Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Mictlan are the best blood hunters in the world bar none and they can be recruited in every fortress. 80 gold for a sacred blood hunter? Nobody else even gets close.

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you? And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

[Edi]

The Garnet Amazons are also very good blood hunters, and the priestess doesn't cost much either, just 100, and it's sacred and has one fire and fire immunity + wasteland survival to boot. It doesn't get any better than that, provided you can just find them first, that is.

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

I find Mictlan very useful. But I do think its one of the nations where it is more difficult to learn to use its advantages.

For one thing... those multiple-magics units means you have fast easy access to a number of multiple-path spells and multiple-path items which others will have to work hard to get if they ever do at all. A pretender with 3 magic in a number of paths can help since it will give you easy access to magic-boosting items which can quickly give you 5-lvl mages which can summon higher level mages etc etc.

A pretender with 4 or more in a magic, even a couple of nines can really bless-boost all of those sacred units.

PLUS oh so many mages which can cast my favorite spell of HellBind. Consider a pretender with 3-5 air magic so you can whirlwind so if there are any Abysia commanders or equipment you want then just snag them.

And a nice selection of pretenders which... if you are not into rainbow pretenders consider your nice choices for a pretender ASSASSIN! A Pretender Assassin casting HellBind!!
MUHAhahahahaha

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Saying they're the best is one (true) thing, saying noone else comes close is an exageration. Diabolists are just as good bloodhunters for the same price and only marginally higher upkeep (+2.67 gold/turn). If this isn't close, what is 'close' to you?

Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is? Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time.

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary), then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan - which is a very serious advantage if parlayed into troops or troop generators (vampire lords/soul contracts).

And Blood of Humans bloodhunters are very similar albeit 20% more expensive - but I think it's a fair price to pay for their fire immunity, when it's so easy to wipe an entire bloodhunting squad out with Fires from Afar. Countering this liability with resistance items or buffer troops and/or leaders is still possible - but at a cost you'll have to factor in the equation.

Ah, equations... I like equations.

Over 30 turns, a BoH Sanguine Acolyte costs 300 gold, putting Mictlan ahead by about 88% blood for the same gold. Of course, as you mention, somebody could wipe out an entire bloodhunting squad of 4-5 hunters with SDRs with Fires from Afar.

Two things to mention. First, this costs a resource (fire gems) that is less easy to acquire than gold, second, the 10 fire gems cost could have been trasmuted to 150 gold. In other words, it is most likely only worth it to use Fires from Afar if you expect to do more than 150 gold worth of damage or if you expect it to force the opposition to take costly countermeasures.

Now, wiping out 4-5 hunters with SDRs will certainly do that, which is why I tend not to let hunters stand around alone. As you mention, one can buffer them with troops. Time to start up with those equations, right? Fires from Afar seem to target troops and leaders indiscriminately, and the single best counter as Mictlan is to have some 40+ slave troopers standing around ready to soak up damaging spells. These, of course, cost no money to recruit but they do cost upkeep. 40 of them cost ~5 gold per turn, and assuming one tribal king per group of hunters worldwide to keep them fed with slaves (probably overkill, but who cares) he will cost about 1.3 gold per turn. Assumine a bloodhunting group size of 4 rather than 5 for the sake of argument (I usually use 4 or 5, but 5 favours Mictlan even more in the following equation so 4 it is) and sticking with a 30 round effectiveness, the Mictlan cost is 4*(80 + 30*80/30) + 30*5 + 1*(40 + 30*40/30) = 870 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 30*100/15) = 1200, an advantage of nearly 38% in blood for the gold piece, with a typical Fires from Afar (say path 6 for 13 shots) killing an average of 1.16 priests, 0.29 Tribal Kings, and 11.55 slaves for an estimated cost of around 105 gold and 5.8 blood (cost of a 1.16 SDR). Add two rounds of blood income (the priest does not deliver blood slaves the round he is slain, nor does he gather any new ones the round a replacement priest is recruited) and we reach a cost of around 105 gold and 10-20 blood slaves (depending on unrest in the province affecting potential gain had the 1.16 priests not been slain).

