Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[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.

[Graeme Dice]

Jim_Parker said:
The amount of blood required for that cannot possibly be viable.

It certainly is viable, and Mictlan actually has to be careful to not overwhelm the dominion of your neighbours.

Not to mention the time spent hunting for slaves when other dominions can be actively preaching against you.

No dominion can actively preach against you unless they've already conquered your provinces. Preaching does not spread dominion outside of the province that it happens in.

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.

They are easy to afford once you've stopped purchasing troops and switched over to Mictlan Priests and capital-based mages.

Mictlan is weak and needs too much micromanagment to be viable.

Mictlan ain't weak, and the micromanagement consists of little more than selecting your hunters in each province and pressing 'Z'.

Even the AI gets mullered with it most games :- I've seen one strong Mictlan AI in about 100 games.

That's not a surprise, since the AI doesn't play blood nations effectively at all.

[The Panther]

Graeme Dice said:

It certainly is viable, and Mictlan actually has to be careful to not overwhelm the dominion of your neighbours.

I must greatly disagree with the Dice Man here. This overwhelmence is late game only. You are SO darn far behind spreading dominion early that it lingers well into the middle game. There is essentially zero chance of overrunning your neighbors with dominion for at least 40 turns into the game. You must fight like crazy for a long, long time just to try and hold your own dominion from getting crushed. The only solution to this early on is getting 9 or 10 base dominion, which is typically a misuse of pretender points.

And you really, really want to spend your slaves on anything but wasting them on dominion spread. Like IDs, ADs, devils, vampires, etc, and etc, and etc. Being unequivocally forced to sacrifice on the order of 20 slaves per turn JUST TO STAY EVEN with any other race is no fun at all. I can assure you that this hurts bad in my current Mictlan game.

Graeme Dice said:

No dominion can actively preach against you unless they've already conquered your provinces. Preaching does not spread dominion outside of the province that it happens in.

The Dice is mostly correct here, though there are races with stealthy preachers. Getting 10 PD everywhere, while expensive, puts a stop to the stealthy business. But the point is that other races passively spread dominion into Mictlan territory just by building temples on your border. Mictlan cannot do this passively. He is forced to waste the blood slaves anywhere he wants to push dominion.

Graeme Dice said:

They are easy to afford once you've stopped purchasing troops and switched over to Mictlan Priests and capital-based mages.

Jim Parker has a good point here. Just because you can maybe afford them later on in the game does not change the fact they temples are pretty much a COMPLETE waste of gold for Mictlan. And just because you need them to recruit the Mictlan priests does not change this fact either. I mean, you will NEVER be able to afford to build a priest in every single province with a temple that you are forced to sacrifice from. If not for the requirement of needing them to sacrifice slaves, I doubt any Mictlan player would build very many temples at all. They would put them in grudgingly only when they want to get to the next set of 5.

Graeme Dice said:

Mictlan ain't weak, and the micromanagement consists of little more than selecting your hunters in each province and pressing 'Z'.

This is both right and wrong.

Mictlan does suffer from more micro than any other race. And it it not as simple as selecting your hunters and hitting 'Z'. I tried that and it simply does not work. It is a start, but you must also baby every single hunter based on the current unrest level in each hunting province. With less than 5 unrest, you can have 3 hunters. With about 10 unrest, you need to put one hunter temporarily on research. And when you get one of those outliers of high unrest or a bad event, or get attacked by knights or barbarians, then they all hunters in the province must go to research while you either wait with zero tax and/or patrollers to clear it.

You must move your patrolling slaves around where needed the most. You also must switch hunting provinces around as you use up population. You also must decide each and every turn on exactly how many slaves you can afford to sacrifice this time.

But I will certainly agree with Dice on one thing here: Mictlan is not weak. If you can survive through the harsh middle game, it can be very strong in the end game with its IDs, ADs, devils, vampires, and the ability to crush other peoples dominions almost at will.

Graeme Dice said:

That's not a surprise, since the AI doesn't play blood nations effectively at all.

Amen to this. You really can't base the true strength of the races based on how the AI plays. I mean, the AI plays Caelum probably worse than any other nation (beside Mictlan, I mean). And Caelum is actually the best nation, based on the results of that informal poll in another thread. The play of the AI is mostly based on how strong the national troops happen to be, since that it what it uses the most by far. Ermor is an exception here because, while the AE/SG troops are weak, the AI can get so darn many of them and micro the heck out of them.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
Mictlan does suffer from more micro than any other race. And it it not as simple as selecting your hunters and hitting 'Z'. I tried that and it simply does not work. It is a start, but you must also baby every single hunter based on the current unrest level in each hunting province. With less than 5 unrest, you can have 3 hunters. With about 10 unrest, you need to put one hunter temporarily on research.

10 unrest has only about a 2.5% chance of causing a blood hunt to fail. A 1d400 is rolled, and if it's greater than the unrest level the hunt goes to the next part of the check. The unrest has to get to 100 or more before it starts to be really noticeable.

You must move your patrolling slaves around where needed the most.

Don't patrol. Never, ever patrol for unrest reduction unless you want to kill your provinces off as early as possible. With 0% tax, and three or four hunters, your provinces will Last for the entire game.

You also must switch hunting provinces around as you use up population.

Why bother? Three priests with SDR's cost only 8 gold per turn. Just buy three more if you want to set up a new province, and leave the old ones there, since that province wouldn't give you any gold anyways anymore.

You also must decide each and every turn on exactly how many slaves you can afford to sacrifice this time.

Two per priest is easy enough.