ME Mictlan

[KissBlade]

calmon said:
One advantage of ME Mictlan is that the dominion spread without blood sacrifice.

IMO, this is actually a DISADVANTAGE with Mictlan's awesome sacred troops, rather than an advantage.

[Shovah32]

Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?

[Baalz]

Well, to play devil's advocate I'll argue the points raised.

1) Dominion spread without blood sacrifice is only an advantage compared to Mictlan of other eras, not an advantage compared to other nations. If this is what they gain at all those other losses from other erras, I'll have to go ahead and say they're very underpowered in this comparisson

(the rest of these I'll take as Mictlan's strengths relative to other ME nations, as that's who they're actually going up against)

2) Mages don't have old age. That's because they're not very powerful. I think age is auto calculated based on how many paths of magic a mage has. This is not an advantage, its just a result of the fact that their mages are now sucky.

3) They have good, cheap, sacred troops. True, as I mention I think this is the only thing they have going for them and I think it's too one dimensional to be the sole strategy in multiplayer. The AI won't adjust, but just try riding that one trick pony against a group of humans...

4) Ease of site searching. I guess you could say this is a mild advantage vs some nations, but because their mages are all single path and only recruitable from the capital it takes a big hit in production time to get a group searching...at which point you've got a big group of wandering mages NOT researching. Between trying to recruit mages to search sites, mages to research, and leaders for your armies of expendable lightly armored troops, you've got quite a bit of production competition in the early game. You could use site searching spells I guess, those single path mages ARE perfect for that, but that's hardly a huge advantage to have access to 4 paths of magic gems with no good mages to use them.

5) Take a blood magic pretender and get access to national spells. Sure, except you've got no blood slave economy to cast those nice blood summons...

So, I still don't see how they're not far below average. The only thing they really have in the plus column is good, cheap sacred troops, but with the crappy mages, crappy non-sacred troops, and nothing special about their dominion (miasma, heat/cold spread, auto spawn troops, etc), they're basically stuck with only one stragegy. Plus, the sacred troops though good, are lightly armored and more expendable than plenty of the other good sacreds, so you're gonna be quite limmited if you're trying to use solely sacreds to carry your conquest as you can only recruit a handful per turn from each temple-upgraded castle.

I dunno, I've still got quite a few more to try in Dom 3, but I can't think of a single other nation in any era which is worse off then ME Mictlan. I always felt Mictlan was nerfed in other ways because they were so powerful in blood magic. ME Mictlan loses that strength, and just keeps the nerfs...

[Baalz]

<I>
Im probably being stupid but how is it a disadvantage?
</I>

Well, with Mictlan you pretty much HAVE to take a very high dominion just so you can recruit sacred troops. One thing you could do when your dominion didn't spread by itself was take totally crappy scales and control where your dominion spread (as in on your border...pushing into enemy territory). With a high dominion you could play relatively close to dominion death because of the control you had (one high priest with a jade dagger could jack the dominion up righ quick if you needed to). So, you could take advantage of the points your neighbor spent getting a good domain while not being too worried about being domain killed. That way you could even swing a tripple blessing on your sacreds if you're creative.

Plus, it was just something that made Mictlan unique and fun to play.

[Shovah32]

Yea the crappy scales thing was the only thing i noticed but, aslong as you dont make any extra temples (and take an imprisoned god of course) i didnt think dominion spread would have much impact.

[Teraswaerto]

The Couatls are good, but still, ME Mictlan could really use some kind of boost, assuming they are not supposed to be clearly weaker than the blood varieties of the same nation.

Since the Land is the dominant aspect of religion in ME Mictlan, it would be great if the Jaguar Warriors and/or Eagle Warriors were stronger than in other ages. Perhaps they could have regeneration, berserking and recuperation, or some other power(s) that is/are nature aspected.

Another option would be some kind of Couatl-connected sacred warrior. Either a human dressed in sacred garb imitating a Couatl, or some kind of non-human serpent creature of sufficient power.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, yeah, I think ME Mictlan is suffering from a lack of identity. Removing their blood affinity means you really need to rethink the whole concept. I don't know that I'd make the sacreds any better, they're already pretty good. I see the theme 'reign of the lawgiver' as kind of an ascension from barbarism, so I’d see them having more modern non-sacred units, just like a lot of other nations have moving up in the eras. Maybe some poison arrow bowmen, or jaguar tamers who can recruit free jaguars like Ulm's wolf tamers (that’d be interesting as jaguars are sacred), or eagle tamers, or some type of stealthy mounted unit (jaguar riders?). It’d also be thematic for the priest caste to consolidate a bit, and perhaps have 2 different 2 path mages rather than 4 different one path ones.

Then, as they descend back into ‘the old ways’ in the LE, they naturally lose these advances.

[DrPraetorious]

ME Mictlan is a communion power. You have better astral than other eras. You buy a lot of nahuali and they power a communion for your coatls, who cast enslave mind and junk. You're utterly inferior to Pythium (or Bandar Log) at this trick - but you also have powerful sacred troops, including Jaguar Warriors which grow everywhere. So, there is a point to ME mictlan.

That said, I think this is one of the few game balance complaints that is really legitimate. Here are a couple of proposals:

a) Give all of their mages an order dependent bonus on research. Lawgiver, right? Ought to encourage order somehow. Right now, the stuff is so cheap you're probably a turmoil/fortune player.

b) Better magic. Compare ME mictlan to mictlan in other eras. The only thing ME gets for -2 blood on all their mages is -30 gold cost - except the Priest King, who *pays* 25 gold to trade 2 blood for 1 holy. If all these guys got a 100% FSWN (and boot the nahuali entirely) that'd help a lot.

c) Mages everywhere. Just make those mages not-capital-only. All of a sudden you have an entire army of perfectly sized, inexpensive zot mages for when your sacred start to lose their sparkle.