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters; Realistically, it would cost me more resources than it would him. As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests, knowing that the best you can reasonably expect to achieve with it is to reduce his blood advantage from nearly 90% to around 40%.

...Of course, a Mictlan that chose NOT to devote slave troopers to guard priests should be burned out as a fool, but that is another matter.

Now, one can of course reasonably challenge the 30 round life expectancy of a blood hunter that I chose somewhat arbitrarily and achieve other results, but even reducing the average life expectancy of a lowly bloodhunter to a lousy 10 rounds will result in 4*(80 + 10*80/30) + 10*5 + 1*(40 + 10*40/30) = 658 vs the Sanguine cost of 4*(100 + 10*100/15) = 666 gold, and one could, to argue Mictlan's side, suggest using larger Groups of slaves to lower the odds of priests being targeted without impacting the upkeep in a major way. I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money (I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders), but I guess it could happen.

One thing to note, I have not counted the population loss from mass slave trooper creation. My gut instinct - always a dangerous thing to trust - says that the economic impact of this is minimal compared to the bloodhunting going on, but if anybody is willing to do the maths, and can show that they affect the cost ratio of Mictlan significantly enough to wipe out that 38% blood advantage, feel free to do so.

So, yes, purely from a mathematical point of view I find that in almost any situation I have encountered the Mictlan bloodhunters will be the best in the world bar none (though I prefer fireproof ones for less micromanagement), and THAT said, should I - unthinkably though it might seem - have overlooked something glaringly obvious in the calculations above, I can only quote one of my old teachers: "Never compute in public!"

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Looking at it from another angle, Diabolists cost twice the maintenance of the Mictlan priests for the same blood hunting results: If that isn't a huge difference to you, what is?

Compared to what? Two times zero equals... a rather unimpressive number in my book.

Doubling upkeep cost is not a marginal effect - when taking over long enough time.

I won't buy this, never. Marginal effects scale up to marginal effects - unless you assume your income over a long time is the same as your income over a single turn, which of course is wrong.

It much depends on how long time you expect to be bloodhunting, which again is likely to depend on map size. On a medium to large map, unless you are eliminated early you can probably expect a blood hunter to hunt on average a good 30 turns (your experience may vary),

It does - I'd make these 30 turns 15-20ish. But that's unimportant.

then the Mictlan priest will cost you 160 over time while the Diabolist costs you 240, so you gain 50% more blood over time for the same cost as Mictlan

Whatever, these numbers numbers aren't as meaningful as you imply, since this extra 50% apply only to a small fraction of your total expenses each turn. I'm a diehard smoker, and I couldn't care less if I had to pay my matches 50% more as long as tobacco prices remain unchanged.

BTW, if you want to scale everything up, remember you need temples to recruit more Mictlan priests, that's 200 gold Diabolical Faith can save when setting a new Diabolist production center up.

Ah, equations... I like equations.

[...]

So, given that the Fires from Afar cost you at least 150 gold (10 fire gems that could have been alchemised), and given that even with this extra money spent on protection Mictlan would still be running a +38% blood hunting economy for the same gold, I would deem it uneconomic in general to spend gems on Fires from Afar in order to kill off his blood hunters;

In a perfect world, maybe. But I guess you won't tell me you always have these 40 Mictlan slaves ready in the right place for each bloodhunter pack? It takes time to raise them. It takes time to move or relocate them to new bloodhunting grounds because of their low mobility. It takes time to gather them again after they routed to nearby provinces. As long as they aren't all where they're supposed to be, at least part of your bloodhunter parties collect slaves with a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

As such, Fires from Afar should only be used against Mictlan as a harrying spell to ensure that the Mictlan player DOES devote the resources to guard his priests,

Are you saying that, if the Mictlan player refuses to do just that, Fires from Afar failed to achieve its goal and thus shouldn't be used?

