EA Mictlan Setup - Q's from a noob

[Hellboy]

Thanks for the quick (and thorough!) response.

Baalz said:
No comment on the other questions. I will also point out that as popular as an uber bless strategy is with Mictlan I’ve had some pretty good luck with more conservative blessings combined with good scales.

Of course, I don't do a bless strategy every time around, but I've a mind to go that way this time. In another game I think it would be fun to have a go w/ a toned down bless and either an SC pretender or a broader and more long term magic strategy.

Something like single bless, Turmoil-3, Sloth-3, Magic-1, Growth-3, Luck-3. Even single blessed Mictlan sacreds are pretty good because they’re cheap enough to throw many of them around, and the nice scales let you more rapidly get to Mictlan’s middle/late powerful blood summons.

So in the example above, would you care to throw out a number as to how high you might put your dominion level at?

[Baalz]

Well, it kinda depends on what pretender you're going with. I seldom go below a 7 on dominion, but where to go above that? Depends on how many points I have left over after getting the paths I want for blessing, and also if I want a SC god (to get the awe at 9 or 10).

The levels above 7 are generally pretty expensive so you've got to balance them against what you could have for the same points. Having 30% more jaguar warriors is nice, but is it worth the price to go from 7 to 10? Well, there are a couple ways to go. I like to get 2 extra castles up as fast as possible, and 30 jaguar warriors a turn is a pretty potent rushing force with a decent bless. But if the other choice is to have an awake pretender to back up 21 jaguar warriors a turn? Or a second bless for those 21 jaguar warriors? On the other hand, if your choice is to move your dominion from 7 to 10, or to move one of your imprisoned pretender's magic path from 4 to 7, or drop sloth from 3 to 1...well you've got to decide where the best bang for your buck is. I seldom plan to try and dominion push when I'm building my pretender, but if I end up with a 10 for other reasons I'm much more eager to look for the opportunity.

One of the reasons I like to have nicer scales is because until you get to the decent blood summons you're going to be relying heavily on jaguar warriors (only non-capital troop worth recruiting), and they're pretty viscously counterable once people get a chance to respond strongly. I try to get some demonic backing before that happens. With that in mind, it's often worthwhile to see what sacrifices you need to make to get your pretender to be awake and researching from turn one, and dominion above 7 is often a good place to cut. All THAT being said, if you take one of the immobile pretenders like the blood fountain getting your dominion to 10 isn't nearly as expensive since you start at 4.

[NickW]

I always recommend to people new to EA Mictlan to take a balanced approach. Dominion 8, scales Order-3, Sloth-3, Heat-3, Growth-3, and an imprisoned blood fountain pretender with F9/B5 isn't a bad starting point.

With dominion 8 you can get a lot of sacred troops for a good early push and with order-8 you can afford all those troops plus the castles and researchers and blood hunters you'll need for late game power.

[Shovah32]

My post(made around 4 hours ago) appears not to have worked so i'll summarise it:

This is one way to play Mictlan, probably most suited to a middle length game because your pretender is imprisoned so blitzing hurts and the death scale will hurt alot in very long games.

Moloch
Dom10
Order3, sloth3, heat 3, death3, misfortune2, drain2
Fire9, Water9, Blood 4
Imprisoned

Nice bless for your sacreds, a standard f9w9 with +2 strength. Your scales are terrible and your gods imprisoned but your sacreds are nasty and when your god gets out he is great.

55 Health
15 Prot
18 Strength
24 Attack
22 Defence
Flying
Fear
Awe
2 Attacks

This is him unequipped and unbuffed in neutral dominion.
He has full slots, can quicken himself(and then his foot slots are free for reinvig ) and can cast fireshield(15ap damage iirc) and phoenix pyre

Your cheap sacreds, even with your terrible scales, should keep you fairly safe from most things(unless your teamed up on) until your god comes out and, hopefully by then you will have fireshield and personal quickness researched and some equipment forged. just as an example: frost brand, lucky coin, dragon helmet(morale boost), robe of shadows/rime hauberk, boots of the messenger, ring of regeneration, another misc item(amulet of resilence/anti magic, cat charm, resistance rings ect) All those items can be forged by your national mages iirc

[Aleph]

I always preface my comments saying I don't play MP. I don't play MP.

