Just a little fun fact for anyone curious, Muuch translates from Maya as frog or toad, Chak translates into red. So the sacreds are literally just "red toads". Also interestingly, Bacab your cap only mages, are named after the Bacab deities in Mayan mythology of which there were 4, one for each direction, and they were associated with rains, the sky, and water beneath the earth, which is fitting given they're water/earth mages. Your other sacred the Wo' Muuch is a bit harder to decipher as Wo' is the referring to the second month in the mayan calendar. So the best I can figure is they're referring to the Wo' Muuch age which is 220 and is much older than any other unit in Xibalbas line up.
When you say it refers to their age to mean as like an elder? Saw a random horoscope for the Mayans that said Wo' stands for mysticism and frogs. It goes on to describe character traits like transcendence, perception, and wisdom which might be things that come with age but I'd consider the source dubious at best as it's about horoscopes.
@@DarkSideBrownie That’s where it gets tricky, there’s 32 different Mayan languages divided into 6 groups. So it very well could have something to do with concepts like transcendence or wisdom, especially when you take into account the Mayan superstitions on various times of the year. Words in their vocabulary often have multiple unrelated meanings. They even have different variations and names for their months/calendars so nothing is concrete here without a comment from Illwinter on what they were going for with the naming. All that being said, I was basing my thoughts on the literal translations from the Mayan hieroglyphs. And Wo’ in a broader sense can be interpreted as “second”. That combined with the lore of the Wo’ Muuch which states they’re the oldest of the muuch and direct descendants of the invading Atlantians. I took to mean as they were the second generation. Or the second after the Atlantians. It really could mean a multitude of things, and I’d love to hear from someone that has spent more time studying Yucatec/Mayan languages than I have.
The cold-blooded thing. Bats, while warm blooded, don't maintain high body temperatures when not active. In addition, bats are incredibly susceptible to cold due to their wing structure. EDIT: bats don't maintain their body temperature at all, the mechanics of flight heat up their body while flying, so they are in fact cold blooded. The muuch, on the other hand, are not actual toads, they are atlantians, which are not cold blooded.
So give the bats negative cold resistance/susceptibility to cold. That's the correct mechanic to use. The cold-blooded tag still makes no thematic sense. Also, see the comment stating that Muuch translates from Mayan as toad. I'm ok with them not having the cold-blooded tag, but if there *were* a warm-blooded tag and they had it, I'd be equally jarred by it. For a game so invested in immersion and lore at the expense of balanced mechanics, this nation lands like a belly slap when making the dive. Frankly, they should just rename the cold-blooded tag to something else so that it doesn't trigger those of us who are pedantic about this stuff.
I like the suggestion to switch cold blooded to a cold weakness, not just for bats, in general maybe. I don't recall how cold malus interacts with a cold climate, but perhaps it should cause extra fatigue/encumbrance.
The Chak Muuch Assassins can be blessed pretty easily with the Flask of Holy Water. With an earth random Bacab you've got hammers and that makes spamming flasks a breeze.
Regarding the cold-blooded bats, I believe that's based on the original mythology the nation was derived from. I can't find the exact story right now but IIRC the House of Bats was one of the tests a legendary maya hero had to pass to get access to the lords of the underworld, and cold was part of the solution he came up with.
Something that is often overlooked with the standard vs bronze muuch warriors: the standard versions have 12 vs 8 map move, and much less encumbrance. I've actually found this makes the standard muuch spear warriors a better choice most of the time, as they let you dump sloth and the greater mobility is really noticeable. Also, MA Xib super fun to play in DE. Their new spells are *chef kiss* and perfectly complement their otherwise awkward pathing. Also also, there was some economic analysis of temp scales done on the forum some time ago. For heat 1 nations, cold 2 is significantly more brutal in terms of economic damage - it's like 4 equivalent negative scales worth for cold 2 while only 1.5 equivalent negative scales for heat 3. . I tested both forms of Xib for MP and ended up picking heat because it's really very noticeable how much worse cold is for the nation. You also strongly telegraph your build if your opponents are savvy, as you're essentially locked into fatigue play rushing.
