LA Marignon Questions

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

2) Dominion. Marignon is both best able to survive a low Dominion, and best able to leverage a high dominion

Oh, yeah. Forgot to add that. Dominionwise you're really free to do as you like. If you want to outright win through dominion, or even "merely" kill of opponents, there's probably no one who does it better. On the other hand, with the ability to blood sac, you can easily survive with a really low dominion too. Whatever floats your boat.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Amhazair

Oh, yeah. Forgot to add that. Dominionwise you're really free to do as you like. If you want to outright win through dominion, or even "merely" kill of opponents, there's probably no one who does it better. On the other hand, with the ability to blood sac, you can easily survive with a really low dominion too. Whatever floats your boat.

Mictlan is still better at domkilling, if only because Mictlan is very good at getting truly absurd amounts of blood slaves. Still, Marignon is good at it, and can pair it effectively with a more standard military strategy.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Amazhair

I'm not generally one to complain about people asking stuff rather than testing it out, (In fact, I think this is the first time ever I do so) but if this is too much work to do to learn about a nation you'll be playing in MP... You don't even have to hit end turn to find out.

The *one* time I don't fire up a test game to double check the answer a question

Originally Posted by Knai

Mictlan is still better at domkilling, if only because Mictlan is very good at getting truly absurd amounts of blood slaves. Still, Marignon is good at it, and can pair it effectively with a more standard military strategy.

That was true before the latest CBMs, back when they could still have sanguine dousing rods made and carried by every last 60g priest.

Current day Mictlan is bad at blood hunting, whereas LA Marignon has B3 holy bloodhunters available from any castle for a mere 190g a pop. Also H3 bloodsaccers who count double to remove black candles (although that may only count when preaching and not when saccing, I dunno)

Do the math: a Mictlan priest has 50% chance each turn to net d6+1 slaves. A B3 Geotic master gets d6+3 every turn, guaranteed (unless there's unrest). On average, you need ~3 Mictlan priests to equal the output of a single Geotic Master, and they'll have much more chances to generate unrest. That's 180g and 3 turns of recruitment to the master's 1 turn and 190g. 3 B3 geotics can operate pretty much indefinitely at 0 taxes barring "bad luck" when all 3 get huge amounts of slaves. On any given day, 9 Mictlan Priests in a single province will generate at least 9d6-9 unrest (avg. 22), more if they actually manage to catch slaves.

And of course, while Mictlan priests who generate too much unrest can't do much else but sit on their hands, Geotic Masters can forge useful stuff, summon devils, can Harm or Life for a Life or Infernal Prison any would-be raider...

[Shangrila00]

This is CBM, which I think makes Marignon stronger than Mictlan at blood sac.

1) No jade knives. LA Mictlan can't get above holy 1 outside the capital, and only the King of Rain gets holy 3 and recruiting him means not recruiting the other cap only mages which are also necessary for Mictlan, and using him to bloodsac means not using him for all his other roles. So Mictlan needs to seriously sacrifice to crank out those temple checks. Marignon on the other hand has recruit anywhere H3s which don't really have anything else they need to be doing.

2) No SDRs. Outside the cap, Mictlan only gets B1s, while Goetic Masters are recruit anywhere and 1/4 get B3. That means Marignon can spend money to get more hunters, while Mictlan needs to spend slaves to summon hunters. That's super efficient in the long run thanks to Mictlan's super good summons, but that means less actual blood available. This plus temples that actually work means that a Marignon focused on blood will have more blood to actually do things. Of course, Mari is never as focused on blood as Mictlan, but that's because of its other options, not that it's not capable.

Plus, Marignon needs to sacrifice (ha) less to get dom10. Mictlan has a strong incentive to pump all their points into a massive bless rather than spend on high dominion when their sacreds are recruit anywhere and thus not limited by holy.