Guide to EA Mictlan and bloodhunting

[Meglobob]

Baalz said:I actually find that the astral bless is surprisingly effective at improving their staying power. The first hit is negated by the blessing, and at least one other hit is negated by the shape shifting, so you end up having to hit them many times to take them down (not easy if they've also got a water bless)...while they're wailing away at you with a huge sword quick sword.

Firstly, excellent guide Baalz.

I agree with astral bless, twist of fate on your sacred warriors and on your sacred mage/priests really increases there surivability. Which saves you gold btw, always useful for Mictlan as Baalz points out. A S9W9 dual bless is I think on a par with F9W9.

Also you have a astral lvl 9 mage with your pretender which is fantastic for the end game.

The additional MR also helps your sacreds against magic later on and the shroud of the battle saint becomes a real bargain for 5S gems, combo it with boots of stone to get high protection as well, obviously difficult to do with a lack of earth but you never know.

[Baalz]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the MR buff really helps out the sacred demons more than the jaguar warriors.

[Xietor]

I do not use the blood path, and old age is not an issue with Pangaea, my flavor of the month race, but blood can be used to reduce old age. Is that not a viable option for Micitans priests that get old?

[Huzurdaddi]

Re: Jaguar Warrior

So does anyone know how many HP these bad boys have? By this I mean the following:

1. How much damage must they sustain for the transformation? Does it only happen on death?
2. Does any of the damage he had before the transformation go to the were-jaguar?

I'm not 100% sure how it work, but I have a suspicion. They seem to have a tremendous number of HP.

[jutetrea]

Nice, I'll try these guys out after my flav of the month nation, Pangaea as well, gets stale.

Is Mict considered a face hugger? Any staying power in a long game? Everything else being equal, etc,etc in general. There are some interesting convos going on the "heavy bless strat" thread and Mict got mentioned a bit.

[Aleph]

I would think Mictlan would be both a facehugger and a longterm threat - the triple bless Mictlan more of a pure facehugger, but the right dual bless (LA Mictlan with Fountain for F9S9 or W9S9) or 1 major/multiple minor bless strats (Smoking Mirror is a great F9/W4/B4/S4/D2 base) can definitely leave a lot of room for Mictlan to take beneficial scales (ideal IMO is sloth/turmoil/luck 3 growth 2 magic 1). As Mictlan is the premiere blood nation, you can in a sense "buy off" some of your bad money scales by switching over to blood. Your random luck income will continue to roll in, you won't hunt in provinces which pick up good mines, and the opportunity cost for each individual blood slave is less (since the province is producing less gold through taxation than in an order setup and still has reasonable chances to give hundreds or thousands in random events).

Blood is an exceptionally strong long term strategy in my mind because it allows you to convert your gold income (generally used to buy troops with upkeep costs) into blood income (used to summon demons without upkeep costs). The longer the game lasts, the more your army size and power increases.

Finally, as mentioned above, in the late game Astral Corruption is pretty much an "I win" card.

[Hellboy]

Baalz,

First off, awesome post! I've been following your posts on Mictlan for a while, and it's really great to have everything brought together here in this guide.

I have one more noob question: is it a stupid idea to take death scales when you're playing Mictlan?

I like to play MP games on large maps (20+ provinces per player), and it just seems that on maps that size, once you get some momentum going, you just never run out of provinces. On this basis, any nation that is successful past turn 40 will have enough provinces and a large income, that they can afford the negative impact of the death scales.

But maybe its just my limited MP experience that leads me to this conclusion. Or maybe it's my noobishness that has me playing on such big maps. Either way, I'd love to hear some informed comment on death vs. growth scales in MP play.

[Saxon]

Nice one, I had not noticed the cost variation between locations. I normally go for strategic value, but cost will infulence that. If I find a blood site that lowers ritual cost, that has to be a strong candidate for a fort/lab/temple.

I was just thinking the call of the winds commander would make a nice transport unit. Once your empire gets a bit bigger, you need that strategic movment. I will take a look at the mounted commanders, as you suggest, as they are much more common.

[Saxon]

Very helpful again, thank you. I will avoid the patrolling.

If I have labs in each blood hunting province, I can pool the slaves nicely. However, if I do not, I have to shuttle them around with cheap or highly mobile units. If a lab costs 500 gold, it seems that a scout or flying turkey mage are really the most cost effective methods over quite long time horizons. Micromanagement saves cash…

However, what if my mages are full and still hunt? Do they not collect, because they have no place to store them? Then there is a higher cost to not having a lab.

Given that I usually have other things to do with my 500 gold, it does seem that buying extra scouts would be the cost effective way of handling this. Unless you have found a sneaky way around the problem you would like to share with us…

[vfb]

I think you should use indy commanders to shuttle your blood slaves when you cannot afford a lab. I do not like to take any turns where my home province does not build some sort of priest. Indy scouts are best, Horse tribe commanders work well too, and even the regular Commanders, Mounted Commanders, and Barbarian leaders are okay.

I think it may be best to build labs only where you are intending to eventually build a temple and a fort. I try to build forts where they are cheapest, in the forests and mountains. You need to build all of these somewhere in any case, to churn out even more priests. Might as well provide some protection for your hunters while you are at it. (If you're playing SP you might be better off to just take castles from the AIs.)

You can also build another temple instead of a lab, and sacrifice where you hunt. The sacrificing priest can take some of the overflow if your hunters get close to limit. This option is best if the province is in the plains and can recruit indy priests (for sacrificing with a jade dagger), since this frees up even more of your priests for hunting and researching.