Mictalan Setup-Please Help The New Guy

[Endoperez]

'SC', short for Super-Combatant. It is a commander which has nice natural abilities and enough items to let it slaughter whole armies of normal units.

With natural abilities I mean things like dozens of hitpoints, high attack and defence Ratings, maybe even some special abilities like regeneration, resistance of a particular element or innate Fireshield. An Arch- or Ice Devil is a good option for Mictlan.

The items depend on what you want to do and can make. Life-draining weapon (Wraith Sword, Hell Sword and a Blood 3-dagger at Construction 6 which also improves Blood by 1) is nice versus living troops as the wielder's fatique goes down and hit points stay high. If you used the dagger you can even give you combatant a shield, like Lucky Coin(gives luck) or Charcoal Shield(gives fire shield). Archdevils can cast Fire Shield on their own, so in most cases you would want to give them something else, like that Coin. Dragon scale mails and Chain mail of displacement are good.

For other slots, choose items to give him as much of this list as possible: regeneration, reinvigoration (fatique removal), luck (if not already), etherealness(rare), flying, quickness, resistances according to enemies (fire resistance vs Abysia etc.), magic resistance, fire-/astralshield. Remember to cast spells that give any of these abilities, like Quickness and Breath of Winter for Ice Devils.
Ring of Regeneration, Pendant of Luck, Amulet of Antimagic, Boots of Flying (or Quickness) and Starshine Skullcap are commonly seen. For reinvigoration, Amulets of Resilience, Boots of the Messenger (I think) and Girdle of Might.

The idea is that normal units will rarely hit him (defence over 18), even when they hit they will give him almost no damage at all( prot. 20+) and after he is hit he will regain it through regeneration or life draining in the same round. Mictlan should aim for summoning as many of the big unique monsters as it can. Ice Devils are available early, and are evil...

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Misfortune3: Even the worst catastrophe is in the end quite small..

Unless you happened to put air and death magic on your pretender, you'll want to leave this at the neutral point or even a bit positive.

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What's the relationship between Air/Death magic and withstanding bad events?

[Teraswaerto]

Mictlan gets air and death magic from heroes.

[PDF]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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Originally posted by Azhur:
Magic2/3: It's just nice to get asap new spells (and more magic resistance isn't bad either..)

Actually it's the reverse: your MR is LESSER in a magic dominion.

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Hey, I beat you by 5 min on this one !
Nagot, I'm sure you have interesting ideas on how to play Mictlan - personally I don't have many more than trying to get a F9/A4 pretender at a non-ridiculously high cost

And does someone really understands how work the Mictlanese "non spreading dominion" ? Is it just that Temples don't spread dom ?
Then what is the "good" method to get it spread ? Sacrifice is tedious, costly and not that effective according to my own small test run.
Do Desert Sun and Restless Worshippers themes work with Mictlan and let the dom spread or not ?

Ohh so much questions ..

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by PDF:
Nagot, I'm sure you have interesting ideas on how to play Mictlan

My best idea about Mictlan is to not play them at all.

Frankly playing Mictlan is a MM nightmare I don't want to experience anymore. I'll change my opinion when IW adds a toggle on leaders that says don't poll gems/slaves

- personally I don't have many more than trying to get a F9/A4 pretender at a non-ridiculously high cost

I've tried high-level blessings when I still had fun playing Mictlan, but I always got better results with a dedicated SC or a multpurpose half-rainbow with something like ~3 in the paths the national mages don't cover.

And does someone really understands how work the Mictlanese "non spreading dominion" ? Is it just that Temples don't spread dom ?

They don't. Only the pretender 'radiates' a bit, 2 or 3 times less than other nations's gods.

Then what is the "good" method to get it spread ? Sacrifice is tedious, costly and not that effective according to my own small test run.

I agree on all points.

Do Desert Sun and Restless Worshippers themes work with Mictlan and let the dom spread or not ?

I believe Desert Sun spreads heat only in provinces where you already have dominion, if it works at all. Restless Worshippers might work, but I haven't checked.