Blood Simple?!

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

Graeme Dice said:
Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Graeme Dice said:
Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.

Graeme Dice said:
You will probably also have your hunters behind castles.

In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.

Graeme Dice said:
Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.

]NTJedi said:
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

Graeme Dice said:
This is part of any blood nation.

It's still extra management.

[spirokeat]

Well, I have to say, having a far clearer understanding of how Dominion spreads and then changing accordingly, I find that as Mictlan I am capable of outstripping the other nations in the SP game I am in easily. Whereas before I was constantly at the bottom of the pile.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Thanks Zen.

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

Theyn might be able to, but with 0 taxes it will take a few turns usually. Even at 20% unrest, that's just a 20% chance of failure. 4 out of 5 turns the province will produce normally. Avoiding micromanagement is done by not trying to optimize every possible thing.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Blood hunters in a proper hunting province will succeed 90% of the time. With three hunters, you are almost certain to have some success, and as stated, those three hunters will either be enough of a defense, as they are against small attacks, or will be hopelessly defeated.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.

If your opponent is spending gems on call of the wild, you will win the resources war fairly simply.

In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.

That's a problem with the house rules you chose, not the game itself.

Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.

You will be managing the unrest every five turns or so anyways.

[Cainehill]

Damn, I gotta answer this when I'm awake.

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
Theyn might be able to, but with 0 taxes it will take a few turns usually. Even at 20% unrest, that's just a 20% chance of failure.

Combined with the chance they will return with nothing even with 0 unrest raises the percentage beyond what I see as beneficial and tossing them into research will not only remove the existing unrest but improve research.

Graeme Dice said: those three hunters will either be enough of a defense, as they are against small attacks, or will be hopelessly defeated.

Unlike your games I've seen not only small attacks and huge defeats but very close magic casted and non-magic casted battles. Those close battles really are fun to watch.

Graeme Dice said:
If your opponent is spending gems on call of the wild, you will win the resources war fairly simply.

You're forgetting the Soulstone allows its wielder to cast call of the wild for free every turn... combined with madmen or a hordes from hell and you'll pray for those blood mages each have a pair of blood slaves.

Graeme Dice said:

That's a problem with the house rules you chose, not the game itself.

Players having to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically is a problem to you ... sounds like mass-castle building is more the problem since it's expected to be seen in multiplayer games.

Graeme Dice said:

You will be managing the unrest every five turns or so anyways.

The point is Mictlan has to have blood hunters, priests sacrificing and adjusting unrest just to push or keep alive the domain. All which brings extra micromanagement. This was mentioned long ago in previous topics as well.

[Endoperez]

Mictlan's whole idea is that they have to have blood hunters capturing and priests sacrificing slaves. If this brings micromanagement, it is a pity but hardly avoidable. Both the Z (pool all blood slaves from the chosen commanders) and the automatic refill of blood sacrificers are ways Illwinter tries to ease the burden with. I don't think the burden is big enough to warrant big chances, as the current one works quite well and doesn't increase the micromanagement too much.

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
Combined with the chance they will return with nothing even with 0 unrest raises the percentage beyond what I see as beneficial and tossing them into research will not only remove the existing unrest but improve research.

The chance that a hunter fails is 10% for B2 and 0% for B3.

Unlike your games I've seen not only small attacks and huge defeats but very close magic casted and non-magic casted battles. Those close battles really are fun to watch.

A small attack can be dealt with by moving your bloodhunters back to the province they retreated from to recapture it.

You're forgetting the Soulstone allows its wielder to cast call of the wild for free every turn... combined with madmen or a hordes from hell and you'll pray for those blood mages each have a pair of blood slaves.

The soulstone is an artifact and only gives you a single call of the wolves per turn. Your province defense of 10 should be enough to hold that off by itself. If your opponent has the astral income to cast multiple madmen spells per turn, then you have to have comparable income of some other kind or you've already lost. Hordes from hell is not going to be defeated by the six imps that three B1 mages will likely be able to summon.

Players having to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically is a problem to you ... sounds like mass-castle building is more the problem since it's expected to be seen in multiplayer games.

No, players complaining that their house rules mess up game balance is the problem.

The point is Mictlan has to have blood hunters, priests sacrificing and adjusting unrest just to push or keep alive the domain. All which brings extra micromanagement. This was mentioned long ago in previous topics as well.

I'm well aware of what you think the point is. The actual fact is that the micromanagement is not that much worse once you've built the basic infrastructure needed.

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
The chance that a hunter fails is 10% for B2 and 0% for B3.

And combined with a 20% from unrest is too likely in my book. You never have close battles anyway so there's no need for you to worry about it.

A small attack can be dealt with by moving your bloodhunters back to the province they retreated from to recapture it.

One turn lost blood-hunting/researching since it's a magic casted battle and another turn lost to recapture the province. And if the blood hunters were unable to retreat into a province without a lab then you're sending them into battle without blood slaves making them virtually powerless.

Graeme Dice said:
The soulstone is an artifact and only gives you a single call of the wolves per turn. Your province defense of 10 should be enough to hold that off by itself.

Call of the wolves v.s Mictlans 10 PD
way too risky in my book.

Graeme Dice said: Hordes from hell is not going to be defeated by the six imps that three B1 mages will likely be able to summon.

Summon imps casted by 3 blood mages is 18 imps... when casted again during battle that is 36 imps plus PD. And this has won battles for me against hordes from hell.

