Guide to EA Mictlan and bloodhunting

[Jazzepi]

This is something I didn't know until I played for a long time.

No matter what the current scales read in any given province. You get NO benefit, at all, from any positive scales if you don't have at least one point of positive dominion there (you only get the bad ones). So if you opponent had +3 magic scales, and you move all your combat mages into their newly conquered capital to research, you will only get their regular research rate.

That said, if you conquer a province, and get one white candle in it, you can use their scales for as long as they remain, though the further the scales are from your own, the quicker they shift.

Jazzepi

[MaxWilson]

True. However, if your scales are heavily negative (e.g. drain-3 dominion), you benefit from hostile magic-3 dominions in the sense that you're at least not taking any penalty to research. If you've totally trashed your scales for a triple bless this could be important, especially because Mictlan can micromanage its dominion spread to avoid dominion kill and still contain its own dominion. I've never tried it, but IIRC Gandalf did this to get a quad bless with Mictlan and he reported it as being fun (which is not the same thing as effective, because we all know Gandalf is crazy and doesn't optimize for effectiveness).

-Max