Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Compared to what? Two times zero equals... a rather unimpressive number in my book.

Whereas B/30 != 0 for B!=0 in my book, and is hence of consequence. Especially when considering costs over n turns, as the difference in price between a sacred unit with purchase price B1 and a non-sacred with purchase price B2 is B1+(n*B1/30) vs B2+(n*B2/15) and gets nastier the larger n is, rather than just B1 vs B2.

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more. I mean, you are discarding a 36% price difference because you choose not to count upkeep, considering it a marginal effect? I could understand discarding effects less than 5% (standard practise ) - but 36% is a heck of a lot more and not marginal.

BTW, if you want to scale everything up, remember you need temples to recruit more Mictlan priests, that's 200 gold Diabolical Faith can save when setting a new Diabolist production center up.

Hehe. Yes, I conveniently ignored this one, as I tend to build a lot of temples as Mictlan anyhow to be able to mass blood sacrifice, but it should be at least be partially included - IF that is, one assumes that DF will not likewise be setting up temples for dominion spread. E.g. one would have to consider the issue of surplus temples needed to ramp up priest production rather than just total temples.

In a perfect world, maybe. But I guess you won't tell me you always have these 40 Mictlan slaves ready in the right place for each bloodhunter pack? It takes time to raise them. It takes time to move or relocate them to new bloodhunting grounds because of their low mobility. It takes time to gather them again after they routed to nearby provinces. As long as they aren't all where they're supposed to be, at least part of your bloodhunter parties collect slaves with a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

In the not entirely hypothetical world described above, you end up with one Tribal King in each province and (in practise) way too many slaves. Yes, you do always have sufficient slaves within at least one province distance and, for those guarding bloodhunters in a castle, no retreat is going to happen. Sometimes accidents do happen, but you can significantly reduce the odds.

Are you saying that, if the Mictlan player refuses to do just that, Fires from Afar failed to achieve its goal and thus shouldn't be used?

I am saying that if a Mictlan player does guard his priests, he should be harried every once in a while to make sure he continues, but that I shouldn't expect the spell to garner me a strategic or economic advantage of significance that scales with its use.

Really, the strategical aspect of spells like Fires from Afar far outweights these economical concerns. In this case its primary goal is to disrupt the bloodhunting if the targeted player is lazy and doesn't defend his bloodhunters. If the same player isn't lazy (eg, uses 'troop buffering' - or resistance gear), then Fires from Afar becomes irrelevant and won't be used - thus costing no gems. This is proof enough that including the 'cost' of Fires from Afar in the 'equation' is, at best, a specious argument. You simply forgot the THREAT of Fires from Afar doesn't cost anything.

Oh, no, I did not forget any of that. The cost of the Fires from Afar part vs the damage inflicted is important, as it is the thing that shows that just scaling up (using more and more of them as gems become available) does not pay because it hurts your economy more than his.

And the THREAT alone, as shown, will at best reduce his blood advantage from ~90% to ~40%.

The spell can still be used to strategic advantage in trying to draw the enemy's attention somewhere by somebody with lots of fire gems to burn, but it is not going to alter the equation with respect to how good the Mictlan priests are at bloodhunting compared with the opposition.

The original point was Fires from Afar WILL be used against a 'lazy' Mictlan (as long as it efficiently dispatches the bloodhunters), and not otherwise (after the Mictlan player realized he'd better divert valuable resources to protect his bloodhunters - but then, he actually diverted these resources). BoH hasn't this concern.

And as I have stated, I too much prefer managing fireproof bloodhunters - it is less time consuming and allows you to commit more errors. That does not make the mathematics of good bloodhunting wrong, however, assuming a player with a low error margin.

I never argued against that, on the contrary I even agreed with you here. But remember, you said - 'nobody else even gets close'. And you failed to convince me on this particular point. I never argued about anything else.

Ah, well. And since my best calculations still puts Mictlan at about a +40% blood advantage, I guess I will just have to disagree with you: That is not close. A shame I did not manage to convince you, but then, it would not be fun if we all agreed on everything. And at any rate you made me question some of my assumptions, and that is always good.

[Chazar]

I think I recall that victory point spread dominion like a temple. Do victory point owned by Mictlan spread dominino like Mictlan temple (i.e. not at all) or like everybody else's temples?

[archaeolept]

more like a half temple, but they work for mictlan.

[Foom]

On a similar note, what do "Restless Worshippers" and "Ceremonial Faith" do for Mictlan? Dominion is really hard to spread since blood sacrifices seem so weak. Do those special dominions help?

[deccan]

I think Panther did a series of tests a while back that proved the power of blood sacrifice. I'm playing an SP game as Mictlan myself, but I agree that it's really powerful. Give Jade Knives to your priests and don't stint on the slaves. There's more where they come from.

[Graeme Dice]

Foom said:
On a similar note, what do "Restless Worshippers" and "Ceremonial Faith" do for Mictlan? Dominion is really hard to spread since blood sacrifices seem so weak. Do those special dominions help?

I don't believe that you can select either of those themes with Mictlan.

[archaeolept]

no, you can't.

as to the debate, personally I hate the diabolists. not being sacred, combined w/ bloody mary's forced turmoil really ratchets up the economic pain. I far prefer the wonderful goetic masters, who have pretty well the same upkeep, are good for hellfire, research, bloodhunting w/out a sanguine rod even, and get a random. their versatility and power more than makes up for the initial expenditure, IMO.

Sanguine acolytes are good, but that is payed for through the relative troop weakness of the theme, and, especially, the inability to take magic scales. Blood of humans is good for rushing the arch devils, or some such, but early expansion is more difficult and research will always heavily lag.

Mictlan has good magical diversity, to my mind excellent sacred troops, and the best combined economic/research/blood ramp-up in the game. what's not to love? (other than their early game crap dominion)

[Foom]

Graeme Dice said:

I don't believe that you can select either of those themes with Mictlan.

I just checked; you can pick Restless Worshippers, but not Ceremonial Faith.

RW seems to help a little, but the turmoil probably isn't worth it.

[Gandalf Parker]

Something I just noticed about Mictlan. A large disadvantage for them is that they cannot preach a pretender to death inside his castle. Thats kindof a large game-theme strategy to lose.

Well maybe they could but they would have to conquer all of the surrounding provinces, build temples there, and sacrifice like crazy hoping for an overflow effect. If they bought into a blessing strategy then they might not have a high dominion setting. I was abit disappointed that independent priests also were not able to preach.

I havent come across it yet but if their pretender dies do they have to sacrifice it back again also?

EDIT: Hmmm added thought. Maybe we could add a sacrificial knife which allows them to use it in the field. Do sacficies without the need for a temple.