Part 14: Mictlan - Turns 25-26

Turn 25



Arco ends up not patrolling their army. They moved off, presumably to go north to fight Pangaea who has started invading Arcoscephale at this point. Due to Arco's capital already being at 200 unrest, I decide to move my stack off of it and go attack the province that he put 40 PD down in. My thought at this time is there are one of two possibilities for why he put down so much PD. He wanted to try and kill my stack of jaguars a handful of turns back, or he found a nice magic site that he was trying to protect. My guess is on him finding a nice magic site because he hasn't put down nearly that scale of PD in any other province.



After hitting rain of toads I continue going down the blood path of research.



My eventual goals for the path are Contact Tlahuelpuchi at level 6, Leech at level 7, and rain of jaguars at level 8. I'll be able to put each of these spells to good use once they actually come into play.

Turn 26



Arco doesn't move back onto his capital, I suspect he was attempting to set up a defensive movement trap, since he shifted his army right rather than just move back onto the capital. Assuming that I wouldn't move directly towards his army, but would want to continue heading deeper into his territory.



Additionally I recently recruited one of my Mictlan priests who had a random in F1.



This lets them cast the lower level version of Rain of Jaguars, Bind Jaguar Fiends. It is significantly less efficient than rain of jaguars, but Ozelotl are good enough to commit the magetime and extra slaves to. Requires B1F1 to use.



For comparison this is RoJ, 40 slaves for 14+ (scales with path levels) ozelotl. However it requires a B5F2 mage to cast. Still well worth the 5+ extra free ozelotl you get.



These are ozelotl, they are some of the best troops in the game, in my opinion. With 3 attacks, 16 strength, and 13 attack (all before a blessing) they have some of the best base offensive stats in the game. Additionally they are innately flying and sacred, meaning they have a lot more potential than most units.

One of the bothersome things about vanilla spell casting is there are very few ways to increase offensive capabilities relative to defensive ones. There are strong battlefield wide protection spells to help low protection units, battle field wide mist form, and battlefield wide luck, +50% to all resistance, battlefield +4 MR and battlefield regeneration. By comparison for offensive statistics there are large AoE spells to give all attacks armor piercing, a battlefield wide +4 strength buff, and a small AoE spell to give your units quickness (which also increase attack and defense by 3). Blessings are one of the best/easiest ways to buff offensive statistics, so ozelotl have a lot of potential. The only real downside is they are size 3 (but they have 3 attacks, so its still 6 attacks a square)



One other drawback is they're demons, so they can be banished and such. However their 16 MR pre buffs helps that. It still requires an individual with undead (undead counts for demons and undead) leadership to guide them though. It helps that the circle masters I found have 110 undead leadership though.