Mictlan, Cross Breeding and Luck

[moodgiesanta]

Ah, yes, I downloaded the Cold Caelum mod and now they don't suck anymore.

Anyhow, I burned the midnight oils until 4:00 AM Last night playing away at my plan. It was going well, and I started next to a (then unmodded) Caelum, so I had a wimp to beat up on. It was going well, until Jotenheim cast Burden of Time or whatever that spell is. I only picked a single growth bump, as I really wanted fire magic. Soon, however, my provinces declined. Then the Ermor, Soul Gate Flavor, came through and literally ripped up my empire. My dominion dropped like mad, and my priests got slaughtered before they could get banish all those baddies. I'd relied mostly on the cheap ones and the Priest Kings. My hordes of cross-breeds, with the occasional big one, did very well, but they eventually lost out to the hundreds of shadow thingies that are completely immune to the primary weapon of the weak hordes, that is, the plague/disease stuff. The very thing that let me whip the independants around me cost me, and on top of all that, I'd focused so much on priests that I forgot to invest in archers. With Jotenheim on the right and Ermor on the left, and the rest of the world conquered, my little empire grew smaller until it was just me, my capital, and a couple of sattelite provinces that I had saved by summoning massive amounts of devils and imps. (I stopped the cross-breeding as soon as I got that spell, as it was more cost effective and I had a ton of blood slaves.) I then realized that with all the death world enchantments my Ermor and Jotunheim, my population was shrinking bigtime. So I really raised the blood hunting to cash in as soon as possible.

I'm not sure if it could ever work, but I had no choice, so I summoned a couple Heliophagus, after the first one could summon, and set them to auto-summon a horde of demons and summoned up Fallen Angels to summon up imps. I had no choice, as I was running out of people. After making some noise several turns later, I realized I wasn't going to win, what with zero people in my capital. So

Anyhow, I'm going at it again during the Super Bowl. I'll take what y'all you are saying into serious consideration.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

Do you find Mictlan too dependent on the Fountain's blood hunt bonus? Has anyone had any luck with other gods for them?

I am doing quite well with the Smoking Mirror, a good pretender for blessings. Cheap priests in numbers will do all the blood hunting you'll ever need.

In my Mictlan game, I am currently switching to all summons army : Improved cross breeding for arrow fodder and the occasional goody, devils for heavy hitters, whatever summons the site I found give me, and to lead all that a mix of Arch-devils, Ice Devils, Fallen Angels, Succubus for fun, and I'll have to try the Heliophagus and Demon Lord sometime.

[Vger]

Hi,

The Heliophagus makes a pretty good SC with decent equipment. I haven't played a blood nation yet, but I've piddled with blood magic and called one up, once.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

[Ragnarok-X]

to General Tacticus:

With the improves crossbreeding, how many commanders are usually leading one of your main armys ? because just a few breeds usually come with MANY lesser breeds you must have several commanders. Or are you using a experienced leader with 2+ exp levels ? Because i cant figure out how to lead those bloody breeds, they allways seem to end up guarding my capital..
ty

[DLC]

you need a crown of command

[Bowlingballhead]

Dear Moodgiesanta:

Welcome to the agony of Burden of Time, one of the few spells I think should be removed from the game. Unless you're Ermor or Desert Tombs C'tis (I guess Carrion Woods might be okay, too. Then again, Pangaea does heal.) it rips the snot out of you, and does it so fast that if you can't destroy the enchantment in short order you're just... lost. Wounds compound upon wounds and your units crumble to dust in a matter of a few turns. It's gruesome!

Jotunheim probably paid dearly for being stupid enough to cast that spell, but with Ermor tromping through your backyard it didn't make much difference to you.

I really, really hate that spell. Any spell that all by itself can leave an opponent helpless and beaten I have grave reservations about.

Of course, in a multiplayer game, you've just got to be ready to dispell it if you're playing against an undead-user. But if you guess wrong and haven't researched enchantment yet, or don't have the astral...

[PvK]

Fiends and Devils get hurt only rarely, when you have 10 or more of them, especially combined with numbers of Eagle Warriors and/or Imps. Once they get over a certain number (somewhere over ten), they change from mage-killers to army-annihilators. 25 devils led by a Devil commander from HfH, is quite awesome.

For demon/devil leaders, other options also include high priests (who can pitch in with battlefield spells), a few cheap Mictlan Priests leading 5 each, and/or with items, or undead commanders (a nice cheap option to lead a large force).

PvK

Well most of the time you don't have the ability to field too many armies with 20+ Devil/FoD. I'd prefer to have 3 or 4 Armies hammering away from different directions and each having the ability to null enemy mages than one (or 2) Big ugly armies that can be shut down by a Storm.

Just a personal preference but this is from a MP aspect. The AI rarely uses storms or storm items to their full effect.

[PvK]

Ya, I'm against the AI, haven't had much storm problems, and since I have a Soul Contract, I happen to have such an army, and when lead by a Devil, they can fly and attack any province within 3 hops every turn. My Mictlani infantry is mostly elite, unafflicted, and rarely has to do much serious fighting against enemies who aren't about to be routed by devils.

I imagine competetive human opponents would find ways to deal with the tactic, at least if they got to me before I got a huge devil production going. Such as, storm follwed by lots of banishing and anti-demon magic.

PvK

[moodgiesanta]

Originally posted by Vger:
Hi,

The Heliophagus makes a pretty good SC with decent equipment. I haven't played a blood nation yet, but I've piddled with blood magic and called one up, once.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

Indeed, the Heliophagi are great. I managed to summon three before my country died out completely. One was just a wonderful commander, but one, aside from being a kick *** commander with good magic, also could summon a fiend every turn cost-free, and the other could summon two Bone fiends things with no cost every turn. I dunno about the fourth, but I assume he is equally awesome. It was the only way I survived, with no blood slaves due to having no people.

Bowlingballhead, yes, Burden of time is broken, in my opinion. It costs far too little for the extreme effects it has. It absolutely kills me, and not being an astral mage or interested in enchantment, I'm utterly screwed. So I have a couple choices:
1. Go out of my way at creation to take four astral and research dispel AND somehow get ahold through alchemy (at tremendous cost) enough astral pearls to dispel it. Which utterly sucks.
2. Take three on the growth scale, and mass produce cheap human units to replace my ever-dying legions.

I haven't played a nation that uses mostly elite troops yet, but I'd imagine things would be doubly worse if I didn't field an army of expendable cross-breeds as fodder for my equally expendable horde of sling-using warriors, but rather a crack team of elites that are hard to replace. I mean, that seems VERY broken to me. Heck, it deserves its own thread.
Someone asked this:

With the improves crossbreeding, how many commanders are usually leading one of your main armys ? because just a few breeds usually come with MANY lesser breeds you must have several commanders. Or are you using a experienced leader with 2+ exp levels ? Because i cant figure out how to lead those bloody breeds, they allways seem to end up guarding my capital..
ty

I dunno about other countries, but I pumped out Tribal Kings en masse with Mictlan. They're only 40 gold and minimal resources and command 50 soldiers right off, so there is no reason not to just hire one every turn you need one don't hire something else. With several forts (which so far has been my strategy, not that it has done all that well . . .) you can pump out serious quantities of them.