Graeme Dice said:
No, players complaining that their house rules mess up game balance is the problem.

House rules are set before a game starts... no one forces them to play these games with house rules. If they don't like the house rules they should host their own game.

Graeme Dice said:
I'm well aware of what you think the point is. The actual fact is that the micromanagement is not that much worse once you've built the basic infrastructure needed.

Guess you're just in a total different game experience compared to others since this has been mentioned before yet you deny the big micromanagement with Mictlan. Obviously you don't believe me or anyone whose complained about this before, as I've listed below:

Taqwus said:#329252 - 02/04/05 02:57 PM
Mictlan priests set to Sacrifice should not deposit slaves in the pool; or, they should automatically pull them from the pool; or blood hunters should by default deposit them in the pool if there's a co-located lab. Unless this has changed lately, managing this was a pain.

Huzurdaddi said: #312056 - 11/18/04 02:58 PM
Mictlan's negatives are that their troops are very fragile to missle fire, their excellent ( but costly ) casters are capital only, and their dominion costs an additional resource ( this also has the side effect of making their micromanagement quite difficult ).

The Panther said: #299007 - 09/29/04 02:58 AM
4. Mictlan has the highest level of micro-management of any race. I can fully attest to the truth of this, for I am currently playing 5 different races in 5 separate MP games. My Mictlan game definitely does, on average, take the longest time to move of the group.

PDF said: #359245 - 06/15/05 08:19 AM
But it was with Aby mainly, for Mictlan it's a real pain to *also* manage sacrificer fueling

Skolem said: #359271 - 06/15/05 11:09 AM
first have to "shift Z" all my bood hunters, then found every former sacrifier on the map, then put them enough slave to sacrifice, and the click the sacrifice commad (AFAIK there is no shortcut ). And I don't think I'm the only one who use all his slave in most of his turns, so there still is a lot of micromanagement (most of it is to found the commanders you want).

Zen said:#314419 - 11/30/04 02:49 PM
The biggest killer of Mictlan is it's own micromanagement, or more appropriately the need to use resources to circumvent some of that micromanagment.

As you can see these quotes CLEARLY indicate the extra micromanagement is not a small issue as you seem to believe. I'm sorry you disagree with all of us Graeme Dice... maybe you just play small maps to not notice this.

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
And combined with a 20% from unrest is too likely in my book. You never have close battles anyway so there's no need for you to worry about it.

The chance that all three blood hunters will fail approaches 2%. Why are you worrying about events that will only happen in 1 out of every 50 attacks, when your province is only likely to experience 5 attacks in a game.

One turn lost blood-hunting/researching since it's a magic casted battle and another turn lost to recapture the province. And if the blood hunters were unable to retreat into a province without a lab then you're sending them into battle without blood slaves making them virtually powerless.

This would be a problem for you with any blood nation thanks to your choice to perform unnecessary tasks.

Call of the wolves v.s Mictlans 10 PD
way too risky in my book.

You'd be better off to buy a single Tribal King and have him capture slaves than to worry about supplying blood slaves to your hunters. Your hunters are expendable, your play time isn't.

Summon imps casted by 3 blood mages is 18 imps... when casted again during battle that is 36 imps plus PD. And this has won battles for me against hordes from hell.

Of course, you could have just had your hunters retreat, then move them back in to retake the province the next turn.

House rules are set before a game starts... no one forces them to play these games with house rules. If they don't like the house rules they should host their own game.

You are complaining that Mictlan can't use castles to protect its blood hunters. That is micromanagement created solely by the house rules you chose, so you certainly can't complain about it.

Guess you're just in a total different game experience compared to others since this has been mentioned before yet you deny the big micromanagement with Mictlan. Obviously you don't believe me or anyone whose complained about this before, as I've listed below:

Maybe you should learn to read while you go about learning that repeating the same assertion does not make it anymore true. I have issues with your complaints about micromanagement. Please don't bring up irrelevant appeals to popularity.

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
The chance that all three blood hunters will fail approaches 2%.

I'm not saying they all will fail, but even 15% of increased failure compared with zero unrest is not a comfortable setting for me. And if they don't fail then unrest increases even more dropping population and decreasing chances even more.

This would be a problem for you with any blood nation thanks to your choice to perform unnecessary tasks.

Yes but those blood mages might not need to flee if they were originally setup with blood slaves at the start of a magic casted battle. 36 imps for holding a province is well worth the six blood slaves the mages hold... sorry you don't agree.

Your hunters are expendable, your play time isn't.

Three blood hunters each with 2 or 3 blood slaves adds good protection for a province... thus winning is worth my playtime.

Of course, you could have just had your hunters retreat, then move them back in to retake the province the next turn.

You know... keeping that province and killing the attacking force is better in so many ways then your retreat and recapture strategy.

Graeme Dice said:
You are complaining that Mictlan can't use castles to protect its blood hunters. That is micromanagement created solely by the house rules you chose, so you certainly can't complain about it.

The micromanagement exists with or without the house rules... did you not read the quotes from the other gamers?

Graeme Dice said: I have issues with your complaints about micromanagement. Please don't bring up irrelevant appeals to popularity.

NO... you've been saying the micromanagement wasn't that bad. These quotes from many other gamers CLEARLY indicate the micromanagement is painfully noticed with Mictlan. The only reason I see you not experiencing this is if you've been playing small maps with Mictlan.