@LucidTactics Just did some singleplayer testing - holy shit the sacred chak muuch dart throwers are the shit - with a +7 strength bless (still with +8 scales) - they shred even heavy cav with four 19 damage poisoning darts and their spear deals 15poison damage on top of that
Wish it was feasible to get a weapon-bless on them, there's not many ranged sacreds, but there's really no good chassis for it; you'd want Thundering Weapons but there's only one Air chassis and it's a pretty average titan.
While the Ah Ha' are a bit too flimsy to thug without heavy gearing, one thing they do well is be elite killers/flankers in an army. As you said, Xib has issues with killing power, but a halfdozen Ah Ha' with frost brands or greatswords of sharpness doing Ironskin>Quicken Self>Attack on a flank can quickly chop up a lot of enemies.
In my experience the best all round Ma Xib build is an awake Snake Lady with Larger,blood surge poison res 5 and O0 P0 H3 G1 T2 M3. Snake lady covers your expansion and gives you more blood options later. Growth 1 is mitigated by blood fecundity. Larger/blood surge makes your sacred toad mages thuggable. The size 3 toad mages with larger can even do heavy thugging with regen rings and they can cast most of the personal elemental resistance spells.Even the Ah'as can be thugged pretty cheap with a lion pelt/armor of knights and some trample boots or a frost brand. Nuetral prod/order scales let you recruit good chunks of the better armored frog troops too and lets you recruit a decent amount of WoMuuch. This nation deserves more love cheers Lucid. Toads forever.
Please please show me how to play this nation! I've only ever gotten spanked playing these guys and getting into a dominant position is so hard. You can't really do it in the early game, unless you get cave provinces you're going to have a hard early mid game. And by the time the mid-mid game begins you're not the strongest.
If I my add a few things that may have been over looked or I at lest think is interesting. One is Xibalba's unique spells particularly the gifts death get you personal luck and blood gets you personal regen 10. Blood is the most interesting since you can impower anything in blood and give it access to regeneration. As for the dimir toad there ability to get stigian skin, skeletal body, and luck makes them pretty resilient underwater, on to that they're excellent dust to dust spammers I feel the decision on what frog to make your research monkeys depends mostly on who your neighbors are. Finaly when it comes to pretenders I prefer high order and getting fire 4 out side of getting sacreds the biggest constraints on your forts will be recruitment points I think 450 gold and 220 resources can get you a full army of stealth muuch's plus there commander basically the price of your slow recruit can get you a 40 strength army. As for the fire paths I just like the cross path with water and blood, I think the biggest problem Xibalba faces is the low attack stat and lastly I feel devils function better in high heat I'm biased. Ok rant over can't wait to see you put them to the test.
Assassin expansion is really good early, your assassins will almost guarentee kill anything they get into melee with (baring heavy cav) but most indies just get mulched. The underwater spear+shield toad has a much better shield than the regular toad troops for not much more resources. They have equivalent armour to the leather dudes as well. You also forgot to mention that no toads wear hats.... slingers (and archers) love fighting toads! Your toads have weak shields so a lot of the time the arrows just break the shield and the next volley ruins your day. Bacab's are also good heavy thug chassis, they actually have the base stats that the cheaper mages are lacking. The jungle Muuch scout is also great because it has a lot more mobility than other scouts, it has swamp and forest survival, is amphibious and has swimming so it can move in ways that a regular indie scout cannot. And you guarentee them in every forest without a fort. You should definately consider them as an advantage.
It seems like a Bat nation should be able to attack at night. So surface battles where they attack should have an automatic Darkness cast. Especially in a storm castle. Since this would be a pretty big change maybe add a sight spell or two at low levels in some Fire or astral school.
I think if they split K'uhul into two mages like the Ah Ha and Ah Itz the nation would function a lot better. Right now you kinda overpay for either death or earth paths which are stuck at level 1. A chassis with guaranteed water 2, earth 2/death 2 with randoms of water, earth/death or nature would be much more playable.
just started playing them in sp and they are pretty fun. im gonna suffer through them in mutliplayer soon too, so this overview gives some well needed perspective. i dont like bats in real life they are creepy asf but the xibalban batman seem chill i would sit down with them.
