Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Whereas B/30 != 0 for B!=0 in my book, and is hence of consequence. Especially when considering costs over n turns, as the difference in price between a sacred unit with purchase price B1 and a non-sacred with purchase price B2 is B1+(n*B1/30) vs B2+(n*B2/15) and gets nastier the larger n is, rather than just B1 vs B2.

It never gets 'nastier'. Sure the absolute difference gets bigger and bigger as times goes on, but it doen't mean what you want it to mean - your accumulated income over the same amount of time will get bigger too. What is 10 gold to 100 gold? Only 10%. What is 100 gold to 1000 gold? Again, only 10%. These % numbers are the ones that really count, much more than the accumulated absolute upkeep difference.

Now of course, if you tell me in a typical turn with Mictlan, half of your income is spent to pay for your bloodhunters' upkeep (and I mean upkeep only - not recruiting new ones), I'll agree about these 'marginal' effects not being marginal in your case.

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

Correct, if you assume the Acolyte loses all his usefulness as soon as the Mictlan priest reaches the end of his own life expectancy. Otherwise, it's pretty bad maths, and since living Acolytes are more useful to me than dead priests, I'd be glad to keep on paying the former's upkeep.

Anyway, what we are really comparing is the relative (blood output/gold investment) ratio for both nations, right? Then, assuming I agree with your 30-turns average life expectancy, and the Mictlan priests gets 10 less because of their lack of immunity, it just means you can expect to get as much blood from 2 Acolytes over 30 turns than from 3 Mictlan priests over the same amount of time. That's 480 gold paid on the priests, and 400 on the Acolytes. Fact is you'll get part of these bloodsdlaves earlier with Mictlan, which is an advantage. But then again, I never argued that Mictlan was worse than Abysia as long as it comes to blood harvesting.

I mean, you are discarding a 36% price difference because you choose not to count upkeep, considering it a marginal effect? I could understand discarding effects less than 5% (standard practise ) - but 36% is a heck of a lot more and not marginal.

That's bad math again. Assuming U is the upkeep/turn spend on bloodhunters, I is the total income/turn, and assuming this 36% figure is correct, we're comparing (U / I) to (U * 1.36 / I) here, which is definitely not the same thing, unless U is big enough when compared to I.

Hehe. Yes, I conveniently ignored this one, as I tend to build a lot of temples as Mictlan anyhow to be able to mass blood sacrifice, but it should be at least be partially included - IF that is, one assumes that DF will not likewise be setting up temples for dominion spread. E.g. one would have to consider the issue of surplus temples needed to ramp up priest production rather than just total temples.

Marignon spreads its dominion thru Inquisitors, not temples. Marignon doesn't need to push its dominion as hard as most other nations, BTW, and DF even less so.

In the not entirely hypothetical world described above, you end up with one Tribal King in each province and (in practise) way too many slaves.

The important word here are is the 'end' in 'you end up'. Guess I didn't put enough emphasis in my repeated 'it takes time to...'.

(OK, that's nitpicking...)

Oh, no, I did not forget any of that. The cost of the Fires from Afar part vs the damage inflicted is important, as it is the thing that shows that just scaling up (using more and more of them as gems become available) does not pay because it hurts your economy more than his.

Usually you can expect a decent player not to spend his fire gems aimlessly.

Ah, well. And since my best calculations still puts Mictlan at about a +40% blood advantage, I guess I will just have to disagree with you:

Except these 40% only exist in your calculations, and your calculations don't take into account many factors which drastically reduce it.

The most important of these by far is this blood advantage actually comes from a gold advantage, which comes from the lesser upkeep paid on Mictlan priests. Now, assume you have 30 Mictlan priests bloodhunters, thus spending 80 gold less than, say, DF on your hunters' upkeep. After 5 turns you have recruited 5 new hunters and send them to a new hunting ground (say, 8k province yielding 40 gold at 100% taxes, a reasonably average figure IMO). If, like most players, you decide to drop the taxes to 0% to avoid unrest coming in the way of your hunters' efficiency, your 'gold advantage' is cut in half. Repeat this after 10 more turns, and your 'gold advantage' is gone. And your 'blood advantage' amounts to only 2 more bloodhunted provinces, and this doesn't scale up.

Then there is the fact that pop isn't an unlimited resource, and your alleged 40% blood advantage will the same kind of wall pyramid schemes do.

Then there's the need for temples, which DF or Iron Woods don't need to recruit more cheap bloodhunters.

Then there's the fact that bloodhunters don't hunt 100% of the time. When unrest comes out of hand (and this may happen even in heavily patrolled provinces), it may be a good idea to have your hunters perform magic research for a turn or 2 if there's a lab in the place. The point here is that a 40% advantage over a degraded value isn't as impressive as a 40% advantage over an ideal value.

Then there's the fact that Mictlan has to divert some of its priests and slaves to push its dominion, a concern other nations ignore completely. Something that will eat up a significant part of this 40% blood advantage, I guess.

And I have a feeling I could add more to this list if I spent a few more minutes thinking about it.

A shame I did not manage to convince you, but then, it would not be fun if we all agreed on everything.

To your credit, I have to say you're probably the poster (or one of the few -) I feel most often in agreement with on this board. Except not this time - everything happens eventually.

[Wyvern2]

Wow, someone taking Peter on in a battle of math. Have they no fear

Interesting discussion regardless. I prefer to play DF or Abysia, but I hate the forced turmoil of DF more and more which really kills their startup.

[Zen]

Mictlan-san! I choose you!

[Nappa]

Thanks for all the info.

What is the differance between a 1b with sanguine rod blood hunter and a 2b with sanguine rod blood hunter? nobody has discussed that and from my observations, the 2b with SR bloodhunters do much better.

If the primary advantage of Mictlan is the efficient bloodhunting, do people play by creating a strong early bloodhunting economy and quickly getting the devil factories going and ignoring their substandard troops? Maybe using a SC pretender for initial expansion?

What are the succesful strategies for Mictlan?

[archaeolept]

a 1b + sanguine rod will have a 90% chance of getting 1d6OE+2 slaves in a turn, given no unrest and 5000 population

a 2b + sanguine rod will have a 100% chance of getting 1d6OE+3 slaves in a turn, given.

basically, a sanguine rod counts as +1 blood for the purpose of bloodhunting. the chance for a hunter is 10% +blood*40%, if unrest is rolled above on a 1d400 and population is rolled below on a 1d5000. results are then 1d6 open ended +blood lvl (i think sanguine contributes to this as well, but i'm not absolutely positive).

so a 1b +sanguine is only minorly inferior to a 2b +sanguine. the real advantage of 2b bloodhunters is that you can send them out efficiently w/out first researching and forging sanguine rods.

Mictlan has many disadvantages, but gathering blood is not one of them

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Nappa said:
What is the differance between a 1b with sanguine rod blood hunter and a 2b with sanguine rod blood hunter? nobody has discussed that and from my observations, the 2b with SR bloodhunters do much better.

Do you get more bloodslaves per gold invested with the 2b? I doubt it. Although ultimately, it depends on how much gold a bloodslave is worth to you, but usually it's not worth the extra expense.

If the primary advantage of Mictlan is the efficient bloodhunting, do people play by creating a strong early bloodhunting economy and quickly getting the devil factories going

Well, it's the main point of the theme.

and ignoring their substandard troops?

They're poor quality, anyway don't ignore them completely - there are a few battle enchantments you can use to augment them. I've seen someone use an emergency levy of the crappiest slinger type once, about 80 of them, and annihilate an AE army 5 times its size (mostly soulless and longdead infantry, though) with only minimal priestly support - 4 or 5 mage-priests I think. Flaming Arrows did most of the killing. Not sure if Mass Protection was also up, anyway Mictlan had something like 20 or 25 casualties. Not bad for crappy slingers.

Maybe using a SC pretender for initial expansion?

That's common practice.

What are the succesful strategies for Mictlan?

Many, as long as they're bloody strategies.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said
Correct, if you assume the Acolyte loses all his usefulness as soon as the Mictlan priest reaches the end of his own life expectancy. Otherwise, it's pretty bad maths, and since living Acolytes are more useful to me than dead priests, I'd be glad to keep on paying the former's upkeep.

Be nice. You have not done anything to show that the Acolyte should have a longer average life expectancy than a priest save the hypothetical "if an average Priest lived 10 turns shorter than a 30 turn average Acolyte due to fires from afar", which is almost certainly not the case in practise as that would require an immense number of Fires from Afar assuming a decent mass of priests and lots of slave troopers (as postulated earlier), since most blood hunters that die tend to be either a) wiped out by mass casualty spells (like murdering winter) or battle (and an Acolyte will not be able to retreat from a castle defense any more than a Priest will) You could argue it based on better hitpoints and fire resistance, and could then assign an arbitrary increased average life expectancy to stuff into the cost equation but I reject the 30 round vs 20 round until I see some voodoo mathematics to support it.

Nagot Gick Fel said

That's bad math again. Assuming U is the upkeep/turn spend on bloodhunters, I is the total income/turn, and assuming this 36% figure is correct, we're comparing (U / I) to (U * 1.36 / I) here, which is definitely not the same thing, unless U is big enough when compared to I.

No it isn't - bad math, that is. I just happen to be measuring a different quantity than you.

I was not saying it was a 36% differential of your upkeep compared to income (the calculations you are making), but a 36% differential of blood per gold. I.e. I was measuring the relative usefulness of investing gold in order to get blood (which can then be scaled by however much gold you want to invest), not the impact relative to your income.

Your actual income does not factor into the blood/gold relationship - it is only truly releveant when you want to find out how much to scale by or in case you want to make specific examples (e.g. including extra temples purchased to find out what is best in a specific situation).

Then there's the fact that bloodhunters don't hunt 100% of the time. When unrest comes out of hand (and this may happen even in heavily patrolled provinces), it may be a good idea to have your hunters perform magic research for a turn or 2 if there's a lab in the place. The point here is that a 40% advantage over a degraded value isn't as impressive as a 40% advantage over an ideal value.

True. On the positive side, it gets some research done that would otherwise have required somebody else (who also cost money to recruit and maintain) to do it, so it is certainly not wasted. In fact, under magic 3 the Mictlan priest is one of the best researchers in the game in terms of RP/gold, nearly matching the sage - you can never have too many priests - there is always a use for them.

Wyvern2 said:
Wow, someone taking Peter on in a battle of math. Have they no fear

Why should they? Nagot Gick Fel makes some very good points regarding income reduction that I have conveniently ignored. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just as I ignored the long term income reduction from hard blood hunting early in the game, he ignored that Mictlan can run Order 3 while Diabolical Faith has a forced Turmoil 1. In all likelyhood, not only is it cheaper to get priests in the early game for Mictlan, but Mictlan will also have more money to do so and will continue to have a massive advantage in provincial income until such time as provinces are laid waste.

(The thrust of this discussion is so funny because both of us started out only discussing unit vs. unit, but as it is obvious that the entire theme is important for a thorough investigation, we have both begun selectively to use the facts that support our case. Hey, it happens, and the nice thing is that I learn things about Marignon that I hadn't thought of, since it is not a favourite nation of mine.)



This will to some degree be countered by the "but Marignon will preach via inquisitors instead of building temples" issue, though an inquisitor is 110 gold (plus upkeep of 3.67 gold/turn) vs a temple's 200 gold cost and 0 upkeep (and requires a lab, a temple, and a fortress to be recruited just like the Mictlan priest). Of course an inquisitor is mobile and a more useful general purpose unit than a temple, but then again, he does not count towards boosting the maximum dominion either. So while using inquisitors instead of temples is certainly a useful advantage for targeting of dominion, I am not certain that it is a great saving in money and doubt that it is enough to make up for the significant difference between turmoil 1 and order 3.

As for the very real need of mass sacrifice for Mictlan, I really ought to have included it though it is hard to get a good estimate since. The best guess would be about 1/2 priest output per turn per province in a very competitive game where everybody else is dominion pushing, but that is certainly not the sort of massive sacrifice I would do for the major part of the game. Still, it certainly does reduce the advantage - I am just unsure how much in practise.


As for the ever increasing income from the example, that does not continue to hold in Dominions 2 once the independents have been killed and it is time to face organised opposition. In fact, what with population reducing spells that can make the world end up a wasteland, it is a pretty safe bet that the wealth of the world and most realms within it will decrease over time once independents have been killed.* In fact, if one was bloodminded enough, one could argue that it was better for a player to kill his population by himself for personal gain than wait for somebody else to do it with a few gems and a targeted spell. (Which is why I am always tempted to choose death 3 in MP because my projections suggest it is the best allocation of points in nearly all circumstances, but it is just too damn unthematic for my tastes)


* Except at such time in the late game when excessive clamhoarding and a fever fetish fetish completely dominates the economy. However, when that becomes the case the arguments concerning the long-term economic damage done by mass bloodhunting becomes even less compelling.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Be nice. You have not done anything to show that the Acolyte should have a longer average life expectancy than a priest save the hypothetical "if an average Priest lived 10 turns shorter than a 30 turn average Acolyte due to fires from afar",

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

I reject the 30 round vs 20 round until I see some voodoo mathematics to support it.

Your fault - you shouldn't have brought these voodoo 56% into this debate first.

No it isn't - bad math, that is.

Fair enough, pardon the poor wording. I should have written "good maths put to bad use".

I was not saying it was a 36% differential of your upkeep compared to income (the calculations you are making), but a 36% differential of blood per gold. I.e. I was measuring the relative usefulness of investing gold in order to get blood (which can then be scaled by however much gold you want to invest), not the impact relative to your income.

I understand what you were saying, but it doesn't make it any more relevant as a factor to consider when comparing Mictlan's bloodhunting to other nations'. Well, to me at least . And that's because this differential is only marginal when compared to your income, and you pay new bloodhunters with your income. Basically you're telling me I should stop smoking because the price of matches has raised by 36%. I can imagine far better reasons to stop smoking - eg, tobacco prices raised by 36%, or: smoking shortens my life expectancy by 36% - these ones aren't marginal effects.

Your actual income does not factor into the blood/gold relationship

Of course it doesn't. Where did I say that? I'm just saying that as Mictlan, your gold savings haven't a big enough impact on your upkeep (thus, indirectly, your income) to support your claim that 'noone else comes close'.

True. On the positive side, it gets some research done that would otherwise have required somebody else (who also cost money to recruit and maintain) to do it, so it is certainly not wasted.

Of course it isn't wasted - but the situation is exactly the same for Diabolists, and they're better researchers than Mictlan priests. The disadvantage seems to be Mictlan's here.

In fact, under magic 3 the Mictlan priest is one of the best researchers in the game in terms of RP/gold,

True, so what's new here? Nothing, it's still the same upkeep issue: Mictlan priests vs Diabolists (for instance), whether they bloodhunt or research. The fact remains that, when both are forced to research while unrest is brought down to bearable levels, the blood/gold differential narrows, and the Diabolist is still worth 1 more RP.

Why should they? Nagot Gick Fel makes some very good points regarding income reduction that I have conveniently ignored. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just as I ignored the long term income reduction from hard blood hunting early in the game, he ignored that Mictlan can run Order 3 while Diabolical Faith has a forced Turmoil 1.

Of course - but it's not due to the merits of Mictlan's priests. Order 3 isn't required for Mictlan anyway, I know a few players who are enamoured to Mictlan's heroes enough to pick Luck+3 instead. Not that it's a strategy I'd recommend, but still...

In all likelyhood, not only is it cheaper to get priests in the early game for Mictlan, but Mictlan will also have more money to do so and will continue to have a massive advantage in provincial income until such time as provinces are laid waste.

In all likelihood... Hmmm, I've run dozens of tests with both Mictlan, Diabolical Faith, and both Abysias themes, and never found evidence Mictlan had the sharp edge over the other nations you want us to believe it has. My own experience tells me all of these are rather well matched when it comes to bloodhunting. Initial conditions (the map, neighbours, easy early expansion or not) have a far greater impact than the nation itself. Even Diabolical Faith's forced turmoil isn't that painful when compared to an Order 3 Mictlan. Mictlan will have to divert resources (sacrifices, temples) to push its dominion and reaps the benefits of its order scale in other provinces than the capital - a painfully slow process in my experience. DF on the other hand can alchemize its early fire gems for a +60 gold early income, almost matching Mictlan's initial income - and use its 200 'free' design points to buy other goodies.

(The thrust of this discussion is so funny because both of us started out only discussing unit vs. unit, but as it is obvious that the entire theme is important for a thorough investigation, we have both begun selectively to use the facts that support our case. Hey, it happens, and the nice thing is that I learn things about Marignon that I hadn't thought of, since it is not a favourite nation of mine.)

It's a favourite of mine, especially DF. OTOH, I really hate Mictlan because of the MM issues (don't pool these sacrificial bloodslaves - PLEEEASE!)

This will to some degree be countered by the "but Marignon will preach via inquisitors instead of building temples" issue, though an inquisitor is 110 gold (plus upkeep of 3.67 gold/turn) vs a temple's 200 gold cost and 0 upkeep (and requires a lab, a temple, and a fortress to be recruited just like the Mictlan priest). Of course an inquisitor is mobile and a more useful general purpose unit than a temple, but then again, he does not count towards boosting the maximum dominion either.

No, so what? Unless I'm playing with dominion VCs (which I never do), why would I want to increase my max dominion as long as my Inquisitors negate the enemy's just fine? For pushing my dominion farther into enemy territory to get the morale bonus? Marignon doesn't really need that: its sacred troops have awesome morale already, its crossbowmen don't have to check morale as often as melee troops, and for DF - its demonic troops don't care.

So while using inquisitors instead of temples is certainly a useful advantage for targeting of dominion, I am not certain that it is a great saving in money and doubt that it is enough to make up for the significant difference between turmoil 1 and order 3.

It depends widely on the circumstances. Sometimes you need lots of Inquisitors, sometimes you don't - in that case, the gold savings can be everything except negligible. Sometimes I DO build a few extra temples, besides the ones I need to recruit my priests, but it's extremely rare. Heck, with DF I'll pick Luck +3 and just wait for these temples to pop up!

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me. I.e. in both cases, I was assuming that Acolytes and Priests had essentially the same average lifetime, but, since the longer life expectancy one examines the more the equations favour Mictlan, I chose to consider the special case of an insanely low low life expectancy (10) compared to the one I usually use (30). In other words, even in a heavy spell and battle environment where you can only expect a blood hunter to survive for 10 turns, you are still getting significantly more blood for the buck as Mictlan.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me.

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?