Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Be nice. You have not done anything to show that the Acolyte should have a longer average life expectancy than a priest save the hypothetical "if an average Priest lived 10 turns shorter than a 30 turn average Acolyte due to fires from afar",

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

To take your Sanguine Acolyte example, it does not make much sense to me to state that they only cost 20% more (100 gold vs 80 gold) for their extra (admittedly good) effects, when even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

I reject the 30 round vs 20 round until I see some voodoo mathematics to support it.

Your fault - you shouldn't have brought these voodoo 56% into this debate first.

No it isn't - bad math, that is.

Fair enough, pardon the poor wording. I should have written "good maths put to bad use".

I was not saying it was a 36% differential of your upkeep compared to income (the calculations you are making), but a 36% differential of blood per gold. I.e. I was measuring the relative usefulness of investing gold in order to get blood (which can then be scaled by however much gold you want to invest), not the impact relative to your income.

I understand what you were saying, but it doesn't make it any more relevant as a factor to consider when comparing Mictlan's bloodhunting to other nations'. Well, to me at least . And that's because this differential is only marginal when compared to your income, and you pay new bloodhunters with your income. Basically you're telling me I should stop smoking because the price of matches has raised by 36%. I can imagine far better reasons to stop smoking - eg, tobacco prices raised by 36%, or: smoking shortens my life expectancy by 36% - these ones aren't marginal effects.

Your actual income does not factor into the blood/gold relationship

Of course it doesn't. Where did I say that? I'm just saying that as Mictlan, your gold savings haven't a big enough impact on your upkeep (thus, indirectly, your income) to support your claim that 'noone else comes close'.

True. On the positive side, it gets some research done that would otherwise have required somebody else (who also cost money to recruit and maintain) to do it, so it is certainly not wasted.

Of course it isn't wasted - but the situation is exactly the same for Diabolists, and they're better researchers than Mictlan priests. The disadvantage seems to be Mictlan's here.

In fact, under magic 3 the Mictlan priest is one of the best researchers in the game in terms of RP/gold,

True, so what's new here? Nothing, it's still the same upkeep issue: Mictlan priests vs Diabolists (for instance), whether they bloodhunt or research. The fact remains that, when both are forced to research while unrest is brought down to bearable levels, the blood/gold differential narrows, and the Diabolist is still worth 1 more RP.

Why should they? Nagot Gick Fel makes some very good points regarding income reduction that I have conveniently ignored. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just as I ignored the long term income reduction from hard blood hunting early in the game, he ignored that Mictlan can run Order 3 while Diabolical Faith has a forced Turmoil 1.

Of course - but it's not due to the merits of Mictlan's priests. Order 3 isn't required for Mictlan anyway, I know a few players who are enamoured to Mictlan's heroes enough to pick Luck+3 instead. Not that it's a strategy I'd recommend, but still...

In all likelyhood, not only is it cheaper to get priests in the early game for Mictlan, but Mictlan will also have more money to do so and will continue to have a massive advantage in provincial income until such time as provinces are laid waste.

In all likelihood... Hmmm, I've run dozens of tests with both Mictlan, Diabolical Faith, and both Abysias themes, and never found evidence Mictlan had the sharp edge over the other nations you want us to believe it has. My own experience tells me all of these are rather well matched when it comes to bloodhunting. Initial conditions (the map, neighbours, easy early expansion or not) have a far greater impact than the nation itself. Even Diabolical Faith's forced turmoil isn't that painful when compared to an Order 3 Mictlan. Mictlan will have to divert resources (sacrifices, temples) to push its dominion and reaps the benefits of its order scale in other provinces than the capital - a painfully slow process in my experience. DF on the other hand can alchemize its early fire gems for a +60 gold early income, almost matching Mictlan's initial income - and use its 200 'free' design points to buy other goodies.

(The thrust of this discussion is so funny because both of us started out only discussing unit vs. unit, but as it is obvious that the entire theme is important for a thorough investigation, we have both begun selectively to use the facts that support our case. Hey, it happens, and the nice thing is that I learn things about Marignon that I hadn't thought of, since it is not a favourite nation of mine.)

It's a favourite of mine, especially DF. OTOH, I really hate Mictlan because of the MM issues (don't pool these sacrificial bloodslaves - PLEEEASE!)

