Mictlan, Cross Breeding and Luck

[moodgiesanta]

Originally posted by Vger:
Hi,

The Heliophagus makes a pretty good SC with decent equipment. I haven't played a blood nation yet, but I've piddled with blood magic and called one up, once.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

Indeed, the Heliophagi are great. I managed to summon three before my country died out completely. One was just a wonderful commander, but one, aside from being a kick *** commander with good magic, also could summon a fiend every turn cost-free, and the other could summon two Bone fiends things with no cost every turn. I dunno about the fourth, but I assume he is equally awesome. It was the only way I survived, with no blood slaves due to having no people.

Bowlingballhead, yes, Burden of time is broken, in my opinion. It costs far too little for the extreme effects it has. It absolutely kills me, and not being an astral mage or interested in enchantment, I'm utterly screwed. So I have a couple choices:
1. Go out of my way at creation to take four astral and research dispel AND somehow get ahold through alchemy (at tremendous cost) enough astral pearls to dispel it. Which utterly sucks.
2. Take three on the growth scale, and mass produce cheap human units to replace my ever-dying legions.

I haven't played a nation that uses mostly elite troops yet, but I'd imagine things would be doubly worse if I didn't field an army of expendable cross-breeds as fodder for my equally expendable horde of sling-using warriors, but rather a crack team of elites that are hard to replace. I mean, that seems VERY broken to me. Heck, it deserves its own thread.
Someone asked this:

With the improves crossbreeding, how many commanders are usually leading one of your main armys ? because just a few breeds usually come with MANY lesser breeds you must have several commanders. Or are you using a experienced leader with 2+ exp levels ? Because i cant figure out how to lead those bloody breeds, they allways seem to end up guarding my capital..
ty

I dunno about other countries, but I pumped out Tribal Kings en masse with Mictlan. They're only 40 gold and minimal resources and command 50 soldiers right off, so there is no reason not to just hire one every turn you need one don't hire something else. With several forts (which so far has been my strategy, not that it has done all that well . . .) you can pump out serious quantities of them.