34:08 well, first of all: those "frogs" are mutated Atlanteans (not that it'd change much if those count as fish, which are also cold blooded), but in Dominions "Cold Blooded" means that they can't handle cold very well and not that they're actually cold blooded, small mammals can still lose theire body temperature pretty quick while fish thrive in cold oceans (as long as the water doesn't freeze around them, just the surface is fine), also remember that Atlantis goes full cold in the Late Age, that wouldn't go well if so close relatives couldn't handle the cold at all so basically I'm saying that being weak to cold makes sense for the small Zotz while the likely actually cold blooded Atlantean descendants probably already adapted to cold temperatures in the oceans, just stop thinking of them as actual frogs or I might lecture you about a frog that spends the winter being frozen solid and doesn't seem much affected afterwards
Doesn't seem like a nation that needs a lot of resources so I'd keep it neutral or sloth one, and maybe put some points elsewhere. Especially if you plan on phasing out many of the troops later on.
the muuch kuhul would be unreal if they had an extra path in D or E. All of the randoms would be very useful then, justifying their high cost. (Not sure if you mention this just commenting as I watch)
Yeah, flyers losing first strike from dom4 totally ruined Xibalba for me. MA Xibalba is now ocean nation stuck on land and capital province being the most important one you are put in quite a dasgerous surroundings early on. And later on lacking hats on your troops is still an issue. What a shitty nation indeed
Just a little fun fact for anyone curious, Muuch translates from Maya as frog or toad, Chak translates into red. So the sacreds are literally just "red toads". Also interestingly, Bacab your cap only mages, are named after the Bacab deities in Mayan mythology of which there were 4, one for each direction, and they were associated with rains, the sky, and water beneath the earth, which is fitting given they're water/earth mages. Your other sacred the Wo' Muuch is a bit harder to decipher as Wo' is the referring to the second month in the mayan calendar. So the best I can figure is they're referring to the Wo' Muuch age which is 220 and is much older than any other unit in Xibalbas line up.
When you say it refers to their age to mean as like an elder? Saw a random horoscope for the Mayans that said Wo' stands for mysticism and frogs. It goes on to describe character traits like transcendence, perception, and wisdom which might be things that come with age but I'd consider the source dubious at best as it's about horoscopes.
@@DarkSideBrownie That’s where it gets tricky, there’s 32 different Mayan languages divided into 6 groups. So it very well could have something to do with concepts like transcendence or wisdom, especially when you take into account the Mayan superstitions on various times of the year.
Words in their vocabulary often have multiple unrelated meanings. They even have different variations and names for their months/calendars so nothing is concrete here without a comment from Illwinter on what they were going for with the naming.
All that being said, I was basing my thoughts on the literal translations from the Mayan hieroglyphs. And Wo’ in a broader sense can be interpreted as “second”. That combined with the lore of the Wo’ Muuch which states they’re the oldest of the muuch and direct descendants of the invading Atlantians. I took to mean as they were the second generation. Or the second after the Atlantians.
It really could mean a multitude of things, and I’d love to hear from someone that has spent more time studying Yucatec/Mayan languages than I have.
@@justalittlerest Still a fantastic reply. Thanks!
Wo could be something like with TES cats that they are predestined to a role within society based on the time of year they were born
The cold-blooded thing. Bats, while warm blooded, don't maintain high body temperatures when not active. In addition, bats are incredibly susceptible to cold due to their wing structure. EDIT: bats don't maintain their body temperature at all, the mechanics of flight heat up their body while flying, so they are in fact cold blooded.
The muuch, on the other hand, are not actual toads, they are atlantians, which are not cold blooded.
So give the bats negative cold resistance/susceptibility to cold. That's the correct mechanic to use. The cold-blooded tag still makes no thematic sense. Also, see the comment stating that Muuch translates from Mayan as toad. I'm ok with them not having the cold-blooded tag, but if there *were* a warm-blooded tag and they had it, I'd be equally jarred by it. For a game so invested in immersion and lore at the expense of balanced mechanics, this nation lands like a belly slap when making the dive. Frankly, they should just rename the cold-blooded tag to something else so that it doesn't trigger those of us who are pedantic about this stuff.
