Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[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

[The Panther]

I did not. Both sides had a pretender.

Except for Mictlan, each pretender gets 10 dominion spread plus 2 temple checks at your max dominion level. The Mictlan pretender has the full 10 dominion spread also but zero temple checks. Plus, the Mictlan home province with a temple does not get the extra temple check like all other races do. Thus, the 10 pretender spread of Mictlan cancelled the 10 pretender spread of Marigon and left the difference at 3 (or is it 4?) missing temple checks.

Which seemed exactly to match my testing. Both 3 and 4 slaves sacrificed per turn seemed close to balanced as far as the random number generator would allow over a short term.

[Jim_Parker]

Overall, it's a pretty bad deal for Mictlan though. In real game scenarious you are going to be fighting off hostile dominions all over and not just against one enemy. The amount of blood required for that cannot possibly be viable.

On top of that, you've got to build temples to increase your maximum dominion (and to actually sacrifice) but they don't do anything else positive...Mictlan is on a hiding to nothing dominion-wise I fear. Not to mention the time spent hunting for slaves when other dominions can be actively preaching against you.

I'd recommend 1/2 price temples which increase the max dominion and the ability to sacrifice without a temple in the province. As things stand, those temples look like a huge waste of cash that you are unlikely to be able to afford considering you'll be running blood provinces. Mictlan is weak and needs too much micromanagment to be viable. Even the AI gets mullered with it most games :- I've seen one strong Mictlan AI in about 100 games.

[cydius]

Original post:

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

Graeme Dice said:

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

just wanted to let you know you can select both Restless Whorshippers and Ceremonial Faith as Mictlan.

[archaeolept]

you can't select ceremonial faith, but you can select restless worshippers. dunno whether it works or not though.