminately, and the single best counter as Mictlan is to have some 40+ slave troopers standing around ready to soak up damaging spells. These, of course, cost no money to recruit but they do cost upkeep. 40 of them cost ~5 gold per turn, and assuming one tribal king per group of hunters worldwide to keep them fed with slaves (probably overkill, but who cares) he will cost about 1.3 gold per turn. Assumine a bloodhunting group size of 4 rather than 5 for the sake of argument (I usually use 4 or 5, but 5 favours Mictlan even more in the following equation so 4 it is) and sticking with a 30 round effectiveness, the Mictlan cost is 4*(80 + 30*80/30) + 30*5 + 1*(40 + 30*40/30) = 870 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 30*100/15) = 1200, an advantage of nearly 38% in blood for the gold piece, with a typical Fires from Afar (say path 6 for 13 shots) killing an average of 1.16 priests, 0.29 Tribal Kings, and 11.55 slaves for an estimated cost of around 105 gold and 5.8 blood (cost of a 1.16 SDR). Add two rounds of blood income (the priest does not deliver blood slaves the round he is slain, nor does he gather any new ones the round a replacement priest is recruited) and we reach a cost of around 105 gold and 10-20 blood slaves (depending on unrest in the province affecting potential gain had the 1.16 priests not been slain).

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters; Realistically, it would cost me more resources than it would him. As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests, knowing that the best you can reasonably expect to achieve with it is to reduce his blood advantage from nearly 90% to around 40%.

...Of course, a Mictlan that chose NOT to devote slave troopers to guard priests should be burned out as a fool, but that is another matter.

Now, one can of course reasonably challenge the 30 round life expectancy of a blood hunter that I chose somewhat arbitrarily and achieve other results, but even reducing the average life expectancy of a lowly bloodhunter to a lousy 10 rounds will result in 4*(80 + 10*80/30) + 10*5 + 1*(40 + 10*40/30) = 658 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 10*100/15) = 666 gold, and one could, to argue Mictlan's side, suggest using larger Groups of slaves to lower the odds of priests being targeted without impacting the upkeep in a major way. I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money (I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders), but I guess it could happen.

One thing to note, I have not counted the population loss from mass slave trooper creation. My gut instinct - always a dangerous thing to trust - says that the economic impact of this is minimal compared to the bloodhunting going on, but if anybody is willing to do the maths, and can show that they affect the cost ratio of Mictlan significantly enough to wipe out that 38% blood advantage, feel free to do so.

So, yes, purely from a mathematical point of view I find that in almost any situation I have encountered the Mictlan bloodhunters will be the best in the world bar none (though I prefer fireproof ones for less micromanagement), and THAT said, should I - unthinkably though it might seem - have overlooked something glaringly obvious in the calculations above, I can only quote one of my old teachers: "Never compute in public!"

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is?

Compared to what? Two times zero equals... a rather unimpressive number in my book.

Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time.

I won't buy this, never. Marginal effects scale up to marginal effects - unless you assume your income over a long time is the same as your income over a single turn, which of course is wrong.

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary),

It does - I'd make these 30 turns 15-20ish. But that's unimportant.

then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan

Whatever, these numbers numbers aren't as meaningful as you imply, since this extra 50% apply only to a small fraction of your total expenses each turn. I'm a diehard smoker, and I couldn't care less if I had to pay my matches 50% more as long as tobacco prices remain unchanged.

BTW, if you want to scale everything up, remember you need temples to recruit more Mictlan priests, that's 200 gold Diabolical Faith can save when setting a new Diabolist production center up.

Ah, equations... I like equations.

[...]

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters;

In a perfect world, maybe. But I guess you won't tell me you always have these 40 Mictlan slaves ready in the right place for each bloodhunter pack? It takes time to raise them. It takes time to move or relocate them to new bloodhunting grounds because of their low mobility. It takes time to gather them again after they routed to nearby provinces. As long as they aren't all where they're supposed to be, at least part of your bloodhunter parties collect slaves with a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests,

Are you saying that, if the Mictlan player refuses to do just that, Fires from Afar failed to achieve its goal and thus shouldn't be used?

Really, the strategical aspect of spells like Fires from Afar far outweights these economical concerns. In this case its primary goal is to disrupt the bloodhunting if the targeted player is lazy and doesn't defend his bloodhunters. If the same player isn't lazy (eg, uses 'troop buffering' - or resistance gear), then Fires from Afar becomes irrelevant and won't be used - thus costing no gems. This is proof enough that including the 'cost' of Fires from Afar in the 'equation' is, at best, a specious argument. You simply forgot the THREAT of Fires from Afar doesn't cost anything.

The original point was Fires from Afar WILL be used against a 'lazy' Mictlan (as long as it efficiently dispatches the bloodhunters), and not otherwise (after the Mictlan player realized he'd better divert valuable resources to protect his bloodhunters - but then, he actually diverted these resources). BoH hasn't this concern.

I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money

I never argued against that, on the contrary I even agreed with you here. But remember, you said - 'nobody else even gets close'. And you failed to convince me on this particular point. I never argued about anything else.

(I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders)

Same here!

[Huzurdaddi]

What is the strength of Mictlan?

They have the following strengths:

1) The most cost efficient blood hunter in the game. However the margin is not huge between them and 2nd place.
2) The Tribal King. 40 gold. Sacred. Great leadership. And be can recruit super cheap slaves that are great on partol.
3) A wide variety of moderatly useful scared troops.

However they have some pretty serious disadvantages. Without a heavy bless effect they have substandard troops. Sadly heavy bless effect means less than optimal SC pretender which may be a serious disadvantage. The required blood sacrifice can be a heavy drain on both blood income and upon preist turns.