Really, the strategical aspect of spells like Fires from Afar far outweights these economical concerns. In this case its primary goal is to disrupt the bloodhunting if the targeted player is lazy and doesn't defend his bloodhunters. If the same player isn't lazy (eg, uses 'troop buffering' - or resistance gear), then Fires from Afar becomes irrelevant and won't be used - thus costing no gems. This is proof enough that including the 'cost' of Fires from Afar in the 'equation' is, at best, a specious argument. You simply forgot the THREAT of Fires from Afar doesn't cost anything.

The original point was Fires from Afar WILL be used against a 'lazy' Mictlan (as long as it efficiently dispatches the bloodhunters), and not otherwise (after the Mictlan player realized he'd better divert valuable resources to protect his bloodhunters - but then, he actually diverted these resources). BoH hasn't this concern.

I have not played a game where the average life expectancy of priests was so low that any nation but Mictlan gained the upper hand in blood for money

I never argued against that, on the contrary I even agreed with you here. But remember, you said - 'nobody else even gets close'. And you failed to convince me on this particular point. I never argued about anything else.

(I am a sucker for madcastling when playing blood nations to protect the hunters from raiders)

Same here!

[Huzurdaddi]

What is the strength of Mictlan?

They have the following strengths:

1) The most cost efficient blood hunter in the game. However the margin is not huge between them and 2nd place.
2) The Tribal King. 40 gold. Sacred. Great leadership. And be can recruit super cheap slaves that are great on partol.
3) A wide variety of moderatly useful scared troops.

However they have some pretty serious disadvantages. Without a heavy bless effect they have substandard troops. Sadly heavy bless effect means less than optimal SC pretender which may be a serious disadvantage. The required blood sacrifice can be a heavy drain on both blood income and upon preist turns.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Compared to what? Two times zero equals... a rather unimpressive number in my book.

Whereas B/30 != 0 for B!=0 in my book, and is hence of consequence. Especially when considering costs over n turns, as the difference in price between a sacred unit with purchase price B1 and a non-sacred with purchase price B2 is B1+(n*B1/30) vs B2+(n*B2/15) and gets nastier the larger n is, rather than just B1 vs B2.

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more. I mean, you are discarding a 36% price difference because you choose not to count upkeep, considering it a marginal effect? I could understand discarding effects less than 5% (standard practise ) - but 36% is a heck of a lot more and not marginal.

BTW, if you want to scale everything up, remember you need temples to recruit more Mictlan priests, that's 200 gold Diabolical Faith can save when setting a new Diabolist production center up.

Hehe. Yes, I conveniently ignored this one, as I tend to build a lot of temples as Mictlan anyhow to be able to mass blood sacrifice, but it should be at least be partially included - IF that is, one assumes that DF will not likewise be setting up temples for dominion spread. E.g. one would have to consider the issue of surplus temples needed to ramp up priest production rather than just total temples.

In a perfect world, maybe. But I guess you won't tell me you always have these 40 Mictlan slaves ready in the right place for each bloodhunter pack? It takes time to raise them. It takes time to move or relocate them to new bloodhunting grounds because of their low mobility. It takes time to gather them again after they routed to nearby provinces. As long as they aren't all where they're supposed to be, at least part of your bloodhunter parties collect slaves with a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

In the not entirely hypothetical world described above, you end up with one Tribal King in each province and (in practise) way too many slaves. Yes, you do always have sufficient slaves within at least one province distance and, for those guarding bloodhunters in a castle, no retreat is going to happen. Sometimes accidents do happen, but you can significantly reduce the odds.

Are you saying that, if the Mictlan player refuses to do just that, Fires from Afar failed to achieve its goal and thus shouldn't be used?

I am saying that if a Mictlan player does guard his priests, he should be harried every once in a while to make sure he continues, but that I shouldn't expect the spell to garner me a strategic or economic advantage of significance that scales with its use.

Really, the strategical aspect of spells like Fires from Afar far outweights these economical concerns. In this case its primary goal is to disrupt the bloodhunting if the targeted player is lazy and doesn't defend his bloodhunters. If the same player isn't lazy (eg, uses 'troop buffering' - or resistance gear), then Fires from Afar becomes irrelevant and won't be used - thus costing no gems. This is proof enough that including the 'cost' of Fires from Afar in the 'equation' is, at best, a specious argument. You simply forgot the THREAT of Fires from Afar doesn't cost anything.

