Mictlan , how to play it effectively

Sheap · #1 August 23rd, 2004, 06:50 PM

Blood magic is all about the summons. The combat spells of blood, while decent, have a lot of overhead in the form of the blood slaves, who are often killed by enemy action (sometimes without even trying), and even if not killed, get in the way.

Blood summons, however, are extremely strong. Ice Devils, Arch Devils, and Demon Lords are very powerful units who are better SCs than many pretenders, and often require minimal equipment to do their job. And, they are unique. All the blood nations need to race to get the powerful blood summons, and the limiting factor for this is usually blood slave income, rather than research. Mictlan's enormous bloodhunting capacity is a big advantage here.

Mictlan dominion, while micromanagement-intensive, has a lot of advantages. You can "aim" your dominion very precisely with Mictlan. If you take a hostile dominion, such as drain scale, you can simply avoid putting your dominion in certain provinces, for instance, carving out a low dominion area to do your research in. You can also push your dominion, suddenly and effectively, into enemy territories. This makes vampires (another blood summon) extremely effective. The ability to move your dominion (combined with low cost temples) also allows you to get away with slightly lower base dominion than you otherwise could. Mictlan is also highly resistant to being dominion-killed.

Send Horror is a powerful artillery spell, with an extremely low cost for what you get. It's not quite as popular as Ghost Riders, but this may be due to the difficulty of casting it. Horrors are extremely powerful against some types of armies and extremly weak against others. If you saw no effect at all, you must have done something wrong, as you do get to see the battle.

The in-combat Call Horror spells aren't quite as good, because whoever conjures the horror up is likely to be killed by it.

jarenko · #2 August 23rd, 2004, 06:58 PM

That's odd.

It would say:

<priest> has cast Send Horror.

But nothing after that.

Graeme Dice · #3 August 23rd, 2004, 11:36 PM

Quote:

jarenko said:
That's odd.

It would say:

<priest> has cast Send Horror.

But nothing after that.

This is because you have either not patched the game yet, or you are casting it on a province with a castle and no patrolling troops.

jarenko · #4 August 24th, 2004, 12:15 AM

I play with v 2.02. I like it more than later patches.

I keep a separate install patched to 2.12 for MP purposes however.

PDF · #5 August 24th, 2004, 07:58 AM

Well, you've to choose *either* to play Mictlan *or* play effectively

!
More seriously, Mictlan is hard to play and not that powerful : it screams for some high Bless strategy with the were-warriors, and requires full power to Blood economy to get hordes of Devils. Blood and dominion management requires serious micromanagement, with eventual frequent mistakes !

Overall Mictlan is rather disappointing ...

Boron · #6 August 24th, 2004, 09:37 AM

Quote:

PDF said:
Well, you've to choose *either* to play Mictlan *or* play effectively

!
More seriously, Mictlan is hard to play and not that powerful : it screams for some high Bless strategy with the were-warriors, and requires full power to Blood economy to get hordes of Devils. Blood and dominion management requires serious micromanagement, with eventual frequent mistakes !

Overall Mictlan is rather disappointing ...

yeah i agree .
i wanted to try something new and now i play mictlan in my 3! new mpgames . was a serious serious fault

each with other pretender / tactics but so far none is satisfying .
the sacrificing for dominion is bad .
i think i like abysia more when i wanna play blood

NTJedi · #7 August 24th, 2004, 01:26 PM

Mictlan is definitely the most challenging to play. Anytime Mictlan is setup in a game as a computer opponent he almost always dies early.

archaeolept · #8 August 23rd, 2004, 07:00 PM

though I should say that in the only Mictlan game i've ever played, currently underway, I've used mostly troops and have only a minor blood income. As always, there are a lot of possibilities, but just pumping out a couple armies of fiends will do you well.

research construction 4 for the sanguine dousing rods.

mictlan troops are only good, however, w/ a significant bless effect.

Quote:

t would say:

<priest> has cast Send Horror.

But nothing after that

perhaps the province was empty even of PD.

jarenko · #9 August 23rd, 2004, 07:06 PM

I do not think it was, i was sending those little devil armies in, and it had some PD and some sages. Thats why I was trying to destroy his army there.

He had sages there conducting research. [or does having only leaders not count as an army?]

Thufir · #10 August 23rd, 2004, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Sheap said:
The in-combat Call Horror spells aren't quite as good, because whoever conjures the horror up is likely to be killed by it.

I have a slightly OT question, but one I've been wondering about for a while. That is, in SP play I've got an SC pretender who is using a "Shield of the Accursed" and when using this, everything in sight seems to get horror marked. Would it work as a tactic, to take an SC attacking the rear, armed with this shield while a mage in your own rear is casting the Call Horror spell? And/or is it helpful to have this shield in play while casting any of those spell that incur a risk of horror attack?

I guess I should test this on my own, but it would take me a while to setup a gamere where I have the in-combat Call Horror spell.