success with Mictlan in MP?

[Teraswaerto]

I am in turn 60 of one MP where I am Mictlan. Started with a fire 9 blessing, moved onto heavy duty Blood magic.

As for success, well, I'll let you know in a few days. The **** is about to the hit the fan, so to speak.

[Norfleet]

I rather like Mictlan in MP: The key to remember is that the blood must flow: Get those blood sacrificing going early and fast, or you'll have no dominion and die easily. Mictlan has a highly versatile collection of magics: Its national mages have basically every kind of magic covered, except Death and Air.....both of which are covered by its national heroes, Mictlipoclti and the Eagle Warrior guy, respectively. You can also easily cover them on your pretender.

The drawbacks being that the troops, while relatively cheap, suck hard. Unless you're playing a strong bless effect, you may as well forget about them. Graeme argues that the troops aren't so awful, but the ones that don't suck cost more resources than you can reasonably afford as Mictlan.

I like to take the cheap 0-pt watchtower, build them everywhere as anti-raid protection so my blood hunters aren't killed by random irritances, and then pump out the cheap priests and hunt ze blood everywhere. Between a wash of sacrifices and a horde of devils, vampires, ice devils, arch devils, and what-have-you, Mictlan is a great nation: Don't let the cruddiness of the trops fool you. Just think about it as money saved by not building them.

[tinkthank]

Anyone have it? My degree of suckiness with Mictlan is still extremely high, and I'm talking SP. How are others faring with them in MP, and what do they do? Does anyone play them in MP at all?

[HotNifeThruButr]

Nor, is there any drawback to your Micky strat? I sounds like your gold income would suffer heavily by keeping down unrest caused by hunters, either because patrollers would depopulate or because you need to lower taxes to reduce unrest. Does this work well with the relatively high gold to resource ratio units? Can you get away with not using any Mic troops at all in the middle to late parts of the game? Do bless effects play a big role in your plan? What's your preferred blood summon? (I personally find cross breeding, Demon Knights, and Frost Fiends very attractive, and no, not the "attractive" that you're thinking of) What's your preferred scales with Mic (I would probably think some sloth 3, order to some degree, growth 3, and luck 3 for breeding, magic would also be helpful, but that's a bit much and might kill your points.) What does Mictlan have that other bloody nations don't have (Abysia seems like a very good blood nation, along with Marignon's Diab faith)? Any suggested pretenders (don't say VQ)?

edit: Graeme tolerates Mictlan troops? I'd like to see him defend them.

[ May 11, 2004, 05:39: Message edited by: HotNifeThruButr ]

[sergex]

I've been playing Mictlan and Abysia Blood of Humans in MP a lot the Last couple of months and I have to say that I prefer Mictlan a lot better as a blood nation (except for the mico managing the priest blood sac every turn which makes my turns take too long for blitzes).

Mictlan has cheap blood hunters. 80 gold sacred 1 Blood priests with the diving rod are the best gold to bloodhunt ratio there is. Use them, and use them often. They are also the best researcher per gold for Mictlan. I recruit them every turn because they are so versatile. They can be built even at your non-capitol castles.

As Norfleet has said you need castles to protect your bloodhunters or they'll die easy to SC's. I've beaten big armies with just my standard bloodhunters casting Summon Imp over and over but I wouldn't rely on that. You also won't be getting much gold from your provinces since you should be bloodhunting all of the ones that are population 4000-6000, so Watchtower is the best way to go for defense.

My strat is generally to use mercenaries and a SC Pretender to expand and not the nation troops. I really really hate Mictlan's troops. I only recruit the priests and independant scouts as units. Using devils and fiends as a base army works fine because they don't cost upkeep. You won't be getting much gold, but you won't need much gold either. If you get a more expensive tower or if you recruit a lot of troops you'll be screwed due to the unrest caused by your bloodhunters.

What my core of combantants are: Fiends and Devils, along with Ice Devils, Arch Devils, and Heliopolii eventually. Maybe a few succubi if I'm feeling frisky. That's more than enough to beat most armies, even in MP. As long as you are blessed with close provinces that are 4000 Pop+ you can start the blood economy early. The priority is to build a cheap castle (preferably Watch Tower) quickly so you recruit blood priests in two provinces a turn.

Mictlan's priests are super province searchers. Water, Astral, Nature, Blood, Holy and Fire are easily searched out with them. Use that to your advantage as well. However, after I get 1-3 in some paths of magic I totally focus on Blood Magic to summon the Devil Commanders before anyone else. Keep them alive and geared up and you can corner the game with the unique Devils since nobody else can summon them once they are in the game (except with a Wish I think).