Oh, no, I did not forget any of that. The cost of the Fires from Afar part vs the damage inflicted is important, as it is the thing that shows that just scaling up (using more and more of them as gems become available) does not pay because it hurts your economy more than his.

And the THREAT alone, as shown, will at best reduce his blood advantage from ~90% to ~40%.

The spell can still be used to strategic advantage in trying to draw the enemy's attention somewhere by somebody with lots of fire gems to burn, but it is not going to alter the equation with respect to how good the Mictlan priests are at bloodhunting compared with the opposition.

The original point was Fires from Afar WILL be used against a 'lazy' Mictlan (as long as it efficiently dispatches the bloodhunters), and not otherwise (after the Mictlan player realized he'd better divert valuable resources to protect his bloodhunters - but then, he actually diverted these resources). BoH hasn't this concern.

And as I have stated, I too much prefer managing fireproof bloodhunters - it is less time consuming and allows you to commit more errors. That does not make the mathematics of good bloodhunting wrong, however, assuming a player with a low error margin.

I never argued against that, on the contrary I even agreed with you here. But remember, you said - 'nobody else even gets close'. And you failed to convince me on this particular point. I never argued about anything else.

Ah, well. And since my best calculations still puts Mictlan at about a +40% blood advantage, I guess I will just have to disagree with you: That is not close. A shame I did not manage to convince you, but then, it would not be fun if we all agreed on everything. And at any rate you made me question some of my assumptions, and that is always good.

[Jarkko]

Peter Ebbesen said:
To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80%) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

Do I understand correct, basically after 15 turns Mictlan would have payed $121 for its bloodhunter while the cost for the Sanguine Acolyte would be $201, ie the Mictlan could comparatively hire another bloodhunter "for free", if costs for protection etc are not counted for?

Or to put it another way, if both are recruiting one bloodhunter for a turn, after 6 turns (assuming every turn a new bloodhunter is recruited and upkeep is paid for all) the Mictlan player could build another temple "for free" (because (6x20)+(21x4)=204>200)?

It would seem to me the Mictlan player has thus early on a clear advantage, as the killer spells (like Fires from Afar) are not at use yet. Later on the need to divert more attention (ie micromanaging) to the protection might not be very pleasing (at least to me), but the economic "lead" acquired early on does not disappear (entirely).

Did I get it right?

Edited computing error

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Whereas B/30 != 0 for B!=0 in my book, and is hence of consequence. Especially when considering costs over n turns, as the difference in price between a sacred unit with purchase price B1 and a non-sacred with purchase price B2 is B1+(n*B1/30) vs B2+(n*B2/15) and gets nastier the larger n is, rather than just B1 vs B2.

It never gets 'nastier'. Sure the absolute difference gets bigger and bigger as times goes on, but it doen't mean what you want it to mean - your accumulated income over the same amount of time will get bigger too. What is 10 gold to 100 gold? Only 10%. What is 100 gold to 1000 gold? Again, only 10%. These % numbers are the ones that really count, much more than the accumulated absolute upkeep difference.

Now of course, if you tell me in a typical turn with Mictlan, half of your income is spent to pay for your bloodhunters' upkeep (and I mean upkeep only - not recruiting new ones), I'll agree about these 'marginal' effects not being marginal in your case.

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

Correct, if you assume the Acolyte loses all his usefulness as soon as the Mictlan priest reaches the end of his own life expectancy. Otherwise, it's pretty bad maths, and since living Acolytes are more useful to me than dead priests, I'd be glad to keep on paying the former's upkeep.

