EA Mictlin Anomaly

[Edratman]

I only play SP, almost always EA. I had noticed since I started setting independent starting strength to 9 that frequently in the first 10/15 turns I would get the message that Mictlin was defeated and ceased to exist. A couple of times I was adjacent to a Mictlin province and it would go independent at tis time. I would then find the home castle to be an independent province which meant that Mictlin was not conquered.

So I started to always include Mictlin as an opponent in new games. I find that about 60% of the time Mictlin evaporates in the first 10/15 turns, and once by the 2nd or 3rd turn. I have never seen another opponent evaporate in the early game.

I must conclude that Mictlin always(?) sends its pretender out as a SC in the early game and keeps going to the well no matter how many hit points are left. Has anyone else noticed this and does anyone have an idea why this only happens to Mictlin, or at least only very rarely to other nations?

[Edi]

The reason it happens to Mictlan is that Mictlan only gets dominion increase by sacrificing blood slaves at a temple. If it does not sacrifice, its dominion drops. If it can't expand (which happens due to the strong indies) it will die a dominion death.

The AI is flat out lousy at playing Mictlan, it requires too much special stuff that you need a human to do correctly.

[normalphil]

Edi said:
The reason it happens to Mictlan is that Mictlan only gets dominion increase by sacrificing blood slaves at a temple. If it does not sacrifice, its dominion drops. If it can't expand (which happens due to the strong indies) it will die a dominion death.

The AI is flat out lousy at playing Mictlan, it requires too much special stuff that you need a human to do correctly.

Shouldn't the '#bloodnation' command (which I assume is hard-wired into EA and LA Mictlan have fixed that?

[PvK]

Mictlan doesn't always do badly as the AI. It's not a master of blood magic, but if it manages to avoid early challenges, it can get as strong as other AI-led nations. I wonder if maybe sometimes the AI chooses a low dominion strength and fails to sacrifice at first, leading to an early dominion collapse.

[Edratman]

Edi said:
The reason it happens to Mictlan is that Mictlan only gets dominion increase by sacrificing blood slaves at a temple. If it does not sacrifice, its dominion drops. If it can't expand (which happens due to the strong indies) it will die a dominion death.

The AI is flat out lousy at playing Mictlan, it requires too much special stuff that you need a human to do correctly.

That makes sense now. Much more so than my unknowing theory about only one nation using a suicidal SC strategy.

I only tried Mictlan once, very early in my game experience. I didn't like them and quit after a few turns and haven't been back. That is why I knew so little about them and was oblivious to this possibility.

One additional observation I have made since I've been always including Mictlin as an opponent. In the setup screen the human is always in slot 1, and I then put Mictlin in slot #2. The other opponent slots are usually "random opponent" or if I do select a nation as an opponent this is done in a rather haphazard, whimsical matter. I've noticed that Mictlin always seems to be adjacent to me. Does the game place nations in the sequence that they are on the setup screen? (I usually play medium with 4 opponents or large with 6 opponents.)

[Edi]

normalphil: No, the hardwired #bloodnation command does not eliminate that problem. It just makes the AI assign higher priority on researching blood magic and capturing blood slaves than it otherwise would. It does nothing to alleviate the #cannotpreach command that Mictlan has built in.