Well, that's my general strategy. I have one game where I'm blood searching 6 provinces and getting 100+ slaves a turn. I'm summoning a demon leader per turn with a High Priest with some +blood gear and I can easily empower him up if I need to summon other demons since I don't use my gems for much else aside from forging gear.

Also, Mictlan gets the Fiend summon by default so use that to your advantage. Once you get your first blood province working with 4 priests searching, summon 2-4 fiends per turn and you'll have a huge flying demon army before anyone else is at the point of summoning anything on that scale. I've wiped out huge Ulm armies with many crossbowmen and infantry easily with 20 fiends. About the only national units that can stand up to fiends that early are the Paladin, heavily armormed lanced units or possibly a bunch of fire blessed units. If you notice a fire bless coming at you, switch to building Demonic Contracts (80 slaves to summon 1 demon per turn) instead of summoning fiends. Fiends are great early on but you will want to switch to Devils later on because of the fire protection.

Sorry if this was a bit rambling Good luck with Mictlan, it's really the best bloodhunting nation in my experience.

[sergex]

the drawback to this strat btw, is basically if you are stuck next to a really agressive opponent with a fire-blessing army or if you get screwed with bad neighbor provinces or you can't get mercs early on due to poor mercs becoming available or if other people outbid you. If you can't get your blood economy working by turn 10 you are in big trouble if someone decides to take the provinces around you. You can easily become trapped and since you national troops are so weak you won't be able to field much offense without blood slaves or good mercs.

However, most MP opponents are docile or quick to make peace treaties (because usually the people that get mired in a drawn out battle early on leave themselves open to attack from another front and get destroyed easily) so you can usually overcome a bad start once you get 2 or 3 blood provinces coming in. There isn't much in the way of an anti-devil horde start that I know of. Once you get to the point that you have a bunch of Devil Commanders and lots of soul contracts pumping out Devils every turn you are in a position to win. It's just a matter of getting to that point, and playing smart diplomatically and placing castles as quickly as you can to discourage enemy attacks.

[tinkthank]

Hmn.

Not purchasing troops as a central element to success in MP -- I suppose this makes total sense, and explains also my complete failures (even in SP) --- it just feels so.... wrong. Has there been any talk of somehow increasing the cost of blood magic summoners while somehow strengthening Mictlan's troops? (This is not really a "balance" question, just one of flavor and feel: I think all units in the game should have a use and be used, at least sometimes, and if some things are never used, that is bad -- but a whole nation's troops almost never being used? Argh...)

[Teraswaerto]

Mictlan can use troops. The sacred ones are quite good with a blessing, especially early on. The cheap (in both gold and resources) warriors with slings can be boosted with Flaming Arrows and Mass Protection, for example.

They'll never be more than a side dish to Blood magic, but that's just the way Mictlan works. It can't be changed without making it into a whole new nation (though a no blood theme "Reign of the Lawgiver" would be interesting to see).

[ May 11, 2004, 16:53: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
edit: Graeme tolerates Mictlan troops? I'd like to see him defend them.

All of Mictlan's normal troops are very low cost in gold. The 8 resource ones can fill much the same role as C'Tis elite warriors. The 14 resource troops have enough survivability to take an arrow without necessarily dying, which is mostly what you need early game. The sacred warriors are all quite useful, although the sun warriors are too slow to move to the front. Jaguar warriors make decent flankers, and can take down high protection units fairly easily. Eagle warriors are great for swarming archers. Slaves come in huge numbers once you get a couple dozen tribal kings capturing them, and they make a great cannon fodder layer to protect your more expensive troops. Mass protection is also highly useful, since it boosts their protection to the point where they won't die quite as quickly. I tend to take a Mausoleum with Mictlan, but mostly for the gold bonus from administration.

[sergex]

Well since Mictlan both gets +3 blood slaves a turn and the Bind Fiend spell to start off, you can think of the Fiends as the national unit of Mictlan. Even just using the +3 innate slaves a turn you can summon a Fiend every other turn just using a Blood 2 Mage. You can choose to recruit some slaves with a King but I find that they route right away and that it's not much use to round them up from the neighboring provinces. They aren't useless, but I choose not to use them for early expansion.

I'm not big on blessing strategies usually, but I could see Mictlan being used that way. There are probably better nations if you just want to just use sacred units, like the Tuatha Man or Marignon flagellants though.