Mictlan Pretenders ideas request

[Nagot Gick Fel]

ckfnpku said:
How about giving some yourself

Actually I (and many others) already replied to this very question in the past and I was trying to locate these older Posts and provide a link to them - but it seems the Boards' search engine isn't that good. What about trying yourself, maybe you'll be more lucky than me?

instead of whining?

Whining, me? Oh, dear!

[Foom]

With all due respect, I think people on this board have a bad habit of flaming others for giving less than perfect advice. If someone says something wrong, why not just correct him where you disagree and offer a better solution? I'm not only talking about Nagot here. It's keeping people away from the Boards, and ultimately hurting the game. Dom2 is strongest in multiplayer, so why scare away the newbies?

Now that I'm done complaining, here's a suggestion. Which, I might add, is probably not perfect, and hasn't been tested in MP, but I hope you'll let me live anyway.

Vampire Queen
3 Air
3 Earth
3 Death
4 Blood

4 Dominion
3 Order
3 Sloth
2 Heat
1 Growth
1 Misfortune
2 Magic

Wizard's Tower

(You might have enough points for another good scale, not sure)

The pretender's paths complement the national mages nicely IMO and give access to most of the usual SC spells (air shield, mirror image, mistform, *skin, invulnerability, soul vortex). You can probably make a dwarven hammer for cheaper soul contracts if you want to pursue that path.

Alteration-3 gives you spells to expand with the pretender. Construction-4 gives you dousing rods for blood hunting. After that, research Blood and consider Alt-5 to beef the VQ further and Const-6 for the path boosting items.

The national troops are crap, but slingers can be fun if you have a lot of them, since their hail of stones gives them a good chance of routing independent enemies.

I like to forge thistle maces and have priest kings summon dark vines, but that's partly because I think tentacles are cool.

Edited for clarity and great justice

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Foom said:
With all due respect, I think people on this board have a bad habit of flaming others for giving less than perfect advice. If someone says something wrong, why not just correct him where you disagree and offer a better solution? I'm not only talking about Nagot here.

Fair point. I now realize I sounded a bit harsh or petulant, while my intent wasn't to flame anyone. I think I know PDF well enough to understand he was looking for MP advice (although he didn't say anything about it in his initial post - but he confirmed later, anyway), and Boron, unaware of that, was kind enough to provide some ideas. I merely wanted to point out his advice, while OK for SP games, would fall short in multiplayer - IMO of course .

[PDF]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Fair point. I now realize I sounded a bit harsh or petulant, while my intent wasn't to flame anyone. I think I know PDF well enough to understand he was looking for MP advice (although he didn't say anything about it in his initial post - but he confirmed later, anyway), and Boron, unaware of that, was kind enough to provide some ideas. I merely wanted to point out his advice, while OK for SP games, would fall short in multiplayer - IMO of course .

Yes, you were right (about the fact that I wanted MP advice). I realized myself that Boron's strategy advice for 15 hammers was not MP-oriented, but didn't see that the whole pretender theme (search-oriented) was not either.

Funny thing is that I was looking for original ideas, and currently I have a GK and a VQ ... Well, I didn't ask for inefficient design, so ...

[archaeolept]

Nagot was correct, however impolitically he may have presented himself.

Foom: Vampire queens are still good, but quite expensive. you'll be solely relying on her pretty well for expansion. and 4 dominion is a likely death sentence in multiplayer, and wizard's tower is nice but too pricey.

its true that Boron is more of a turtler, at least when i played him, but i'm not so impressed w/ vampire lords and soul contracts. sure, they're good, but no big deal.

the sacred troops are just ok, nothing great IMHO

well, it all depends on settings, but w/ an extreme bless strat, Mictlan has the best sacred units in the game. even w/ just a fire 9 bless they are quite useful and definitely cost-effective. I like an F-9 A-4 Moloch, though i'm used to dealing w/ it's tendancy to "run away". a few indy archers in the back will usually work, until i'm able to solve the problem more permanently...

using zen's pretender mod i've had very good success w/ an ultra-dragon (dual bless), however I don't think this will still be viable under the scales mod.