This will to some degree be countered by the "but Marignon will preach via inquisitors instead of building temples" issue, though an inquisitor is 110 gold (plus upkeep of 3.67 gold/turn) vs a temple's 200 gold cost and 0 upkeep (and requires a lab, a temple, and a fortress to be recruited just like the Mictlan priest). Of course an inquisitor is mobile and a more useful general purpose unit than a temple, but then again, he does not count towards boosting the maximum dominion either.

No, so what? Unless I'm playing with dominion VCs (which I never do), why would I want to increase my max dominion as long as my Inquisitors negate the enemy's just fine? For pushing my dominion farther into enemy territory to get the morale bonus? Marignon doesn't really need that: its sacred troops have awesome morale already, its crossbowmen don't have to check morale as often as melee troops, and for DF - its demonic troops don't care.

So while using inquisitors instead of temples is certainly a useful advantage for targeting of dominion, I am not certain that it is a great saving in money and doubt that it is enough to make up for the significant difference between turmoil 1 and order 3.

It depends widely on the circumstances. Sometimes you need lots of Inquisitors, sometimes you don't - in that case, the gold savings can be everything except negligible. Sometimes I DO build a few extra temples, besides the ones I need to recruit my priests, but it's extremely rare. Heck, with DF I'll pick Luck +3 and just wait for these temples to pop up!

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me. I.e. in both cases, I was assuming that Acolytes and Priests had essentially the same average lifetime, but, since the longer life expectancy one examines the more the equations favour Mictlan, I chose to consider the special case of an insanely low low life expectancy (10) compared to the one I usually use (30). In other words, even in a heavy spell and battle environment where you can only expect a blood hunter to survive for 10 turns, you are still getting significantly more blood for the buck as Mictlan.

[Chazar]

I think I recall that victory point spread dominion like a temple. Do victory point owned by Mictlan spread dominino like Mictlan temple (i.e. not at all) or like everybody else's temples?

[archaeolept]

more like a half temple, but they work for mictlan.

[Foom]

On a similar note, what do "Restless Worshippers" and "Ceremonial Faith" do for Mictlan? Dominion is really hard to spread since blood sacrifices seem so weak. Do those special dominions help?

[deccan]

I think Panther did a series of tests a while back that proved the power of blood sacrifice. I'm playing an SP game as Mictlan myself, but I agree that it's really powerful. Give Jade Knives to your priests and don't stint on the slaves. There's more where they come from.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me.

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?

[Gandalf Parker]

Something I just noticed about Mictlan. A large disadvantage for them is that they cannot preach a pretender to death inside his castle. Thats kindof a large game-theme strategy to lose.

Well maybe they could but they would have to conquer all of the surrounding provinces, build temples there, and sacrifice like crazy hoping for an overflow effect. If they bought into a blessing strategy then they might not have a high dominion setting. I was abit disappointed that independent priests also were not able to preach.

I havent come across it yet but if their pretender dies do they have to sacrifice it back again also?

EDIT: Hmmm added thought. Maybe we could add a sacrificial knife which allows them to use it in the field. Do sacficies without the need for a temple.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

[/quote]
My bad - I completely forgot that a Sanguine Acolyte was sacred as well (was thinking in terms of the non-sacred diabolist) and calculated 100 + (10*100/15) = 167!

This changes the situation completely and you may just have a discussion-winner.

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?

The 56% was based on the mistaken assumption that an Acolyte was not sacred. When one is sacred and the other non-sacred, things do not cancel out as nicely as they do when both are sacred, i.e. I was looking at

BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) vs. BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/15 * T)

where, for T = 10, BaseCost(MictPriest)=80, BaseCost(SangAcol)=100, you get

80*(1 + 1/30 * 10) vs 100*(1 + 1/15 * 10) i.e. 107 vs 167 which you can use to see either 107/167 = 0.64 (i.e. a Mictlan priest being 46% cheaper over ten rounds) or 167/107 = 1.56 (i.e. given that you get the same amount of blood from each priest/acolyte, you get 56% more blood from the Mictlan priest per buck).

Anyhow, you just won this discussion hands down for the Sanguine Acolyte (but not for the Diabolist yet ). With both being sacred the advantage is indeed a fixed 20% in cost or 25% in blood, which given the slightly higher vulnerability of Mictlan's priests and the fact that blood sacrifice is essential for Mictlan it is likely to be parlayed into a meager 0-10% advantage in each Category.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
My bad - I completely forgot that a Sanguine Acolyte was sacred as well (was thinking in terms of the non-sacred diabolist) and calculated 100 + (10*100/15) = 167!

Duh - I should have thought about this, no wonder I was completely lost about what you were trying to demonstrate!