Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

I am replying to this thread from a completely different meaning of you original question - "To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic".

My answer will also tied to the "Dom III Wishlist" so I should post it there also.

I'll like to see many more elements of the game to be tied to an "Good and Evil" scale. For example, if you were at the extreme evil end of the scale it would benefit your Death and Blood magic but would hamper your Nature and Air. There could even be specific Good and Evil units, items and spells.

So to answer your question, you would use Blood if your were tending toward evil, but not toward good.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Oh, no, not that again... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Venture in this thread if you dare...

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Posted also on the Dom III wishlist:

I see what you mean. Okay, skip Good\holy and Evil\unholy. But relationships between related magic which provide mutual benefits is all I was looking for.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

The Theological aspects although interesting where not really what I was after (this being a strategy game not a role playing one). Thank you Baron and Alneyan for keeping it on track.

I hadn't looked at wish for generating Blood - but then I have not played a game that has reached turn 60 yet (major Newbie). With the mod's following a claim strategy seems to be quite hard (2W and 2S needed) - so the 15-20 mages with SDRs may be the way to go. However with a few growth scales the population depletion should be minimal...?

200-300 slaves a turn by turn 40 should provide for a very strong industrial base to fight any nation. The thought of a military campaign assisted by up to 10 Hordes from Hell being dumped across your poor victims empire each turn should shatter their economy (Gems and Gold), plus make movement almost impossible except for flyers.

So far all the comments have been on how strong Blood is - it lacks battlefield magic is a given, but what are effective strategies against it (and it’s hellish hordes). One that jumps to mind is being able to identify the Blood Factories and shut them down (Fires from afar and the like). Any other ideas?

Goblin.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Well, air battlemagic is good againt all the summons but storm demons (expect demon SCs to be prpared with lightning res., though).

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Vs. the Blood SCs herald lances can work very well. You need a bit blood forging capabilities on your own but then golems with ring of warrior, burning pearl, herald lances and some other items are surprisingly effective vs. blood scs and will also kill lots of devils and the like too.

Vs. the normal devil hordes and the like staff of storms + air magic is very effective as qm said.

Horde from hell raiding can be very effective. As soon as the enemy has a few good units in each province though horde from hell alone won't be enough. The imps have very bad morale so as soon as a few die the rest routs.
Normally 3-5 dead imps from the 25 imps you get with horde from hell are enough and they rout.

1 Sauromancer spamming undeads in every province + a few points of pd should be enough to defend vs. horde from hell 90% of the time.
Horde from hell is available quite early though and thus difficult to counter. Many nations/buildups can get crippled if you rush them with horde from hell spamming imho.

Maybe QM has some good ideas how to defend vs. early horde from hell raiding, i have no good ideas for that apart from playing ryleh/atlantis http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

Well, Ermor and CW pan are pretty good at defending againt it too. Apart from that, just rapid response forces and good guessing, or strike the blood hunting gounds.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

So the answer is have undead (no maintenance and no moral checks) or wipe out their capacity to produce enough blood.
I have noticed that the AI has a fondness for suicide battle groups - ie an army will attack a new place each turn, moving deeper into your territory. This is usually quickly fixed but often blood hunting grounds come under threat. Is the AI actually trying to capture these or just taking an offensive strategy?

Goblin.

Re: To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic
 

personally, i don't find hordes from hell to be too much trouble - they route very easily, and good national pd can often stop one; as well parachuting response squads (air or astral) or just some small roving intercepting bands can work.

if your opponent is using all his blood on hordes, I'd say that's often a good thing as this means he's getting fewer of the blood SC's.