how would you play Mictlan

[Pocus]

The race is rather fragile, so what is your style when you start with?
So far I have tried the blood full speed approach : recruiting the cheap blood 1 priests, to get many slaves, thus allowing the strengthening of dominions + summoning of lower demons.

Any other options (the recruit priest/mages path)?

Their blessed units desserve a whole chapter too. Numerous types, with differing usages. The Pretender has a strong role to play with them.

The nation is very difficult to master IMHO. If you have an educated opinion, please share here.

[Nerfix]

Even their better units are dirt-cheap in resources. I use the warriors with Javelins and Feathered Warriors. With a decent income you can crank out huge numbers of troops and Priest Kings can forge Wineskins and Cauldrons. If you need to build sacred troops, sacrifice before building them as you can get more of them if you have higher dominion. The "full-speed blood" aproach isn't bad, but i research some conjuration and construction to get Vine Ogres, Ivy Crowns, Thistle Maces, and Cauldrons/Wineskins.

You should take Order and Growth with Mictlan. Magic is also good and they can even tolerate Sloth.

[Teleolurian]

I found their basic (non-sacred) units so fragile that in an Indy 6 game, I expanded at about the same rate as an Ulm on Easy AI (sad). I too tried full speed blood, since that was what presented itself naturally. I daresay that once you establish a hunting grounds they can get all the uniques significantly earlier than everyone else. As soon as I could afford to mix in sacred units, I set my early expansion tribal king-slaves armies to patrolling provinces to keep down unrest.

Ah Mictian, Mictian, Mictian.

So versitile, so hard to play effectively.

The part that always gets me about them is trying to get their blood sacrificing to work. It seems to spread such slow dominion that it really hurts Mic.

The only way I've been able to beat through Impossible AI's (I've only played them once in MP I was on top; but killing units by the droves) is to focus almost totally on Blood Magic and Construction since most of your researchers are going to be blood hunting to summon demons.

If you get lucky and get a Library fairly fast you can switch things up; but I'm never lucky enough to get one in my first 4 provinces.

Their sacred units are very fragile and if you play them with that in mind; it's not hard to play with them. One of the keys to remember is that they are capital only and the best (the Sun Warriors) have 1 movement, while the Eagle (and the nearly useless Jaguar ones) move 2.

I never had enough points to use the Lord of the Night successfully; though I'm sure you could.

Strategic armies of demon summoners are the key.

[Keir Maxwell]

The best way to play Mictlan?

On top of the pyramid with the sacrficial knife in your hand. The blood must flow.

I have tried a few approaches and hears what a list of likes and dislikes.

Dislikes

1. Coppper armour. Makes the boys slow and weak. Pity they couldn't have got some bronze - access to tin through contact with all the other cultures. The copper makes them slow and vunerable while the latest research on bronze points to it being comparable to good iron but alot more expensive due to the rarity of Tin. The Machakans get Plate.

2. Slings - keep killing my boys and no good versus the other side. Blame it on the crappy armour.

3. Slow, high cost, early spread of Dominion. Haven't gone far enough to say what its like later.

4. Slings - the fact that I start with so many of the buggers.

What I like:

1. Access to an excellent variety of blood magic using sacred mages who can benifit from bless effects such as reinvigoration or quickness.

2. Cool theme, great outfits.

3. Jade knives - buld them, use them. The blood must flow.

4. Sun Warriors are a semi-decent troop type and given some serious bless boosts (Say water9 Blood4) can do serious damage. If only the starting troops you have to use with them didn't have slings.

5. Spine devils early - always wanted to try these. If they had taken on my suggestions of getting maybe 2 spine devils for a higher blood cost . . .

Originally posted by Zen:
focus almost totally on Blood Magic and Construction since most of your researchers are going to be blood hunting to summon demons.

I agree. I'm quite happy to have a seriously empowered Fountain of Blood or similar researching construction in the capital while the Sun Warriors take advantage of its bless effects. The Jade Knife (con 2) allows normal priest to spread you dominion 3x as fast and con 4 opens up a raft of magic boosters and gives you the the must have accessory for any fashion conscious priest - the Sanguine Dosing Rod.

In terms of early expansion what T've got to is deciding to be cautious. I don't want to rush it and take high casualties or the armed forces will never build up and the best troops are capital only.

Giving up one of the first conquered provinces to blood hunting is important though I've generally found the 200gps for a lab tough to come by - thats what you get with low resource troops.

So watch the speed of expansion and make sure it doesn't get to fast as you will probably be losing to many troops. Picking provinces to take and leave is more than usually important - a measure approach to expansion.

Not that I have done particularily well yet. This is just what I'm going to try next time I stop in Mictlan.

Look forward to more peoples ideas/experiances.

cheers

Keir

[ November 29, 2003, 02:09: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Slingers can be very handy if your neighbor is pythium or arcos. They dont damage but they do rout things well. Especially things like elephants.

What I think I would do is put some serious thought into trying to create a pretender with abolutely the MOST blessing bonuses possible. But I havent really tried that yet.

One point that may have been overlooked or assumed;

Mass Produce Blood Contracts on your mobile Summoning Army.

Those things pay for themselves in more ways than one.

[apoger]

So far I have been running into a wall with Mictlan. I can make them work with much the same tactics as other nations just by being efficient, however not by using anything uniquely "Mictlan".

The troops are disaterously lightweight.
The pre-researched blood summons are just not efficient enough (loss of mage-time).
The dominion via sacrifice system is a pain in the rear.

If anyone can get Mictlan working in it's own way... let us know.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by apoger:
The dominion via sacrifice system is a pain in the rear.

The Shft-M thing to put the action on repeater might help. Its kindof a bummer that he has to have the slaves in his inventory. If he could make use of the Lab if its in the same province then that would help alot.

[apoger]

>The Shft-M thing to put the action on repeater might help.

It repeats normally, so this is not an issue.

>Its kindof a bummer that he has to have the slaves in his inventory.

That's the issue. Just to keep dominion in check I need to ferry slaves to the sacrificers all the time. The gem distribution system isn't the highpoint of the Dom2 interface, and having to access it often is frustrating.

If the province contains a lab, the slaves should come from the pool automatically.

It's small interface issues like this that are really grinding me down.