Mictlan , how to play it effectively

[Kel]

So...convert their dominion ? I don't mean you leave it in their dominion, that wouldn't do you any good anyway. I mean, if you keep taking fresh provinces, your death scale won't matter as much since you always have a fresh supply of blood.

I only mentioned taking provinces from people with growth scales since their population should be higher than people with death scales. Really, taking new territory to hunt in is the point. It's just a bonus if the person you are at war with has growth.

- Kel

[Boron]

Kel said:
So...convert their dominion ? I don't mean you leave it in their dominion, that wouldn't do you any good anyway. I mean, if you keep taking fresh provinces, your death scale won't matter as much since you always have a fresh supply of blood.

I only mentioned taking provinces from people with growth scales since their population should be higher than people with death scales. Really, taking new territory to hunt in is the point. It's just a bonus if the person you are at war with has growth.

- Kel

Yeah sure but normally the war is not so easy and the victim damages normally your provinces quite a bit too and the war Lasts some time .

Or do you mean to steal away provinces as second / third opponent from already almost beaten / crippled opponents ?
This works better of course .

[archaeolept]

ok taking a 5k pop province

0% taxation will undo around 35 unrest approx, i think.
patrolling instead of having 0% tax will kill 10 pop per % unrest, so around 350 pop :O (i'm not sure if this goes down at all for smaller pop provinces)
death 3 will kill 30 pop
getting 13 bloodslaves a turn (guestimate as to average) will kill 26 pop.

so death 3 and 0% tax bloodhunting will kill around 55-60 pop/turn, letting one bloodhunt in the province for 30+ turns (since numbers lost to death will decrease as the pop decreases) before pop goes to 3K (which is still ok for bloodhunting, just not as good)

while growth 3 and 100% tax w/ patrollers for the unrest will kill over 300 pop a turn, letting one bloodhunt w/ similar effectiveness for about 8 turns tops...

summary: patrolling is murder.

and we see that Graeme's estimate of 1000 dead a turn from massively patrolling away the unrest from keeping taxation at 100% and bloodhunting w/ 10 hunters is, if anything, on the low side. besides being especially silly, since the massive patrolled-away unrest still affects your tax take.

[Boron]

Archeolopt i have run tests during 2.12 and per 5 points unrest reduced you lose 10 pop !
And i would keep taxes at 0% and bloodhunt and patrol .

35 unrest kill not 350 pop but 70 !

I personally don't patrol either but it is not as bad as you write .

[archaeolept]

hmmm i was going on earlier reports that patrolling 1 pt of unrest kills 10 pop. this may be dependent upon population size though, or may have been changed, or may always have been wrong ;p

even w/ only 2 pop killed per point of unrest, growth 3 + patrolling will kill pop as fast or faster than death 3 + no patrolling. and, frankly, I like the 240 design points...

though that does explain why its taking so long for me to kill off my pop in my stupid swamp goldmine province

[The Panther]

On the subject of unrest, you must try to keep it clear, not because of the possible failure to find slaves, but because of the bad events that will happen. Like barbarian or knight attacks, which has happenned to me about every third turn in my Mictlan game. Or the worst of all, the peasants might leave to find a better home when unrest hits 20. That is a killer event, but I have had that only once when the knights seiged my castle and unrest hit 40 before I cleared it. Maybe this is because I got 3 misfortune, but I think 90% of the Mictlan MP players will take 2-3 misfortune also.

Cainehill is right. You can only keep the unrest always at zero in a 5K+ province with a maximum of 2 hunters. Doing this would certainly decrease the micromanagement. But it seems better to work hard to keep that third hunter as productive as possible and spend the extra time each turn on each and every hunting province to do this.

As for the sacrificing 2 slaves per priest, that is another trick to reduce micromanagement but at a high cost. I think you must give a jade knife to each sacrificier in every province with a temple. This allows you to sacrifice up to 4 slaves any time you have the available slaves or need them in a particular sector. And you can choose between 0 (researching), 1 (probably a waste to do so when you could get research done instead), and 2-4 which are all useful to do.

As for the death scales, this works well on shorter games. But in a long game, death 3 is certain death to Mictlan. No blood hunting means you will die extremely fast to a diminion kill in the late game. The only alternative from dying is building up to wish by having a hundred or so clams working for you.

[Kel]

The Panther said:The only alternative from dying is building up to wish by having a hundred or so clams working for you.

Like I said, take more provinces. Population usually comes with em.

- Kel

[archaeolept]

no death 3 is not certain death lol. the losses are moderate. I'm currently on turn 58 in my mictlan game, and have only had to leave one province due to pop loss. my blood income is 160 on a very bad turn, and more likely over 200. my dominion is on par w/ the strongest in the game. my income is fine. And i've had one barbarian attack all game - that's w/ misfortune 2. I think taking misfortune 3 is definitely a no-no though. As well I have no soul contracts and only one vampire lord, who is actually patrolling not summoning allies

Now, Storm knows the endgame much better than I do, so I may well lose, but that will not be the fault of Mictlan.

And, again, while you can keep unrest at 0 w/ 2 bloodhunters, that does not in and of itself make it the most effective use of your resources. so what if my unrest hovers around 40-50? that's a 10% blood slave loss only from what it would theoretically be if I patrolled.

Mictlan is about the least likely nation to experience dominion kill in the late game. And even early it is easy to avoid unless you're a total moron.

[incognito]

How do you protect the vulnerabilites of a blood economy? Strikes me that it is damn easy to use unrest producing spells to make blood hunting difficult or kill off population en masse. Playing non-blood hunting races, I usually don't care about this issue, but here it really matters.

Certainly one method is a really 'deep' economy ie tons of blood hunting sites, but here you are just increasing tolerance for damage, not actually stopping it. Another method may be the virtual blood economy ie summons that in turn summon allies, soul contracts, special sites, etc that enable you to reap the fruits of blood income without the blood slaves coming in each turn. If you trace the turn-by-turn devil producing capacity back to the spell costs, you can generate a very high equivalent blood slave total this way given time. This is one reason I believe soul contracts are not imbalanced. They are necessary to balance the fragility of blood economies. What other ideas do people have?

[Boron]

The Panther said:
As for the death scales, this works well on shorter games. But in a long game, death 3 is certain death to Mictlan. No blood hunting means you will die extremely fast to a diminion kill in the late game. The only alternative from dying is building up to wish by having a hundred or so clams working for you.

Yeah this is the true power of mictlan imo . You have both worlds , clamhoarding AND blood .
You are horrible fragile earlygame but then if you aren't totally unlucky with sitesearching you can bloodhunt and soon start clamhoarding too .
Since you don't need so many gems you can clamhoard probably even a bit better than e.g. pythium .
If mictlan is left alone long enough it is frightening .
Earlygame it is weak so this is the biggest problem .