Blood Simple?!

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:

Yes but it's because of these reasons and the extra micro-management that mictlan is usually avoided as a nation to play, especially for large maps.

Actually, in my experience it is one of the more popular nations.

[NTJedi]

quantum_mechani said:

Actually, in my experience it is one of the more popular nations.

I would hate to see how long it takes doing a Mictlan turn on day_90 for a map of 400+ provinces.

[quantum_mechani]

NTJedi said:

I would hate to see how long it takes doing a Mictlan turn on day_90 for a map of 400+ provinces.

I would not play _any_ nation on a 400 province map. Though I believe one of the leading nations in the current Faerun game is Mictlan...

[Graeme Dice]

spirokeat said:
Basic rules are, make sure pop is over 5000, pref about 8000.

As long as the population remains over 5000, the population has no effect on the success of the hunt.

[Cainehill]

Yeah - which is why I really prefer to blood hunt provinces between 4000 and 6500, something like that. The more populous provinces I take the gold income from.

[Scott Hebert]

Graeme, spirokeat may be referring how to keep the population 'stable', if you take a growth scale. While 5000+ has no difference on if you succeed at bloodhunting, certainly the population determines its growth, and if it can 'keep up' with the population loss from bloodhunting.

Is this feasible?

[Ygorl]

People complain about Mictlan micromanagement, but it's not that bad. Even as a relatively strong nation on a big map (like Faerun) you're not going to have more than 20 or so provinces being actively bloodhunted. This means that at the beginning of each turn, you spend 20 seconds or so clicking on those provinces and hitting ctrl-z. No big deal. And, for those huge long games, growth is pretty nice. It takes about 115 turns with growth-3 before your population has doubled. In Zen's mod, with twice the effect of growth, it takes less than 60. You can, of course, argue (validly) that by turn 60 money isn't that important, but you can also then send an army against 20 decent mages of the nation of your choice and watch it dissolve beneath a barrage of charm/falling frost/orb lightning/falling fires/nether darts/whatever the destructive spell du jour is...

[Ironhawk]

Rathar said:
I am SO glad that for my first MP game I am playing with 7 of my friends, none of whom has ever played this MP..!

...

P.S. I am the only one of us who reads this forum with any frequency and I am #1 by a long shot! weee!

Heheheh. Just goes to show that Knowing IS Half the Battle When you are done thrashing them tho, get them on to the forum or swing by the IRC channel. Always good to have more players in the community.

[spirokeat]

Thanks for that Graeme, I knew that 5k and below was a serious diminish but thought that it was a finer gradient than simply 5k and over.

BUT ! thats not why I said 8000. I suggest that because it gives your hunters a reasonable stay in one province before the pop does hit 5000 and below and you move em.

One of the things that I do find a pain in the *** is when I pool my blood slaves and I then have to go to each Blood Sacrifice priest and give him new slaves. I hope thats changed in Dom3.

In terms of equiping your hunters. All they get is a sanguine dousing rod. And I tend not to use anything but basic priests either. if I recall you can actually push unrest up despite tax 0, if you use higher level hunters. Three blood 1 priests with dousers seems the best.

As far as changing gear and pushing dominion. Its very hard. Its not just about a temple and a chap sacrificing. You have to keep his blood supply up, which means a lab too.

Plus your good priest is 390 gold a pop, giving you a basic cost to preach basic dominion of 790, plus a 5 slave, 5 nature knife. and then about 8 slaves per turn to keep him going, for every single province you want up. not too cheap.

In my opinion dominion is the single hardest thing for Mictlan to deal with.

Spiro.

[NTJedi]

Ygorl said:
People complain about Mictlan micromanagement, but it's not that bad. Even as a relatively strong nation on a big map (like Faerun) you're not going to have more than 20 or so provinces being actively bloodhunted. This means that at the beginning of each turn, you spend 20 seconds or so clicking on those provinces and hitting ctrl-z. No big deal.

Well that's only step one of many... let me list the other steps:
Step2: Checking for unrest because of blood hunters since patroling troops are sometimes pushed to the front or haven't arrived yet. If unrest exists then switching those blood hunters to research or maybe forge a blood axe.
Step3: Providing each blood hunter with 2 or 3 blood slaves... thus increasing survival of the province. Summon Imps is cheap and helps the patrollers and PD.
Step4: Watching Dominion drops where priest hunting for blood has to switch into sacrificing for bringing dominion back up.
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

And that's four other micromanagement steps of Mictlan which were missed.