Guide to EA Mictlan and bloodhunting

[Janlm]

Thanks for a good guide, I was wondering something. When blood hunting, would you also keep a small force to patrol the province, or is it usually enough to put taxes to zero?

[Velusion]

Janlm said:
Thanks for a good guide, I was wondering something. When blood hunting, would you also keep a small force to patrol the province, or is it usually enough to put taxes to zero?

Depends on how much you hunt. Generally you want the unrest to stay around zero. Normally I use about 3 b2/b3 mages in the same province - drop the taxes to zero and don't have to worry (usually) about patrolling. Using more than four hunters will generally mean that you will have to patrol to keep the unrest down.

[Baalz]

As Velusion says, its a much better idea to set yourself up so that you don't need to patrol. Patrolling will drop your population much faster so it's not a viable long term solution. It is, however, possible to do scorched earth blood hunting by doing massive blood hunting in a province while a large army patrols. This is really more of a tactic to screw up land you don't think you're gonna be able to keep, but can also be used as a last ditch effort for emergency blood slaves. For example, if you're hard pressed and absolutely desperate for blood slaves you can use the dozens of researchers in your capital to blood hunt (assuming they're at least B1 mages) while you patrol which will give you a quick boost of blood slaves but nuke your capital population. This actually might not be as bad as it sounds, once you hit late game with a heavy blood economy focus you really don't have a huge use for gold as you'll be summoning virtually all your units and mages.

[DigitalSin]

I usually have 3 B1 mages with divining rods, and only ever have to stop hunting when theres a bad event, or a particularly lucky haul.

[Olive]

Hi,

Isn't turmoil 3 slowing the initial expansion (few money to recruit jag warriors and build forts / temples) and the switch to blood economy (few money to build castles/temples/labs and recruit blood hunters) ? I've tried (SP) and found myself very vulnerable for a while (almost no armies), I'm lucky the AIs were elsewhere.

Any ideas to build armies able to stop an eventual early aggression ?

I also thought of an early rush to Alteration 5 / Conjuration 3 to cast Mother Oak. It should work only with a magic scale and a bit luck in finding nature sites. The Oak may allow to summon 17 sacred jaguars / 2 turns and compensate the lack of recruitment. Don't know if that's worth the research cost though ?

[13lackGu4rd]

Jaguar Warriors are very very cheap, at 25 a piece with dom6-8 you can easily recruit max Jaguar Warriors each turn even under Turmoil3 and Sloth3 while you're at it. also, since you're only using sacred troops(Jaguar Warriors) your upkeep doesn't get as large as nation that rely on their national non sacred troops. another thing, you're starting army is pretty useless, so use it to patrol your capital while setting taxes to 150% for some additional gold early on, will allow you to get your 2nd, 3rd and even 4th castles pretty early if you keep on expanding, easy with your Jaguar Warriors under a good bless and with H3 Priests Divine Blessing them if you need a mass.

personally I go for const4(SDRs for Mictlan Priests) than Blood all the way to 9 pretty much. not much point getting anything else early on as your Jaguar Warriors are capable enough on both offense and defense, and your power lays with Blood magic...

[Olive]

Okay, I should try again. I do set the taxes at 150%, even 200% for the first 3 turns. I was playing late era, with is much similar to early though, but all castles are 1200 gold (except the too rare Hillfort at 800), maybe that's where were my financial difficulties.

I push the early search to construction 6 - lightless lanterns to boost research. More useful with drain 2 than magic 1 though.

I use slingers as arrow catchers - with indies at 8, they cut the jaguar warriors losses.