Woohoo 🎉 overview time! Thanks, been a bit since we had one. Appreciate the constant content and the variety 👍🏻

I'm about to go into a game as ea mictland so this is good timing.

It would be nice if unused pretender points were turned into gems for you at the start. Or 20 gold or some token.

@lucidtactics so I've actually been thinking about full scales EA Mictlan for a while!! LA & MA you have to hellbless but EA your competition is much weaker. Expansion is actually trivial, just mass slingers work 95% of the time. With full scales you can really crank out the blood economy, and turn it into the cheap assassin/reanimator mages. The moon warrior is not a bad frontline for EA and turkeys are a solid mage core.... Still working out some kinks like transitioning to late game though.

The Smoking Mirror starts in Jaguar form and you have to remember to switch him to human form for Bringer of Fortune to be active; so a step to remember to do when he wakes up.

The Tzitzimitl have Death poison on their tail attack, which makes them great for killing SCs in melee too. The pincer attacks are untyped damage, so they ignore physical resistance from things like Temper Flesh. But the main thing is that their ranged attack hits for close to 30 untyped AN damage (well, 18 plus your bless strength plus 4 from blood lust), with an MR check for half damage; it makes even Storm Demons look weak, since you can't counter it with any resistance.

EA Mictlin is the first dominons nation I ever read about and made me really interested in the game. Dom 3 though.

Ive played EA mictlan once. What i remember fondly was rolling over other players early game but also feeling very low on resources. Could hardly makes anything from the forts besides a blood hunter and 1-3 sacreds. Between the useful nature mages that were site searching and the need for slaves it felt very fragile somehow - not enough other mages to sitesearch/research or even money to recruit them. Had to drop around turn 60 but my successor (i think Jakalor?) managed to win the game so couldnt be all bad 😅

Fingers crossed for scales build with Moon and Sun Warriors only :D

Nice, been a while since a national overview now.

In terms of research targets, usually Mictlan runs up alternation first for Protection, Luck at 3 and Body Ethereal and Quickness at 4, and maybe Wooden Warriors at 5. Lucky Barkskin Jaguar Warriors can be really hard to trade happily with, even using top tier sacreds with an all stats bless. One approach that I've seen recommended to deal with the inevitable anti Mictlan rush is to take a high Dominion score and lower turmoil so that you can greatly outnumber your enemies by just having 8 sacreds a turn from your capital. Another is to get some research online, either with your high path 2cp mages working in magic scales, or an awake researcher. My Mountain Arena build took an awake researcher with Barkskin, which let me expand with squads of 5-8 Jaguar Warriors (and only pay for 6 Dominion strength!), and I spent my free gold on Moon Priests to do imps, cheat fate and later Luck in expansion, and then Rain Priests so that I could field a half dozen Quickness point buff casters as a nasty surprise for the doom stack of whoever ended up rushing me. I would recommend either an awake researcher or magic scales; this nation has fantastic battle mage paths, and you're making your job fending off early aggression a lot harder if you don't have any spells researched for them to use.

The audio sounds really smooth, notices it cause I came here from a older video of yours, but it has this weird fading issue? Think I noticed something similar on the Cold(!) Ragha playthrough earlier, but then I thought it was an issue on my end. Someone confirm whether or not it is? Anyhow, thanks for being awesome Lucid -- Dom 6 hype! :D

Yesssss Lucid we always love your nation overviews!!

"Really rolling in some cat money"

The 10% randoms on Mictlan Priests are really valuable, since you make a million of them, you'll actually get some of the cross paths, and most of them end up able to do jobs that you'd otherwise use a cap only mage to do.

Quickening only requires the water lens for the temporary gem, since it's only water 2 to cast. In my Mictlan game, I usually brought a water bracelet too just so I'd be able to use that mage to cast spells afterwards... Since I ran Drain 3 and was doing a lot of blood sacrifice to push Dominion by the time I had level 8 research, casting a 100 fatigue spell puts you to sleep for the rest of the battle.

Priest Kings are also good for holding spells like Relief or Howl that you might really want to stay up despite Wailing Winds; Nahualli are fantastic but have very low morale. High Priests of the Sun bless your armies and are also your Ozelotl summoners; and late game, with 3 blood boosters, they do Rain of Jaguars for you. A final note on the cap only mages is that until you get construction 4, which might be late if you take Drain scales, they're all much more efficient blood hunters than your normal mages.

