Guide: MA Mictlan - An Introduction

[P3D]

As D9 bless is MR damage (and does not come with attack bonus), its effect is even more negligible later on. So for late game a minor FB bless is better (and cheaper).

[WraithLord]

Wow. An excellent guide!

And the consequent discussion was also marvelous. Lot's of great ideas.

I think all are viable but personally I liked MB's build the most.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by TwoBits

And did anyone satisfactorily determine if it works with Seeking Arrow (there were tests, but I don't know if any were done against large HP targets)?

I was the one who did the Seeking Arrows tests, and re-doing the Death Bless part of it has been on my to-do list for a few weeks now. Shockingly, my recent Dominions time has had to be spent actually playing the game instead of tesing the mechanics

A disgraceful turn of events for sure

[TwoBits]

Originally Posted by Calahan

I was the one who did the Seeking Arrows tests, and re-doing the Death Bless part of it has been on my to-do list for a few weeks now. Shockingly, my recent Dominions time has had to be spent actually playing the game instead of tesing the mechanics

A disgraceful turn of events for sure

LOL, no worries, gives us something to look forward to

As far as a death vs fire bless goes, I assumed it would be fire that suffered more in the late game, as with spells like Army of Gold/Warriors of Muspelheim, the threat from fire can be completely neutered, but the threat from death can only be mitigated with anti-magic spells and items - with open ended die rolls, the threat can never be completely eliminated.

[Dragar]

Interesting discussions, so many options!

In terms of the offensive blesses..

Fire vs Death

I've tried running death blesses a few times and it really never does it for me.. MR isn't really all that harder to boost than FR when you're talking about a fairly easy check - Antimagic will do the trick. And the attack bonus is huge, especially given that you want to use an offensive bless on units that have multiple attacks.

Causing afflictions with area of effect spells seems like an excellent idea, but in general it doesn't change the course of a battle that much, whereas the F9 bless can be devastating, especially early game

The only reason to take a death bless over fire is for the death magic itself, naturally D9 offers up a lot more options than F9. Also if one was only taking a single bless you typically have a D3 base option for a cheap D9, whereas there isn't much Fire on offer

Fire vs Blood

Blood is normally regarded as the poorer cousin of blesses, and the lvl 9 bonus is certainly pretty lame, but the lower levels are pretty good for mictlan. Adding 2 or 4 strength adds a lot of punch to already strong units, and combines well with a minor fire bless without hitting the huge cost.

What is particularly nice is that (in CBM) the Fountain of Blood gives you Blood 3 for zero points pretender cost and a dom of 4, which also makes the high dom you want very cheap. The in-built 3 blood slaves/turn and hunting bonus means you get into blood very quickly once he is around. Immobility is a pain but not a big drama if you patrol, particularly if you are able to run some Growth.

I haven't played around with it but would think you could go dormant with B6F4-6 and have fantastic scales with an easy in to blood early on, while still giving your sacreds some decent punch. With the research you can accumulate with good scales that opens up other paths with the high level blood summons. Alternately imprison him and open up another path to level 4, such as earth (blood stones, father illearth)

[AreaOfEffect]

It's my guide, figured I should chime in at some point.

For offensive power, a fire bless tends to be more effective then a death bless for both the early and late game. You should also keep in mind that a high attack value combined with the spear has defensive potential as well.

Blood is the ideal way to increase damage potential. Dragar pretty much covers why.

Does a death bless increase affliction from poison damage? From what I've heard, it does. It has been recorded before with reference to the sacred Hydras of LA Pythium. The death bless adds affliction to both the poison from normal attacks and from the area effect surrounding them.

There are merits to an Air bless for eagle warrior and jaguar warriors. Archery does tend to be their bane and you should ignore the potential damage avoided when neither dart spam occurs. However, Mictlan has easy access to Arrow Fend somewhere around mid-game.

[TwoBits]

Well, I will say that you do notice the lack of attack bonus without a fire bless. Honestly, with an S9D9 blessing, I've found the most dangerous indies to be not elephants or heavy cavalry, but horse-tribesmen - with their high defense, your Eagle Warriors w/o a fire bonus just can't hit and kill them fast enough, and with two attacks (CBM?) of their own, the horsemen can quickly knock down your Twist Fate and inflict significant casualties.

But I'm wondering if anyone thinks, or has anecdotal evidence, that the 'fringe benefits' make up for the lack of attack-power in the Eagle Warriors. I mean, depending on what the death bless works on, Mictlan has a whole range of units that might benefit, such as:

Seeking Arrow on a Shrouded High Priest of the Sky has been mentioned.

And AoE thinks it might work with the sacred poison froggies.

Sun Warriors now throw affliction causing javelins before they enter melee - might make this otherwise forgotten unit worth looking at?

Sky Priests with a Bow of War are, in CBM, throwing 18 Aimed affliction causing arrows downrange - 5 of 'em shooting a cloud of 90 a round might be nice, on this otherwise not very useful unit?

Perhaps a reverse-communion of 4 or so N2/N3 Couatles (w/ boosters/Power of the Spheres?) blasting away with affliction causing Storm of Thorns? Or even Breath of the Dragon/Poison Cloud if that works with a death bless too?

And I'm sure there's plenty more.

Although I'm tempted to fool around with some alternate offensive blesses - F4B4, or maybe even F4D4B4, with or w/out S9.

[chrispedersen]

Did you notice my note a few posts back about an alternate strategy with the lawgiver?

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Does a death bless increase affliction from poison damage?

It absolutely does. I did a series of tests with Cohens with death blesses.

The cloud poison with the death afflictions was causing disease - sometimes even to myself if I remember correctly.

[AreaOfEffect]

Chris, my only problem is that your strategy relies heavily on a single capitol only commander. This is problematic because you need your other capitol only mage-priests in order to enhance your magic diversity. The number of sky priests available for combat will always be much lower then you desire. Then compound the problem by placing those priests on the front line and, by extension, increase their fatality rate.

[chrispedersen]

Well, its not my favorite strategy- but not for the reasons you name.

First, I apologize for laziness. You only *need* one Sky High Priests. All the other priests can be regular sky priests.

Look essentially what is happening is this:

You have a skypriests that is an 70 gp sacred 1A caster.
You have a sacred highpriest 2A1x?YH3 that can divine blessing.
Toss in a 2s moon priest and this is what you get:

You can either just have your sky priests attack rear and spam shockwave, or you can ground your guys with storm, summon air power and spam 3a orb lightning.

very effective and very powerful leveraging of cheap available everywhere sky priests.


Each of your 1As are now 3a's due to storm power and pots.