Re: Blood Indies
 

Scouts depend on the age.

They're always cheap, but you need a ton of them to bootstrap blood with any efficiency. In EA, I consider myself lucky if I find an indy scout province in the initial expansion. And I do want to use some of them for scouting.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Rare site gives Circle Masters, 2D/2B - it's amazing for jumping into Blood.

Also Lore Masters get 3x100% picks of all paths, so good chance of single Blood on them, and small chance of 2B.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Thanks for the answers so far.
A related question - does a saguine dousing rod also have an effect on someone who has no magic at all? And what kind of effect does it have (blood +1 for hunting only)?

Re: Blood Indies
 

Sanguine rods only help blood mages.

Re: Blood Indies
 

You could add "Ogre Playground" site after next patch. They won't defend the province they're in, but they could be recruited. It'd be nice to have a big mod which added all kinds of modded units (or existing units that could use some help, like drakes or fire lords). The problem would be in adding lots of sites without changing the gem economy too much in any direction.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Sanguine rods give a +4 to your level for hunting. Good hunting indeed. :D

Re: Blood Indies
 

Source?

I've never heard the rods give more than +1. Use seems to bear that out as well.

Re: Blood Indies
 

+4 to hunting level would mean that even a B1 mage never fails in a good province (over 5000+ pop and 0 unrest). Dousing Rods aren't that good.

SDR are supposed to give +1 extra for blood mages, and I think that's what the manual says.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Hmmm personally I don't think it's worth the effort of going into blood and do the research there if you aren't a blood nation.. working with indies for your blood income.. seems unviable.. first get some slaves with your lousy indies and then forge SDR, then you can still only get one weak bloodmage a turn etc etc.. why even bother and why not focus on the strenghts of what you do have?

Re: Blood Indies
 

Depends, Ulm has plenty of uses for blood without researching blood, which is also true for pretty much all nations with lots of earth mages. Then every nation with expensive old capital mages loves blood.

True if your only blood mage is lore master/spectre/etc. then it is not worthwhile to research blood until all other useful field are researched. But if you do get lucky and stumble upon garnet or blood henge, there are several good blood spells early on, esp. if you are using CBM, which greatly reduced the level and cost for many blood spells.

Lastly blood has some of the best bonus sites.