My Mictlan strategy: okay, but needs work

[shovah]

When you notice a bane-venom charm in your territorys? Patrol like mad with your huge masses of slaves and flying demons. In any province (preferably low income) with 5000+ pop get 3 lvl 1 blood mages, give them all dousing rods, set tax to zero and make them all hunt. Very efficent blood hunting. F9 isnt a requirement but it is immensly powerful, try f9, b4, d4 (minor fear rocks+you get vampires) with a decent dominion (atleast 6) and try to get 1 growth (maybe heat 1, growth 1, sloth 2, order 2).

[BigJMoney]

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I'll use these suggestions in my next game, though I'm still very enamored with the idea of a Dominion Powerhouse Mictlan strategy. I'm thinking maybe I can get away with bringing Dominion down to 8, scales down a bit, no astral, and going for a better war setup. Then, maybe after I've taken 35%-50% of the world, I'll shift focus to making money and cranking out temples and priests. At that point, I'll try to use expensive priests in every territory to make 3 sacrifices a turn...that's the equivalent of 3 temples in every territory. Even late game, with a serious deficit in Dominion, I should be able to turn things around.

I'll still keep everyone posted on how my current game is going if things start turning out more like I had originally planned.

=$=

[shovah]

you can, iirc make better sacrifices than that. A high priest of the sun (holy 4) with a jadeknife rocks, make one your prophet if you really wana push it.

[Wick]

BigJMoney said:
Lol, good point. If the daggum scales would come on, I'd have my growth-3 working.

This may be obivious but you do know that Mictlan's Dominion doesn't spread, right?

[Frostmourne27]

Ummm... Doesn't spread? Mictlan God, and their temples don't spread dominion, but Blood Sacrifices do, and I think prophets and juggernaughts do. I'm not sure if their capitol does. Mictlan probably wont be winning through dominion killing, but blood sacrificing is powerful enough to make your dominion 'safe' from enemy dominion, and to get your scale benefits (except perhaps buggy growth 3) I certainly find that I can do ok in dominion terms, and I think thats a fairly common sentiment, though if victory was set to dominion I probably wouldn't play Mictlan.

[BigJMoney]

...and that's what I'm hopefully going to prove wrong. I'm telling you, the numbers say that Mictlan is the best possible late game Dominion spreader, bar-none. With the capability of having at least 3 temples per province (more with a better economy and magic items, but I'm trying to be conservative), I think it's just waiting to be discovered. It's funny; when I first read about Mictlan after buying this game a good while ago, I immediately thought, "Wow, the purpose of this Nation is purely for spreading Dominion." I was very surprised to see that everyone's strategy with them had nothing to do with Dominion killing.

Of course, the difficult part is making it to that late game in a position where you can win.

=$=

PS -- According to the Dominion Spreading Bible, the prophet does not spread Dominion for Mictlan. He'd have to make sacrifices, too. My guess is that Juggs don't, either.

[Agrajag]

Bear in mind that to "have 3 temples per province" you'll also need to blood hunt every* province, and set the taxes to minimal in every* province.
The gratitious blood sacrifices would also be probably better spent on uberkilling mass murdering demons, or maybe a soul contract or a hundred...

Me, I'd rather have one Devil every turn than 40 temple checks.

* - well... most.

[shovah]

Actally your wrong, any-one, with enough of an economy can outspread mictlan because of 1 little fact: They can have multiple priests working per province. I agree they caan spread dominion well but, imo other races do it better (and cheaper)

[Ygorl]

But priests can only raise dominion up to a small positive level, and not nearly as effectively as temples (or blood sacrifices). From my own (limited, certainly) experience, a Mictlan nation with a medium-dominion pretender can push dominion just as effectively as anyone else - and if you made it a priority, with a high-dominion pretender and jade knives, it would be pretty astonishing. It also wouldn't be that expensive. Spending 50 or even 100 blood slaves (if you have a *massive* frontier) a turn isn't a big deal for late-game Mictlan; you're probably making 20+ per province your hunting in, so you can easily have plenty more for those devils etc.
Is 100 temple checks better than 14 extra devils? Maybe not, but depending on the circumstances...

[shovah]

Yes, they can push up there with the big boys, i was simply pointing out (as a counter to BigJ's post) that even at full force they can be out pushed.