I consider one point of undead command to be worth it instead of maxxing Undying; it's really helpful for moving around your Ozelotl to have it. The national blood mages only have 5 per path, so you need to get Banes or Mound Fiends or Civateteo to lead them in any quantity. You'll probably make those anyway; I prefer the options with feet who can be given flying boots. But it's really handy if you can just give any Mictlan priest or Tribal King 25 Ozelotl to shift around rather than 5. And it's also really handy to be able to have them share squads with your human sacreds when fighting against Wailing Winds. Devil commanders from Horde From Hell are s nice flying leadership option too.

To me, The hardest part of choosing a Mictlan bless is survivability. Low defence and low prot on every sacred makes attrition too high with a full offensive bless. Assuming you are running a hellbless and planning for early aggression, you should expect hard hitting enemy sacreds/troops, elementals, skellyspam, point buffs and/or foul vapours in your first war. I think this means Magic Weapons and Fire Resistance are required, I’m unsure about PR being needed but probably. Barkskin, Luck and +Defence seem to be the standout survivability blesses. Dormant Luck and Imprisoned Defence are my current favorites. It leaves me wondering about mid game global control and research plans for Mictlan though. What paths do you want on your god to take maximum advantage of an early successful war, while considering which magic path first goes to level 5-6?

Great nation! But I always struggle with EA Mictlan as I just can't quite handle the dumped scales. I know they're considered to be a strong pick but I think they require a good understanding of the game mechanics to work well. Drexy won a game with them by throne rushing, I was playing Lanka and was doing pretty well in a couple of wars but I wasn't paying attention and he jumped in with a big swarm of ozzies, and that was that!

Didn't expect another Mictlan guide!

You can scales expand fine, but then you're a nation with kind of bad troops and good mages. I bet it's possible to win like that but expect it's just worse than taking a bless and having amazing units, good mages, and work to overcome tech issue rather than inviting a rush with lackluster scales troops.

The Tribal Kings like your prophet have very high encumbance armor, so you can fix their map movement by forging them some other armor, though making boots is often easier early.

at the start of this video i was like.... this isnt lucid wheres lucid

damn, a mictlan with a fortified cap circle is a pain in the ass

For very neat point cost (0 points leftover) do this build, but with 1 less water (removing the cold resist- might be a bit dangerous, I've never played multi-player, so not sure how bad this would be- if it's really bad you could change 1 defense bless for major cold resist) and 1 less death (with 1 less undying), but get neutral magic scales in return. With neutral magic scales you also don't have to worry about the event where you lose half your gems.

One of the only games I've won was with STR bless EA Mictlan who is my favorite race, with stacks of Tzitzimitl's - the STR directly stacks with the AR Negates, Ignores Shields and MR for half damage - but if you've got 6+ STR + Blood spell bonus +Quickness plus whatever other tricks you pull, they take almost no losses at range and hit for 20 Minimum, fight super well in melee when it comes to it., They're my secret weapon as Mictlan because everyone kind of prepares for the Flying Jaguar Circus, and all they get is BOOM HEADSHOT. Slept on, and my fav. uni. They can fight anyone too - undead, horse people, giants, high prot, high res, doesnt matter, these bad boys can fit so much XP in them - don't even need to get attack or defense skill, so you can cut those from the bless, and they come online pretty fast into midgame at conj 6,

Also see: Mountain Arena

dump for cold scales gives 40 points extra doesnt it? ^^

Nahualli morale is really bad so lategame you want them to be slaves in big battles or loaded up with some morale items if they are doing big casts for you to make sure they don't run off before doing their job. Don't expect them to stay on the battlefield as battlemages if there is wailing winds/rain of blood up. For scales, not dumping luck to -3 is a consideration for heroes and avoiding bad events year 0 that mess up your expansion. You'll only have drain in the cap, so it's only an issue earlygame for your research.

Friend - what is your issue with air shield...human holy mages and your ozzies dropping down on an xbowblob beseech you to take air shield if you go into air.

Is there a viable mage bless with scales build where when people see it they won't coalition you? Just kind of curious because some of the other mage summons look cool, and generally I just see everything poured into murder kitties.

I disagree about spirit sight not being worth it, spirit sight is amazing if Ubar or Helheim or Agartha etc. is in the game. Having recruitable sacreds whose stats aren't boned once EA ermor puts up solar eclipse for their spirit sight statbless sacred cav, means you don't have to excessively rely on demons past the early game.

wheres the art from?

But what about the Ukraine war...