Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you?

Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is? Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time.

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary), then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan - which is a very serious advantage if parlayed into troops or troop generators (vampire lords/soul contracts).

And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

Ah, equations... I like equations.

Over 30 turns, a BoH Sanguine Acolyte costs 300 gold, putting Mictlan ahead by about 88% blood for the same gold. Of course, as you mention, somebody could wipe out an entire bloodhunting squad of 4-5 hunters with SDRs with Fires from Afar.

Two things to mention. First, this costs a resource (fire gems) that is less easy to acquire than gold, second, the 10 fire gems cost could have been trasmuted to 150 gold. In other words, it is most likely only worth it to use Fires from Afar if you expect to do more than 150 gold worth of damage or if you expect it to force the opposition to take costly countermeasures.

Now, wiping out 4-5 hunters with SDRs will certainly do that, which is why I tend not to let hunters stand around alone. As you mention, one can buffer them with troops. Time to start up with those equations, right? Fires from Afar seem to target troops and leaders indiscriminately, and the single best counter as Mictlan is to have some 40+ slave troopers standing around ready to soak up damaging spells. These, of course, cost no money to recruit but they do cost upkeep. 40 of them cost ~5 gold per turn, and assuming one tribal king per group of hunters worldwide to keep them fed with slaves (probably overkill, but who cares) he will cost about 1.3 gold per turn. Assumine a bloodhunting group size of 4 rather than 5 for the sake of argument (I usually use 4 or 5, but 5 favours Mictlan even more in the following equation so 4 it is) and sticking with a 30 round effectiveness, the Mictlan cost is 4*(80 + 30*80/30) + 30*5 + 1*(40 + 30*40/30) = 870 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 30*100/15) = 1200, an advantage of nearly 38% in blood for the gold piece, with a typical Fires from Afar (say path 6 for 13 shots) killing an average of 1.16 priests, 0.29 Tribal Kings, and 11.55 slaves for an estimated cost of around 105 gold and 5.8 blood (cost of a 1.16 SDR). Add two rounds of blood income (the priest does not deliver blood slaves the round he is slain, nor does he gather any new ones the round a replacement priest is recruited) and we reach a cost of around 105 gold and 10-20 blood slaves (depending on unrest in the province affecting potential gain had the 1.16 priests not been slain).

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters; Realistically, it would cost me more resources than it would him. As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests, knowing that the best you can reasonably expect to achieve with it is to reduce his blood advantage from nearly 90% to around 40%.

...Of course, a Mictlan that chose NOT to devote slave troopers to guard priests should be burned out as a fool, but that is another matter.

Now, one can of course reasonably challenge the 30 round life expectancy of a blood hunter that I chose somewhat arbitrarily and achieve other results, but even reducing the average life expectancy of a lowly bloodhunter to a lousy 10 rounds will result in 4*(80 + 10*80/30) + 10*5 + 1*(40 + 10*40/30) = 658 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 10*100/15) = 666 gold, and one could, to argue Mictlan's side, suggest using larger Groups of slaves to lower the odds of priests being targeted without impacting the upkeep in a major way. I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money (I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders), but I guess it could happen.

One thing to note, I have not counted the population loss from mass slave trooper creation. My gut instinct - always a dangerous thing to trust - says that the economic impact of this is minimal compared to the bloodhunting going on, but if anybody is willing to do the maths, and can show that they affect the cost ratio of Mictlan significantly enough to wipe out that 38% blood advantage, feel free to do so.

So, yes, purely from a mathematical point of view I find that in almost any situation I have encountered the Mictlan bloodhunters will be the best in the world bar none (though I prefer fireproof ones for less micromanagement), and THAT said, should I - unthinkably though it might seem - have overlooked something glaringly obvious in the calculations above, I can only quote one of my old teachers: "Never compute in public!"