EA Mictlan, Reign of Blood

"Mictlan is a nation mainly inspired by the Aztecs and their practice of blood sacrifices. The name is that of the realm of the dead in Aztec mythology." -Illwinter

Suitably named after Aztec Hell, Mictlan has always been isolated; any of its neighbors and visitors have long-since learned that keeping contact with them would end in them being either enslaved by the Kings or exsanguinated by the Blood Cult. Since the dawn of their Empire, Blood has been spilled to feed the waning powers of Mictlan’s Hungry God, for the Gods in Mictlan’s Early Age were as mortal as their worshipers. The Hungry God of the Early Age was revered through its two Faces (the Sun & the Moon) and its two Domains (the Rain & the Forest), but the worship of all four arguably played out in the same way.

Mictlan isn't exactly the best example of the archetypal Blood nation, but you will certainly need a good understanding of Blood Slaves to survive. As a Human nation without even passable equipment or a reliable Dominion, every decision must be thought through carefully. To offset this somewhat, your Mage-Priests each have a decent discount, and you have plenty of unique tools to work with once you figure out how to avoid immediate collapse. This is certainly not a nation for beginners, though if you don't understand Blood, attempting a sink-or-swim approach with this nation may help you learn quickly.

Race	Military	Magic Access	Priests	Buildings
Average Humans Prefers 1 Heat Forest Survival	Primitive Gear Cheap Infantry Slave Levies Sacred Shapeshifters	3 2 (rare 3) 2 2 2 1 (rare) Heroes: 11 (one) 33 (one) Summons: 33 (requires 11) 112 (requires 3) With 4 & 101: 313 (25%) 214 (25%) 223 (25%) 1213 (25%) With 4 & 60: 243 (one) 423 (one) 243 (one) 423 (one)	Powerful (3) Only 1 outside capital Blood Sacrifice +1 Fire Bless point +2 Blood Bless points	Primitive Fortified Cities

• Your Home Province, Temples, and Prophet DO NOT passively spread Dominion, your Priests cannot Preach, and your Pretender passively spreads Dominion only half as effectively as other Pretenders.
  • Blood Sacrifice isn't just a tool you can use to leverage smaller opponents: it's mandatory for survival, especially if your Pretender isn't present. On the other hand, waiting to spread Dominion until you need it spread can be helpful, if you've taken a Hellbless (and the Scales that come with it).

Provide a brief overview of commanders and units and what tools they provide you with. Outline any peculiarities across the roster (e.g. the animal tag, cold blooded). Highlight any particular strengths of the roster and describe their roles (e.g. high-quality infantry, thugs, powerful mages).

Jaguar Warriors are pretty cool guys, able to heal afflictions that they will no-doubt acquire due to their Wounded Shape. They're especially notable because you can get them from any fort with a temple; most of your other good units aren't so generous.

Nahualli are your off-capital Mages, and while they don't have Blood, they can Contact Couatls to get good Magic access and decent Priests outside your perpetually-busy capital. They can also transform into scrumptuous Turkeys to fly around and look funny; somehow they can still cast spells in this form.

description of the workhorse options, for the sake of sanity better skip the clearly subpar and generic stuff (common indie like units with no gimmicks), merge units into a single description entry if functionally similar battle roles with only minor differences in gear.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Warrior 9 1 7	Forest Survival	Slinger with Shield. Archers prefer shooting at low prot targets so they can keep the heat of Jaguar Warriors while still being more protected and can trade because of their shields.
	Warrior 9 5 7	Forest Survival	Slinger with Shield and armor. Best suited as lance catchers, being cheap but will still last longer than the barechested warriors.
	Warrior 9 7 7	Forest Survival	A good expanding alternative to your sacreds. Javelins give them an advantage over low prot indies that would normally shred Jaguar Warrior like barbarians.
	Warrior 9 14 7	Forest Survival	The above warrior but with better melee weapons and armor. Less often seen line troops as Sloth is a popular dump scale for Mictlan, but still useful as mage bodyguards.
	Moon Warrior 12 15 14	Darkvision (50%) Forest Survival	Warrior with great weapons and darkvision. Moon warriors start getting useful when you start amassing your demon army and learn how to cast the Darkness spells. Make great fort recruits when going with a Darkness army strategy.
	Feathered Warrior 18 14 21	Standard (1) Forest Survival	Boost the morale of the Warriors he is with. Sacreds have good moral but boosting higher it can be important especially when there are so many abilities that force you to roll it many times.
	Jaguar Warrior 26 4 31	Sacred Wounded Shape (Were Jaguar) Forest Survival	A fantastic sacred in-game being a recruit anywhere greatweapon guy with a second werebeast shape with 3 attacks. Beware of mass firepower, they don't have high prot or shields.
	Eagle Warrior 15 3 14 Capital Only	Sacred Ambidextrous (3) Flying when Blessed Forest Survival	Another excellent sacred, gaining the ability to fly when blessed, so can assassinate commanders in the rear like other flying nations. Also suffers the same weakness as Jaguar Warriors
	Sun Warrior 18 15 18 Capital Only	Sacred Resist Fire (5) Forest Survival	Another sacred, being an armored warrior with javelin and resistance to fire. Less appealing than the other sacred choices in terms of offense and competes with the recruitment of Eagle Warriors. Ok During early game expansion depending on blessing when keeping expansion party casualties low is important.