[Chazar]

Foom said:
With all due respect, I think people on this board have a bad habit of flaming others for giving less than perfect advice. If someone says something wrong, why not just correct him where you disagree and offer a better solution? I'm not only talking about Nagot here. It's keeping people away from the Boards, and ultimately hurting the game. Dom2 is strongest in multiplayer, so why scare away the newbies?

This is a very good point! However one should also be aware that written communication is extremly easy to be misunderstood (lack of intonation, body language, language translation, etc.) - which is why emoticons were invented. Therefore people should also not let themselves be angered by Posts too easily, for it might not have been intended that way (like in this case)...

[Foom]

You're right, I was too quick to jump on Nagot here. It's just that I have seen many people insult Cohen and Boron for no good reason, which made me judge too quickly.

Nagot, I offer you a binouse as compensation for my rashness.

Now give me some feedback on my pretender, I'm desperate to get Mictlan to work

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Foom said:
You're right, I was too quick to jump on Nagot here. It's just that I have seen many people insult Cohen and Boron for no good reason

Ad hominen insults are always unexcusable. Maybe I sounded a bit rude wrt Boron's opinions, at least you'll note I wasn't disrecpectful to him. Well, I hope anyway - English isn't my first language, and before I got accustomed to Usenet slang I did some memorable fumbles like confusing "moron" with "regular". When I replied to someone "you're obviously a moron in this newsgroup", he wasn't really happy.

Nagot, I offer you a binouse as compensation for my rashness.

Ah, that's my first encounter with this word, "binouse". Maybe I should check if I'm not allergic to this kind of beverage before I accept your offer?

Now give me some feedback on my pretender

Looks OK to me. The Wiz Tower is a great castle, just (IMO) not as great to Mictlan as it is to most nations, you can still do OK with a Mausoleum or Watch Tower. FYI, my Last Mictlan design pretender was:

LotN
Air 3
Earth 3
Death 5 (just for the increased fear factor you get at each 5-uple, and because I could afford it)
Blood 3

Dominion 6
Watch Tower

Order +3
Prod -3
Heat +1
Growth 0
Luck -2
Magic +1 (always was enough for me, and I never liked the MR malus you get vs hostile rituals when picking +2 or +3)

Leaves 120 unallocated design points, but it was for an handicap game (so you can pick up to 3 extra scales or a Wiz Tower if you want).

So quite close to your own design actually. I prefer the LotN to the VQ because I want my pretender to be able to fight outside his dominion early if required - but YMMV.

I'm desperate to get Mictlan to work

I guess it's more a problem with handling the nation than designing it.

[Vicious Love]

Just wondering, would a F9B6 Moloch be a waste of points? On the one hand, no access to Dwarven Hammers or death, air, & earth multipath blood spells.
On the other, ubercheap(But capitol only) eagle warriors with two flaming, high-strength, high-skill attacks per turn(Four if Quickened), that strike before ANY buffs are cast when defending, and after only one turn of buffs when attacking. And probably end up getting a hefty surround bonus when they attack lone ghost kings, or whatever. If there's a more cost-effective SC killer out there(Other than Carrion Woods goons or these same warriors plus Weapons of Sharpness), I'd like to hear about it.
Couple that with the not-at-all-shabby jaguar warriors you can recruit just about anywhere en masse(THREE for the price of one Ulmish black knight, and you can afford sloth 3, to boot), the combat machine that is the Moloch(Properly supported), and the ability to cast all pure blood spells with only a few path boosters, and methinks you've got an adequate setup, at the very least. Am I right?

[ckfnpku]

Något, no hard feelings I hope. Foom summed up what I was trying to say in an excellent way.

I suppose I should contribute something as well.

I've tried the Smoking Mirror in sp, but he just gets killed from random events, so no good. I wouldn't wanna go to the trouble of protecting him. (Btw, that line in the description about him divining the fates of men, what's with that? It's not like the Jade Emperor and Lady of Fortune, is it?)

I would agree with the ideas presented here. A pretender with a little blood and the paths that mictlans priests don't have. Also, he doesn't need to be a great fighter mid/lategame, since mictlan should scoop up a number of the blood uniques.

A Ghostking with air3 earth4 death3 blood4.
Order3 sloth3 heat1 magic3.
Watchtower.
Dominion ~6.

Something like that. Backed by several minutes of sp experience =)