Mictlan, Cross Breeding and Luck

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by PvK:
Yes the Mictlani commanders are wonderfully cheap (sacred, for half upkeep cost) for cannonfodder leadership and generation too (free slave spear-carriers).

PvK

True. Too bad they have nothing half decent to lead. It would be nice if the Slaves could distract your opponent's troops while your good troops hit him in the flank or rear - but Mictlan doesn't HAVE any good troops.

I'm particularly disappointed by the Jaguar Warriors - they seem like a good idea, but in practice, they rarely even survive the first hit to become were jaguars, and almost never survive more than one round in were jaguar form. They have bad defense, worse protection and low hit points - for 20 gold!

Maybe if Mictlan had a god that could get to Air 6+, Water 9 for reasonable cost, Jaguar Warriors could survive for more than one or two rounds - but who wants to invest heavily in Water magic while taking a heat scale (or at all, for that matter)? And in any case, Mictlan has no troops whatsoever that can damage prot 15+ without a strong Blood blessing. They need falchions, or glaives, or tridents, or SOMETHING that can damage a Hoplite. Why don't they have some of the copper-armored warriors using Obsidian Swords? It wouldn't be much, but a Mictlan Warrior with copper armor, javelin, and Obsidian Sword instead of spear would be worth making.

I've seen armies of 100+ Mictlan troops (ok, that's counting the slaves, but still, 500+ gold worth of actual troops) get routed by ten Heavy Cavalry, and kill only 1, maybe 2 of them. Slings, javelins and spears just aren't going to cut it against Prot 19 - but if you can't come up with something against HI and HC even in small numbers, you can't even expand against low indy strengths, unless you luck out on the types of indies.

Ultra-slow expansion (take one province, spend 3-4 turns making another army because the first one was wiped out in the battle, repeat) is not a good way to build up a blood economy (already more difficult in Dom II than it was in Dom I).

To make Mictlan a bit more playable without taking away too much from their uniqueness:
* Lower the cost of the 4 main priests. Mictlan relies heavily on its priests and they are fantastically expensive. Compare the Theurg, Witch Hunter, and Avalon witches for example - all of which come from nations with average or above average military units.
* Warriors with Obsidian Swords in addition to the spear-carrying ones. Great Clubs (like the ones shamblers and trolls use, don't those have about 7 damage?) would be nice too, without breaking the low tech theme.
* Jaguar Warriors need higher skills, especially defense, to have any chance of being useful. Even against an army with no missiles they die very quickly.
* A national summon that is a cheap demon that can be summoned for 1 blood/1 slave, like DF Marignon's Harlequin (not necessarily flying though - something like a weaker Spine Devil would be good too). The current pre-researched summons are OK, but costs and requirements are too high to allow them to be used in early expansion.
* If Mictlan is going to be stuck with very weak, extremely vulnerable troops, at least let them have a lot of them. More starting troops (at least 50) and lower gold costs on the troops they do have (6 for the no-armor, 7 for the light armor and 8 for the copper armor - maybe 11-12 for feathered warriors).