Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

CP: Actually, regarding the information we have on 0-Blood hunters using SDR, I tend to agree with Archaeolept. We can't say that it hurts the chances of gaining Blood Slaves. I think we can say that it doesn't help.

I'll look into collecting my own data and give some results, with analysis. I'll look at both SDR usage and also the effect of the magic site frequency of the game. (I believe that this also affects the gems you get from random events.)

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

I do agreed about the lost tax gold being a significant factor when comparing different hunters but I didn't quite understand how did you come up the above mentioned new upkeep costs. I know it has to do with the income of the province but just couldn't find the formula for it. If you wouldn't mind sharing :).

Good points by Baalz also. Cheers

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

I'm actually also curious why that 5k pop province is generating 70 income. Either there is an Arena there, or you have very high scales, because it should be ~50 income with even scales.

It's true that we have so far been only focusing on the cost of the hunters, but I thought that was what this thread was for, because regardless of your scales, the cost of removing taxation will always be fairly static. That is to say, within any given layout, 5k pop will represent X% of your income no matter what. Since that cannot be directly influenced in game, the only thing that can be influenced, is what type and how many Blood Hunters are used.

To put it another way, think of your tax loss as "overhead" and your Blood Hunter upkeep as "operating costs". You can directly influence your operating costs by hiring poorly trained migrant laborers (ie- scouts), but overhead is the cost of doing business - you either pay it, or you do not do business. :p

I think the only time that tax loss becomes a major consideration is, when (this happens to me too often) all of your provinces are either <3k or >8k in pop, forcing you to choose between the less effective, or the higher cost options. Also sometimes I get so "lucky" and most of my ~5k provinces have Arenas and Gold Mines and such on them. Gee, thanks. :re:


Of course, it cannot be said enough - the use of Blood, where applicable, is essentially (nearly always) cost effective. That is, you can almost always do more with the slaves than with the gold, regardless of other factors. The trick is, how easily can you generate the gold that you DO need, relative to your other Blood competitors? The upkeep on your Blood Hunters is a very large factor in that equation, and is magnified by your scales, which cannot be mitigated in-game, and which it must be assumed you had adequate reasoning for. ;)

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

The Hidden Gold Mine or Gem provinces should be blood hunted IMO, but tax at 100% and patrol down to 3000 pop, then stop hunting there, but crank taxes to 200% and patrol down to zero population. That's how you can generate the gold you need.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Quite right, I was going by memory how much a 5k population province yield, and since I generally have good scales it comes out around 70 (maybe a touch less). You are totally correct that scales really change the costs.

Agreed. However I just wanted to show that depending upon how one hunts blood, the difference is not nearly as pronounced as one would think based upon a comparison of blood hunter upkeep costs. Actually, the lost taxes dominate the costs blood hunting in many cases.

I could have made a booboo ...

Jotun Skratti (16.66*2 + 70)/16 ~= 6.5
Mitclan Priest (2.66*2 + 70)/14 ~= 5.4

But as was noted above some of the assumptions (like good scales) may be incorrect. Actually it looks like scales matter more than how efficient your blood hunters are, assuming you want steady state blood hunting.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

"Actually, the lost taxes dominate the costs blood hunting in many cases."

yes, exactly, and why scouts are such poor replacements for real bloodhunters. Also why the patch was such a serious nerf to Hinnom's blood power.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Empower costs ~35 blood slaves. 25 slave booster costs ~32 before forging bonus (if any). The increase between B2 and B3 (effective) is about 1.4 blood slaves. 25 turns for empower. ~23 for brazen vessel. Now, boosting further could be done in a cost conscious way with a blood thorn, even to B4 effect or just 1 more B for any B3+ blood hunter. In those case the RoR is equal to the forge cost of the booster. Armor of souls with a 50% forge bonus takes only 25 (adding the cost of the forger's turn) turns to pay off for even your b6 souped up warlock.

Even a modest 25% forge bonus makes the bloodthorn and brazen vessel attractive, especially for low level blood hunters, especially earlier in the game, if you're in a good position.

Also, saving can be achieved if you only forge on turns you've been unlucky and caused an unhealthy rise in unrest.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Ah but the limitation on blood hunting is unrest... so it doesn't really matter whether you are hunting with b2 or b10.

I'd also point out that another big cost of blood hunting, at least early on is the commander slot it takes to produce the blood hunter.

Right so if you are having to keep 2 fort lab temple provinces occupied for 15 turns making blood hunters that is a cost.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

I have successfully necroed this thread. I think, and it seems to me, that each blood hunter, regardless of success, creates some unrest, so, what you want is a few high level blood hunters. With a blood font drawing 25 slaves a turn you can almost count on unrest even at 0% tax... yes, but the FoB is awesome at blood hunting... Also, this should make it so that you either need less turns to recruit blood hunters (less likely) or will be able to field blood hunters in more locations (more likely). You can use scouts to ferry blood slaves around, which can be really important in combat situations.

Also, the best blood hunters are ussually decent mages you want to have. And buffing their capacity to cast makes them even better, AND at some point the PD plus them might well be enough to consider the province defended (especially because they probably have blood slaves).

and remember:
"Undisciplined jailers have defiled some of your blood slaves."

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

What's a blood font? Gothic hand with a bit of drip?

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

?????
Empower does not cost ~35 slaves. Blood boosters cost 25 before forge bonus.

