Inspired by the writings of General Tacitius I figured I'd have another go with Mictlan.
Taloc the Smoking Mirror, fire4, death4, blood4, earth4
Order3, prod1, growth1, heat1, misfortune3
Castle, Dom6
Desert Sun (no wrap around), 7 impossible AI's, indie str 5, events rare, win dominon strength 656.
The plan is to use Sun Warriors as Javelin throwers with their high strength (blood blessing) and reinforce them with large number of mace, javelin armed foot by building castles early with the extra gold this design provides.
I hired the Elephant corp early and they helped get things rolling. I started blood searching early and built alot of the native priests. Construction 2 was the first target for jade knives and I have stayed at the top of the dominon rank from early using first one priest with a jade knife then later two - I'm impressed.
First army lead by my Priest King prophet (attacking turn 3) and a Tribal King who got quickness and has done devestation with a longbow of accuracy more recently. Casulties have been heavy but mainly on secondary troops so the Sun Warriors have built up to large number. I did make the mistake of putting them on both flanks early and when ther enemy came up the middle they threw javelins at each other.
The supporting Mace Javeling infantry have done very well as the game goes on though they have died in droves. I use a couple of standards per unit.
I have alot of tribal kings and thus generate a fair few Slave warriors but they are mainly useful for discouraging opponents to attack or us up lance attacks.
I started summoning Fiends of Darkness fairly early and have a force of 11 now (t.29) with a flying priest. I had to stop summoning awhile back as research became the priority.
Research was slow once the Smoking Mirror went site hunting in jaguar form. I had very little luck site hunting other than lots of earth gems which are hard to use lackign a native earth mage.
War came late vs Pythium (after t20) and has gone very well. Caelum has been raiding with calls of the winds and attacked a couple of turns back but I had kept plenty of forces in reserve and have launched a devestating counter attack.
The only bleak spot is C'tis casting Burden of Time which has been running 4 turns now and really hurting. I'm hitting enchantment 5 this turn and have enough astral gems to empower a Moon priest and I'll turn my horde of earth gems into astral for the dispel. I'm generating a horde of Clam Shells for future problems.
Its t.29 and I have 35 provinces and lead in all areas bar research. My income is probably close to that of all the remaining players combined. While there is some work to do basically the game is won and I figure once I set a couple more priests to work with Jade Knives I will get the dominion victory by ~t.40.
Sadly I doubt my blood economy (started t.4 and built slowly from there) will not have contributed beyond the 11 Fiends of Darkness. These have been good but not made that much difference as they haven't been fighting long and the big battles haven't been close. The biggest problem I had was how long it took me to get to con4 - then C'tis cast BoT and I had to forgo researching blood for enchantment.
Changes to be made.
Drop the earth on the Smoking Mirror. Sure its great for battle mages but I haven't really used any and while it helps the Sun Wariors fight its not crucial as throwing javelins doesn't seem to cause fatigue.
Raise magic scale to +2. I didn't find sages so I used the native priest as researchers and with magic2 they will be top knotch researchers.
The Smoking Mirror will research longer.
All this should enable me to get the blood going early and make it more a part of the game.
The other options would be to raise productivity to +3 allowing the building of alot more javeln throwers early. This has got to be good early but I'm determined to do something meaningful with blood without having to play on a large map - to much MM for me.
The biggest question I have is what are the best supporting Javelin throwers - the mace with more armour or spear with less? In close combat the spear armed are more appealling due to resource cheapness and repels ability so slow things to give time for the sun warriors to win it but vs missiles the extra protection is big. The spear armed only cost 8 resources compared to 13 so you can build alot of them. The advantage of sticking with the mace armed is that it leaves more gold for starting the blood economy.
In MP I don't think its enough to get a big army of javelin throwers as they are not up to what another player will throw at you. This means its necessary to make the blood economy work to get serious long term power.
Cheers
Keir
Some joy with Mictlan
Linear Mode