@@WadeStarNah cold blooded makes sense, as cold induces torpor in bats just like in reptiles and bats are effectively cold blooded when not flying.
I like the suggestion to switch cold blooded to a cold weakness, not just for bats, in general maybe. I don't recall how cold malus interacts with a cold climate, but perhaps it should cause extra fatigue/encumbrance.
The Chak Muuch Assassins can be blessed pretty easily with the Flask of Holy Water. With an earth random Bacab you've got hammers and that makes spamming flasks a breeze.
33:48 Thank you for getting to this. The warm-blooded amphibians, cold-blooded mammals has always driven me batty with this nation, pun intended.
Regarding the cold-blooded bats, I believe that's based on the original mythology the nation was derived from. I can't find the exact story right now but IIRC the House of Bats was one of the tests a legendary maya hero had to pass to get access to the lords of the underworld, and cold was part of the solution he came up with.
Don't forget Xilbalba is uniquely suited to fatigue plays because they can cast quagmire every single battle!
Something that is often overlooked with the standard vs bronze muuch warriors: the standard versions have 12 vs 8 map move, and much less encumbrance. I've actually found this makes the standard muuch spear warriors a better choice most of the time, as they let you dump sloth and the greater mobility is really noticeable.
Also, MA Xib super fun to play in DE. Their new spells are *chef kiss* and perfectly complement their otherwise awkward pathing.
Also also, there was some economic analysis of temp scales done on the forum some time ago. For heat 1 nations, cold 2 is significantly more brutal in terms of economic damage - it's like 4 equivalent negative scales worth for cold 2 while only 1.5 equivalent negative scales for heat 3. . I tested both forms of Xib for MP and ended up picking heat because it's really very noticeable how much worse cold is for the nation. You also strongly telegraph your build if your opponents are savvy, as you're essentially locked into fatigue play rushing.
@LucidTactics Just did some singleplayer testing - holy shit the sacred chak muuch dart throwers are the shit - with a +7 strength bless (still with +8 scales) - they shred even heavy cav with four 19 damage poisoning darts and their spear deals 15poison damage on top of that
ah cool!
Wish it was feasible to get a weapon-bless on them, there's not many ranged sacreds, but there's really no good chassis for it; you'd want Thundering Weapons but there's only one Air chassis and it's a pretty average titan.
You forgot the most important thing:
XIBALBA STANDS.
Bird nation with amphibious troops. You know what we need to do.
Official petition to have a Surfing Bird themed Pretender
While the Ah Ha' are a bit too flimsy to thug without heavy gearing, one thing they do well is be elite killers/flankers in an army. As you said, Xib has issues with killing power, but a halfdozen Ah Ha' with frost brands or greatswords of sharpness doing Ironskin>Quicken Self>Attack on a flank can quickly chop up a lot of enemies.
In my experience the best all round Ma Xib build is an awake Snake Lady with Larger,blood surge poison res 5 and O0 P0 H3 G1 T2 M3. Snake lady covers your expansion and gives you more blood options later. Growth 1 is mitigated by blood fecundity. Larger/blood surge makes your sacred toad mages thuggable. The size 3 toad mages with larger can even do heavy thugging with regen rings and they can cast most of the personal elemental resistance spells.Even the Ah'as can be thugged pretty cheap with a lion pelt/armor of knights and some trample boots or a frost brand. Nuetral prod/order scales let you recruit good chunks of the better armored frog troops too and lets you recruit a decent amount of WoMuuch. This nation deserves more love cheers Lucid. Toads forever.
Please please show me how to play this nation!
I've only ever gotten spanked playing these guys and getting into a dominant position is so hard. You can't really do it in the early game, unless you get cave provinces you're going to have a hard early mid game. And by the time the mid-mid game begins you're not the strongest.
16:06
"you may say, 'okay but what is it good for' and the answer is probably not muuch" :D
"And then we get to our first big toad mages and these guys are pretty cool"
So would you say the Muuch K'uhul are much cool ?
If I my add a few things that may have been over looked or I at lest think is interesting. One is Xibalba's unique spells particularly the gifts death get you personal luck and blood gets you personal regen 10.
Blood is the most interesting since you can impower anything in blood and give it access to regeneration.
