Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[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.

[Cainehill]

Graeme Dice said:
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.

3 or 4 hunters? With 2 good hunters a province (Each with 2+ blood magic + Sanguine rod) I'm finding the unrest creeps up at 0 taxes. Admittedly, I don't have growth scales, but I'm simply hoping for the provinces to Last the entire game, but expecting a "lucky" event to wipe them out if blood hunting doesn't.

[archaeolept]

no I think 3 hunters is the most effective. Sure, unrest will often creep up, but it is a self-balancing system, as failing to find slaves will allow the natural 0% taxation unrest reduction to operate.

think of it this way - If your unrest stays at 0, you're being inefficient... [well, 0% itself would be efficient]

This is part of why, say, 4000 pop is almost as good as 5000. Sure, you get a few misses, but that keeps unrest down, so it is almost as productive as 5000 pop. [i'd need the precise numbers for unrest generation to determine how low your pop can be and still be equally productive on average as 5000]

basically, 0% taxation yields a certain number of potential bloodslaves (without patrolling, which is a true killer), and you don't want to miss a drop of that sweet sweet sugar...

[Boron]

archaeolept said:
basically, 0% taxation yields a certain number of potential bloodslaves (without patrolling, which is a true killer), and you don't want to miss a drop of that sweet sweet sugar...

I haven't tested in 2.14 BUT in 2.12 patrol was no killer : 10 pop / 5 brigands killed .
This is not so heavy and in 8+k provinces probably even compensable with growth 3 .

Normally i am a fan of a death 3 scale only with bloodhunt i tend to take growth 3 : A 5k pop province stays at about 5k forever with growth 3 and bloodhunting .

With death 3 you lose each turn 0,006% pop + more pop by bloodhunt .
With 3 bloodhunters you lose about 50 pop per turn cause of bloodhunt and about 25 per deathscale .
So even without events normally a 5K province is down to 4k in about 12 turns and down to 3k in about 25-30 turns .

Since those 4-6k provinces are so common i really think growth is for bloodnations not too bad .
At about turn 50-60 the deathscale starts to really disturb your bloodhunting .
On a small map you have either long won or are long dead then but other games often Last until turn 50-60 easily .

[Kel]

If you can find someone with growth scale, just keep taking their territories and your death scale won't hurt so much

- Kel

[Boron]

Kel said:
If you can find someone with growth scale, just keep taking their territories and your death scale won't hurt so much

- Kel

Unfortunately enemy dominion causes a bit unrest so limits bloodhunting a bit too

[Kel]

So...convert their dominion ? I don't mean you leave it in their dominion, that wouldn't do you any good anyway. I mean, if you keep taking fresh provinces, your death scale won't matter as much since you always have a fresh supply of blood.

I only mentioned taking provinces from people with growth scales since their population should be higher than people with death scales. Really, taking new territory to hunt in is the point. It's just a bonus if the person you are at war with has growth.

- Kel