Tactics: Countering Summoned Horrors

[Baalz]

Well, that sounds like a bit of a defeatist attitude Sombre. Yes, its not cheap to put a mage or a magic item in each province but you're talking about trying to counter a strong aspect of a strong nation that the player has cultivated and researched up to in the late game. He's forged boosters, forged sanguine rods, built up a blood economy, and is spending scores of blood slaves every round. You could also say that your opponent is forcing you to put amulets of MR and lead shields on all your thugs, or script arrow fend in all major battles, or keep squads around patrolling for spies, or putting domes up over your best provinces, or etc. etc. etc. If you've got the foresight to plan ahead and forge them all with dwarven hammers you could forge 33 moonblades for 99 pearls (about the cost of 1 summoned & extravagantly outfitted SC and hardly ruinous at that stage of the game). Mix in some cheap mages and you can cover a fairly large empire well enough that it gets wasteful to cast horrors. With your alternative being that you rapidly lose every province which doesn't have a fort or large army I'd say its a good plan to start doing if you see Mictlan using such a tactic on your neighbor.