I like Turmoil/Sloth/Luck 3 Heat 1 Growth 2 Magic 1 for Mictlan. I think with an Imprisoned Smoking Mirror this lets you have Dominion 5 and a F9 B4 + your choice of 2 other 4's + death 2. I generally take either W4E4 or W4N4. Either way, your blessed troops hit like trucks (magic/flaming/+2 strength/+4 attack) and have good defense. The former is nice if you're thinking of playing around with blood communions or more battlemages. The latter helps your mages ages very gracefully (bring diseased mages into combat to bless/regen them back up to full health) and makes your troops a little more survivable (even Jaguar Warriors will thank you for the affliction avoidance). You can also go W4D4 and hit even harder while saving some points for higher dominion, although that's really not necessary except against pretenders and the like.

I like turmoil/luck for mictlan because I usually end up with most of my provinces with 5000+ population at 0 tax/blood hunting. Provinces with lots of mines (found by luck) are the exception. Under luck, every province gets a chance to provide random boosts to income, even with 0 tax, and I also net heroes/extra gems (which, if nothing else, can be alchemized into astral to empower your moon priests)/extra magic items. Turmoil/Sloth also makes your dominion quite hostile to other, more gold/resource dependent forces even if you can't force a dominion kill.

Growth offsets blood hunting losses and lets you groom provinces for the 5000 pop mark. Magic, as mentioned before, gives you one of the most efficient gold/research conversions in the game.

[Hellboy]

Thanks shovah32, that was quite detailed and helpful. If that's a summary, makes me wonder what the original post was like!

More general questions on Mictlan:

1) While testing I saw a number of jaguar warriors auto-healing afflictions every turn, but I had no healing priest or GoH up, or anything of the like. Do jaguar warriors have (in effect) recuperate? Or is it possible that there was some hidden site I didn't know about?

2) Does anyone recruit sun or eagle warriors? It's odd that they are the ones that are capital only, when they both seem less useful than jaguar warriors.
If you have a few fortress up and recruiting your jaguars, then I can see some value in recruiting eagle warriors (for mage/archer attacks), but otherwise it seems better to stick to jaguars.

[Teraswaerto]

Eagle warriors are deadly. They get to attack first most of the time, can fly to attack archers, and get 2 attacks. Best to recruit as many of them as you can every turn, IMO.

[Shovah32]

I dont know about auto-healing but(and i could be wrong) they may auto-heal when turning back from were-jaguar form.

I dont use sun warriors but i use a combination of jaguar and eagle warriors, the flight from eagle warriors useful for quickly hitting an enemy be they archers, elephants(who go down fairly quick to f9w9b4-6 eagle warriors) or even minor thugs.

[Edi]

Hellboy said:
1) While testing I saw a number of jaguar warriors auto-healing afflictions every turn, but I had no healing priest or GoH up, or anything of the like. Do jaguar warriors have (in effect) recuperate? Or is it possible that there was some hidden site I didn't know about?

No hidden sites and nothing peculiar. This is a feature of the game, if rather obscure and unadvertised. Units with more than one shape have a fairly good chance of healing afflictions when they change shape. This only works for involuntary changes, such as jaguar warriors, skinshifters and Machaka Black Sorcerers and Sorceresses have and is checked at the end of each combat where the unit changed to its secondshape.

It does NOT work if you give a unit the change shape command in the main interface. I am not even sure if it would work the same way for units capable of voluntarily changing shape.

Hellboy said:
2) Does anyone recruit sun or eagle warriors? It's odd that they are the ones that are capital only, when they both seem less useful than jaguar warriors.
If you have a few fortress up and recruiting your jaguars, then I can see some value in recruiting eagle warriors (for mage/archer attacks), but otherwise it seems better to stick to jaguars.

You need to use jaguars first until you get a second fort. After that it's jaguars from the others and eagles from the capital. Using eagles very early on will get most of them massacred when they attack archers, kill commanders and then start tangling with the heavier infantry units.

Edi

[Hellboy]

Edi said:
You need to use jaguars first until you get a second fort. After that it's jaguars from the others and eagles from the capital. Using eagles very early on will get most of them massacred when they attack archers, kill commanders and then start tangling with the heavier infantry units.
Edi

Sounds like good advice - thanks Edi!