Mictlan , how to play it effectively

Jim_Parker · #1 September 23rd, 2004, 11:20 AM

Been trying out Mictlan in a futile attempt to get it to work.

One tactic I hit upon is sending in your prophet/high level priest with your attacking army and immediately blood hunting the turn you take it. If you drop the tax to 0% that turn, you'll mostly do away with the initial resistance factor and get a 'free' bloodhunt, allowing you to up the tax to 100% next turn.

Can't quite get used to the non-spreading dominion though. I thought a 5th level priest was supposed to be able to sacrifice 5 blood slaves a turn? That doesn't seem to be the case in my experience.

Soapyfrog · #2 September 23rd, 2004, 02:49 PM

Why not patrol with 50 or so slaves wherever you happen to be bloodhunting? It doesnt take that long to generate a nice big whack of slaves, and patrolling with them will let you hunt with 2 or 3 blood hunters/province with essenitally no unrest.

archaeolept · #3 September 23rd, 2004, 02:50 PM

no unrest, but serious population loss...

Soapyfrog · #4 September 23rd, 2004, 03:01 PM

Pretty minimal if you have growth scales, or dont think the game will be super long.

archaeolept · #5 September 23rd, 2004, 03:11 PM

growth scales? what are those?

;p

Cainehill · #6 September 23rd, 2004, 04:10 PM

Sadly, many players seem to agree that a point or two of death is far preferable to growth, to the point where a common complaint of Last of the Tuatha is "But I _have_ to take growth (and luck)!"

That's why there at least one or two balance mods out there that rejigger the scales, so that there aren't so many "no brainers".

Kel · #7 September 23rd, 2004, 04:41 PM

Growth scale is measured by the size of your army

- Kel

Jim_Parker · #8 September 23rd, 2004, 06:34 PM

In the latest game I've got 3 priest kings in a feeder province and I usually bloodhunt with 2 while slaving with the other. The population is only about 6000 but I'm getting around 4-8 each per turn which is alright I suppose. I'm not bothering with patrolling because I don't want the population falling any lower than it is. At 2 bloodhunts per turn and 0% tax rate, the province is stuck firmly on 6 unrest and that's with a bandit camp.

It's all working out fairly well this game actually.

The Panther · #9 September 23rd, 2004, 07:57 PM

One of the problems with Mictlan is that you are pretty much forced to get growth if you expect the game to Last more than about 50 turns or so. With death scales + bloodhunting + patrolling, your provinces will look like Ermor was there in no time at all! With 3 hunters per province, zero tax rate, and no patrolling, you can just about balance the pop loss from hunting with 2 growth. Without population, you get no more slaves and you are totally dead. Just see how fast your dominion dies when you have no slaves to sacrifice anymore!

The other problem, pointed out above, is that the blood battle spells simply aren't useful at all. All those annoying blood slaves die in the battle, and you MUST have them because every blood battle spell uses a slave or two. Not to mention the intense micromanagement of getting the correct amount of slaves to the correct mages scripted to cast the correct battle spells. You are typically far better off using your slaves to make another devil/vampire or 2 (or 10 or 50)!

Another huge problem is the fact that after you pool slaves, you must go to ALL your sacrificing priests and put the 4 slaves (you have the jade knife on all your sacrificers, right?) back on them. Every darn turn! And you will always miss this a few times throughout the course of the game. Plus you will put your tax rate back to 100% inadvertently in the F1 screen and get instant high unrest more than once!

My strategy as Mictlan is to get 1-2 growth and put a set of four Mictlan priests in every single province between 4K and 8K population. One guy has the jade knife and a clam and sacs four slaves per turn. The other three have the SDR and a clam and hunt continously. With the tax at zero and the hunters only 90% successful, you almost never have the unrest go above 20. This nets you around 9 slaves, 4 temple checks, and 4 pearls per such province per turn indefinitely with 2 growth. Also, don't forget to get a cheap castle and put it in every single one of these hunt/sac provinces.

On all the low pop provinces, like below 2-3K, just hunt them to death and move on. Don't bother with a tower/temple/lab in those unless they have a gem income that you don't want to lose.

Jim_Parker · #10 September 23rd, 2004, 09:29 PM

Actually I was working on a strategy of hoarding slaves and then mass sacrificing them at strategic points. I'm doing ok in a military and magic sense (I lead both gem and cash income and have a mid-ranking 'army'). Also, my dominion appears to be getting stronger on it's own - I haven't sacrificed any slaves for dominion so far (I've got the grand total of 2 temples). The whole sacrifice and dominion thing seems a bit different from what the rulebook suggests.

No jade knives yet but I'll have some for the sacrifices. I'm not sure on your point about the population dying btw - the province I'm using for blood slaves is not dropping noticably in population and has no growth scale. I'm basically getting between 5-15 blood slaves per turn for the loss of 26 gold. It has a -2 dominion (right next to Caelum's capital) so maybe thats a factor.