Anyway, what we are really comparing is the relative (blood output/gold investment) ratio for both nations, right? Then, assuming I agree with your 30-turns average life expectancy, and the Mictlan priests gets 10 less because of their lack of immunity, it just means you can expect to get as much blood from 2 Acolytes over 30 turns than from 3 Mictlan priests over the same amount of time. That's 480 gold paid on the priests, and 400 on the Acolytes. Fact is you'll get part of these bloodsdlaves earlier with Mictlan, which is an advantage. But then again, I never argued that Mictlan was worse than Abysia as long as it comes to blood harvesting.

I mean, you are discarding a 36% price difference because you choose not to count upkeep, considering it a marginal effect? I could understand discarding effects less than 5% (standard practise ) - but 36% is a heck of a lot more and not marginal.

That's bad math again. Assuming U is the upkeep/turn spend on bloodhunters, I is the total income/turn, and assuming this 36% figure is correct, we're comparing (U / I) to (U * 1.36 / I) here, which is definitely not the same thing, unless U is big enough when compared to I.

Hehe. Yes, I conveniently ignored this one, as I tend to build a lot of temples as Mictlan anyhow to be able to mass blood sacrifice, but it should be at least be partially included - IF that is, one assumes that DF will not likewise be setting up temples for dominion spread. E.g. one would have to consider the issue of surplus temples needed to ramp up priest production rather than just total temples.

Marignon spreads its dominion thru Inquisitors, not temples. Marignon doesn't need to push its dominion as hard as most other nations, BTW, and DF even less so.

In the not entirely hypothetical world described above, you end up with one Tribal King in each province and (in practise) way too many slaves.

The important word here are is the 'end' in 'you end up'. Guess I didn't put enough emphasis in my repeated 'it takes time to...'.

(OK, that's nitpicking...)

Oh, no, I did not forget any of that. The cost of the Fires from Afar part vs the damage inflicted is important, as it is the thing that shows that just scaling up (using more and more of them as gems become available) does not pay because it hurts your economy more than his.

Usually you can expect a decent player not to spend his fire gems aimlessly.

Ah, well. And since my best calculations still puts Mictlan at about a +40% blood advantage, I guess I will just have to disagree with you:

Except these 40% only exist in your calculations, and your calculations don't take into account many factors which drastically reduce it.

The most important of these by far is this blood advantage actually comes from a gold advantage, which comes from the lesser upkeep paid on Mictlan priests. Now, assume you have 30 Mictlan priests bloodhunters, thus spending 80 gold less than, say, DF on your hunters' upkeep. After 5 turns you have recruited 5 new hunters and send them to a new hunting ground (say, 8k province yielding 40 gold at 100% taxes, a reasonably average figure IMO). If, like most players, you decide to drop the taxes to 0% to avoid unrest coming in the way of your hunters' efficiency, your 'gold advantage' is cut in half. Repeat this after 10 more turns, and your 'gold advantage' is gone. And your 'blood advantage' amounts to only 2 more bloodhunted provinces, and this doesn't scale up.

Then there is the fact that pop isn't an unlimited resource, and your alleged 40% blood advantage will the same kind of wall pyramid schemes do.

Then there's the need for temples, which DF or Iron Woods don't need to recruit more cheap bloodhunters.

Then there's the fact that bloodhunters don't hunt 100% of the time. When unrest comes out of hand (and this may happen even in heavily patrolled provinces), it may be a good idea to have your hunters perform magic research for a turn or 2 if there's a lab in the place. The point here is that a 40% advantage over a degraded value isn't as impressive as a 40% advantage over an ideal value.

Then there's the fact that Mictlan has to divert some of its priests and slaves to push its dominion, a concern other nations ignore completely. Something that will eat up a significant part of this 40% blood advantage, I guess.

And I have a feeling I could add more to this list if I spent a few more minutes thinking about it.

A shame I did not manage to convince you, but then, it would not be fun if we all agreed on everything.

To your credit, I have to say you're probably the poster (or one of the few -) I feel most often in agreement with on this board. Except not this time - everything happens eventually.

[Wyvern2]

Wow, someone taking Peter on in a battle of math. Have they no fear

Interesting discussion regardless. I prefer to play DF or Abysia, but I hate the forced turmoil of DF more and more which really kills their startup.