This section is the longer version of the 'Magic Access' column in National Features. List which paths the nation has access to, what level in each path and the maximum level attainable with common boosters. Avoid discussing in too much depth as much of the information is already covered in MelficeBelmont's Boosting and Access Guide. The length of this section will vary greatly depending on the nation, and does not have to be formatted in the same way as the example below. Some explanation may be required for more complicated boosting methods (e.g. commanderifying a unit with hidden paths). What exactly these paths can be used for can largely be explained in later sections, but pointing out good crosspaths works well in this section too. Mention communion access if applicable.

List combat and ritual spells unique to the nation. Keep descriptions brief but elaborate on any particularly useful spells. Nation-defining national spells (e.g. Bind Jaguar Fiends for EA Mictlan or Scapegoats for LA Gath) can be highlighted like important commanders or units.

Combat

• Mictlan does not have any national combat spells

Ritual

• Summon Jaguar Toads: 2 Conj 1.11 ( Jaguar Toadx2) they are small tramplers (only running over common infantry) and spit armor-negating mortal poison, while also poisoning anyone that don't use spears. They are easy to summon but easy to kill and Undisciplined makes them hard to buff.

• Summon Jaguars: 25 Conj 3.21 ( Jaguarx17) like weaker Ozelotls that come in greater numbers using nature gems. Greate and a effectent use of nature gems spending if you have a good bless for them and desperate need lots of troops.

• Summon Jade Serpent: 3 Conj 4.2 ( Jade Serpentx1) a big bag of hit points that's a sacred standard and a high strength poison bit. Mix some into troops to improve their morale and way to kill high armored enemies.

• Summon Tlaloque: 60 Conj 7.4 ( Tlaloque of the East, Tlaloque of the South, Tlaloque of the West, Tlaloque of the North). Great dump for your Water gems in the late game. Often don't see one unless in a longer game as Mictlan often have other pressing research priorities then reaching Conj 7,

• Summon Monster Toads: 2 Conj 5 8 (summon 3 Monster Toad). Sacred Tramplers that spread poison with their Poisonous Skin and Poisonous Cloud. Likely to Die, but will kill formation as the toads will suicidally trample to the middle of it to spread the poison cloud.

• Contact Couatl: 40 Conj 6.11 ( Couatlx1)

• Bind Beast Bats: 8 Blood 2.1 ( Beast Batx3). Come online early in-game. not as good fighters as Ozelotl but deal a significant amount of fatigue if they can wound with their poisonous bit. Mixing in some can quickly put monsters to sleep if you can overcome their prot and defenses.

• Bind Jaguar Fiends: 16 Blood 4.11 ( Ozelotlx3). Your greatest damage-dealing troops, boasting six rather-decent attacks to a flying square. You'll want to spam a lot of them for your armies once your blood economy is set up.

• Contact Civateteo: 36 Blood 5.22 ( Civateteox1). You need your other nation blood mage summons to make her but she is a great stealth Demon army raider. Also, a Reanimator Priest to free spawn some extra Longdead during downtime.

• Bind Tzitzimitl: 10 Blood 6.22 ( Tzitzimitlx1). Moon Priest can summon these demons which are mini evocations mages in a Demon's body. Lot protection but great at being artily, Hurling their steller bolts.

• Contact Tlahuelpuchi: 42 Blood 6.3 ( Tlahuelpuchix1). a Demon Assasin. Ok if you need a Death mage now and don't have the time to Reaserch Blood 7.

• Contact Onaqui: 101 Blood 7.4 ( Onaquix1, Beast Batx3). Summon a stronger blood Death mage than the Tlahuelpuchi, being a few boosts from summoning Vampire Lords. Onaqui are 2311100% mages who will freespawn a few Beast Bat each turn in friendly Dominion.

• Rain of Jaguars: 40 Blood 8.62 ( Ozelotlx14+[lv]). A late-game but more efficient way to mass Ozelotls, cutting the price down by almost half (not to mention the mage turns). This is something you should aim for as the end approaches, because of how good Ozelotls are, though you may need to Empower someone in Blood 1-3 times.

• Jade Knife Const 2, 55, 11: grants useer Adept Sacrificer, granting you +2 priest levels when using blood slaves to expand your domions.

This is probably the most difficult section to get consensus for. Describe how strong the nation is during expansion, the early, mid and late game, and what makes it strong/weak at each of those points. This should give readers an idea of where the weaknesses of a nation lie (if they have not been shown already) and when to take advantage of a nation's strengths.

List some example expansion strategies here. If a strong bless or pretender is required then leave the specifics for the pretender section.

List some example pretender builds. Try to use the following format to keep authorship and pretender design rationale clear.

youtube of someone discussing the nation
guide page on steam??
forum thread or AAR

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia