Guide to EA Mictlan and bloodhunting

Aleph · #1 March 13th, 2007, 09:33 AM

I would think Mictlan would be both a facehugger and a longterm threat - the triple bless Mictlan more of a pure facehugger, but the right dual bless (LA Mictlan with Fountain for F9S9 or W9S9) or 1 major/multiple minor bless strats (Smoking Mirror is a great F9/W4/B4/S4/D2 base) can definitely leave a lot of room for Mictlan to take beneficial scales (ideal IMO is sloth/turmoil/luck 3 growth 2 magic 1). As Mictlan is the premiere blood nation, you can in a sense "buy off" some of your bad money scales by switching over to blood. Your random luck income will continue to roll in, you won't hunt in provinces which pick up good mines, and the opportunity cost for each individual blood slave is less (since the province is producing less gold through taxation than in an order setup and still has reasonable chances to give hundreds or thousands in random events).

Blood is an exceptionally strong long term strategy in my mind because it allows you to convert your gold income (generally used to buy troops with upkeep costs) into blood income (used to summon demons without upkeep costs). The longer the game lasts, the more your army size and power increases.

Finally, as mentioned above, in the late game Astral Corruption is pretty much an "I win" card.

Hellboy · #2 March 13th, 2007, 12:39 PM

Baalz,

First off, awesome post! I've been following your posts on Mictlan for a while, and it's really great to have everything brought together here in this guide.

I have one more noob question: is it a stupid idea to take death scales when you're playing Mictlan?

I like to play MP games on large maps (20+ provinces per player), and it just seems that on maps that size, once you get some momentum going, you just never run out of provinces. On this basis, any nation that is successful past turn 40 will have enough provinces and a large income, that they can afford the negative impact of the death scales.

But maybe its just my limited MP experience that leads me to this conclusion. Or maybe it's my noobishness that has me playing on such big maps. Either way, I'd love to hear some informed comment on death vs. growth scales in MP play.

Baalz · #3 March 13th, 2007, 12:49 PM

Well, the growth/death scales for Mictlan are not in the no-brainer category. I think it's probably better to take death scales for the reason you mention as well as some others (the impact to income is reduced for death scales, same as turmoil), BUT there is a trade off there that the death scales compound the population loss that you get from blood hunting. Yes, you will hopefully have a flow of fresh provinces, but there is a cost to moving your blood hunters - setting up a new lab, lost turns in moving them across the map, less easy to defend them closer to the front, etc. Also, high death scales will really hit all your old priests up until you can get boots of youth (all the way at construction-6). So, it's really more a question of how you want to play it. Death scales will give you a better early game by sacrificing some of your late game...usually a good trade off but more of a personal playstyle preference.

Hellboy · #4 March 13th, 2007, 04:07 PM

ok, thanks again Baalz, this is very helpful stuff to us noobs!

What you're saying makes perfect sense, I've seen the old age impact on sun priests from testing in SP, but I think I can live with that.

JaghataiKhan · #5 June 22nd, 2007, 05:16 PM

Now I see why I get ***-run over when playing MA Mictlan. It sucks ***.

Kristoffer O · #6 June 25th, 2007, 03:27 PM

Are you sure? I'm just playing MA MIctlan. I lost my first important battle, and have fallen to bootlicking. Bootlicking is a viable tactic, especially if your nation is considered weak. I'm quite confident I will end up as ruler of the world

All Hail the Lawgiver!
ehm... eternal Servant of the Earth Monster.

Baalz · #7 June 25th, 2007, 04:18 PM

Yeah, very early game MA Mictlan plays just like EA/LA because it's all about the Jaguar warriors. The problem is they lose their most cost effective researcher as well as their blood power so there isn't really anything to transition to once the Jags become obsolete. They really have no good answer to massed archers, so you probably won't live long enough to get to the point that your realize their only cross pathed/strong mage is in a kinda weird path combo with no terribly effective combat or summoning spells.

Cheezeninja · #8 July 19th, 2007, 07:07 PM

Great guide Baalz. I was just wondering if, with all the bless strategy going on, you usually take a dormant/imprisoned God. Obviously sacrificing becomes supremely important if you do, and I read your opinions on that. I didn't see any specific mentions of whether you go with a awake/dormant/imprisoned god, though... maybe I just missed it.

MaxWilson · #9 July 19th, 2007, 07:22 PM

I should think sacrificing doesn't grow all that much in importance with an imprisoned god, since a god is only equivalent to three sacrifices or so per turn (with a low-ish dominion of 5), and your scales may be bad enough that you don't really care to push your dominion. As long as you keep your home dominion reasonably high (3 or 4 candles) you're not in any danger of a surprise dominion death. Basically, an awake pretender is worth a couple of priests and a sun priest in terms of pushing dominion.

-Max