As for the dimir toad there ability to get stigian skin, skeletal body, and luck makes them pretty resilient underwater, on to that they're excellent dust to dust spammers I feel the decision on what frog to make your research monkeys depends mostly on who your neighbors are.
Finaly when it comes to pretenders I prefer high order and getting fire 4 out side of getting sacreds the biggest constraints on your forts will be recruitment points I think 450 gold and 220 resources can get you a full army of stealth muuch's plus there commander basically the price of your slow recruit can get you a 40 strength army. As for the fire paths I just like the cross path with water and blood, I think the biggest problem Xibalba faces is the low attack stat and lastly I feel devils function better in high heat I'm biased.
Ok rant over can't wait to see you put them to the test.
after watching this video I feel strongly that ma xibalba is actually a natgen nation
Assassin expansion is really good early, your assassins will almost guarentee kill anything they get into melee with (baring heavy cav) but most indies just get mulched.
The underwater spear+shield toad has a much better shield than the regular toad troops for not much more resources. They have equivalent armour to the leather dudes as well. You also forgot to mention that no toads wear hats.... slingers (and archers) love fighting toads! Your toads have weak shields so a lot of the time the arrows just break the shield and the next volley ruins your day.
Bacab's are also good heavy thug chassis, they actually have the base stats that the cheaper mages are lacking.
The jungle Muuch scout is also great because it has a lot more mobility than other scouts, it has swamp and forest survival, is amphibious and has swimming so it can move in ways that a regular indie scout cannot. And you guarentee them in every forest without a fort. You should definately consider them as an advantage.
It seems like a Bat nation should be able to attack at night. So surface battles where they attack should have an automatic Darkness cast. Especially in a storm castle. Since this would be a pretty big change maybe add a sight spell or two at low levels in some Fire or astral school.
I like overviews of non obvious nations
I think if they split K'uhul into two mages like the Ah Ha and Ah Itz the nation would function a lot better. Right now you kinda overpay for either death or earth paths which are stuck at level 1. A chassis with guaranteed water 2, earth 2/death 2 with randoms of water, earth/death or nature would be much more playable.
Hey Lucid, I'm thinking of geting back into Dominions... Can you link me to the discord so I can get in a game?
just started playing them in sp and they are pretty fun. im gonna suffer through them in mutliplayer soon too, so this overview gives some well needed perspective. i dont like bats in real life they are creepy asf but the xibalban batman seem chill i would sit down with them.
34:08 well, first of all: those "frogs" are mutated Atlanteans (not that it'd change much if those count as fish, which are also cold blooded), but in Dominions "Cold Blooded" means that they can't handle cold very well and not that they're actually cold blooded, small mammals can still lose theire body temperature pretty quick while fish thrive in cold oceans (as long as the water doesn't freeze around them, just the surface is fine), also remember that Atlantis goes full cold in the Late Age, that wouldn't go well if so close relatives couldn't handle the cold at all
so basically I'm saying that being weak to cold makes sense for the small Zotz while the likely actually cold blooded Atlantean descendants probably already adapted to cold temperatures in the oceans, just stop thinking of them as actual frogs or I might lecture you about a frog that spends the winter being frozen solid and doesn't seem much affected afterwards
Doesn't seem like a nation that needs a lot of resources so I'd keep it neutral or sloth one, and maybe put some points elsewhere. Especially if you plan on phasing out many of the troops later on.
I wonder how a ghost king expander would work on this nation. I'd reckon it'd be funny
the muuch kuhul would be unreal if they had an extra path in D or E. All of the randoms would be very useful then, justifying their high cost. (Not sure if you mention this just commenting as I watch)
LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hey man the Muuch have enough problems don’t go around sayin they need to be cold blooded too
Yeee
R'lee-yeh not reyleh lol
no one cares buddy since no one actually speaks this names and the devs made em all up its not big deal if people dont say em right
Yeah, flyers losing first strike from dom4 totally ruined Xibalba for me. MA Xibalba is now ocean nation stuck on land and capital province being the most important one you are put in quite a dasgerous surroundings early on. And later on lacking hats on your troops is still an issue. What a shitty nation indeed
:D