Waiting #20 turns for a return on investment is rarely worthwhile in MP. If you're talking about equipping, say, 20 blood hunters with thorns or skulls, the 500 slaves (~375 with hammers) you just burned could probably have been used to summon a demon army and conquer another player (or to prevent an invasion).

See above. And if you have a B6 warlock, why isn't he doing something like making Soul Contracts rather than blood hunting? If you've boosted all your warlocks to B6, why haven't you won the game yet?

They're vastly less attractive than dowsing rods, whatever you do. If for some reason you have an extremely limited supply of blood hunters, then maybe you can afford to blow your slave reserves into boosters for hunting use. Otherwise, the spend is less effective, especially in terms of return on investment, than having more hunters and only using rods.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Ya, whatever, I'm not going to deal with this whole thing you typed out, but just mention that empowering a guy who is a blood hunter costs the blood slaves he would have found that turn, so it costs ~35 slaves.

Yada, yada, yada...

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

So you're ignoring the slaves spent in the empowerment? That seems odd. And how many blood hunters get 35 slaves/turn?

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

It costs 30 slaves to empower a B1, say, Mictlan priest. He probably could have gotten 4-5 blood slaves with a dousing rod.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

That makes more sense. Why not compare the return on investment from spending the same number of slaves on dowsing rods for new blood hunters (again, assume Mictlan Priests)?

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

That probably pays for itself the next 2 turns. 50% * 5 = 2.5/turn

The first turn pays for most of the SDR, and the next one pays more than it off, unless, as occasionally happens, they don't find any, in which cast it takes 3 turns. The probability of it taking 3 turns, for any specific priest is ~ (1 - ((.9)^3))

If he used a forging assist, it would likely be paid back the first turn. ~10% of the time it would not.

If you roll the numbers into an aggregate you'd endup with a ror of just over 2 turns without a hammer, and just over 1 with one.

The RoR is much longer with a B2 or B3 forger and lower if you use Forge of the Ancients and a forging item on a non-blood mage to make the item.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Because it gets harder to compare. You have to figure in the costs of buying the priests, of having more provinces being hunted and thus producing less gold. The opportunity cost of using those castle slots to buy blood hunters instead of researchers or combat mages.
I agree in general, especially with nations like Mictlan who have cheap blood hunters, the other costs are generally low.
I can see two cases where you might want to empower hunters: Where you only have expensive B1 mages, like Vanjarls. Or capital only ones - Warlocks? Then the cost of getting more blood hunters is much higher.

Or when you are low on provinces to hunt. Few higher level blood mages seem to generate less unrest/slave than more low level hunters, so you might want to concentrate.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Just keep in mind that you can "slave hoarde" by increasing the blood level of your mages, if you are in a position that makes it prudent to do so. There is a real RoR on each level you boost them. That third point of effective blood pays off fairly fast, especially with a decent forging discount.

Also, your slaves aren't doing you any good sitting in the dungeon, at some point you need to work harder to keep them working for you.

It isn't so much how many gems you have, as how fast and which ones you can spend.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Realize this is a deep resurrection of a post in a topic that was already necroed, but just getting back into Dominions after some time away and wanted to comment on this.

LA Ulm's Vampire Counts are the vampires I think of as blood hunters - 44 blood slaves for a B2 hunter, or 49 blood slaves for the equivalent of a B3 via an SDR. Granted, from a pure blood economy perspective they are notably less efficient than Mictlan's Tlahuelpuchi, however:

a. Mictlan's comes at Blood 6 while LA Ulm's comes at Blood 0, which makes them available at very different points in the game.
b. Vampire Counts are a spammable unit that can take on many roles throughout the game, while Tlahuelpuchi are likely only worth their cost as bloodhunters and in rare cases assassins (as they compete against Infernal Disease at the same blood level). In particular, on top of the advantages of immortality, regeneration, and slightly superior stats across the board, Vampire Counts make significantly better demon leaders than do Tlahuelpuchi.
c. the freespawn of the Counts plays an integral role in LA Ulm armies as chaff for Ulm's excellent Rangers. (However: does someone who knows the game better than I do know if thralls have gold upkeep? Used to have EDI's database bookmarked, can't find it now)
d. Vampire Counts are likely the best that LA Ulm can do for a bloodhunter, while the extreme efficiency of the Mictlan Priest makes him quite difficult to out-do (save for MA Mictlan, as mentioned elsewhere).

All that said, anyone better at math than I am want to throw in on efficiency of maintenance-free summons as bloodhunters? As more recent posts are looking at opportunity costs of bloodhunting, we should be able to calculate an average initial gold expenditure per bloodslave, then multiply that by number of bloodslaves spent to summon the creature. That will give us the total "lifetime" gold cost of the summons, which can then be used comparatively to see how long it takes a particular summon to surpass a non-summoned hunter, both in terms of his initial gold cost AND upkeep (earlier comparisons seemed to bypass the former, which does matter). How long, for example, would it take for a Vampire Count to out-efficient a Mictlan Priest? A decade? A century?

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

They have a gold cost of 1, which would, in huge numbers, lead to some upkeep.

Also, Edi's database is here: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42819.

It's also linked in his .sig, so if you find any posts by Edi, you can find the db, assuming you don't have signature display disabled.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Utimately determining a sound aggregate equavelence between gems, gold, blood slaves, RP turns, castle turns, etc, is going to require both a short, mid, long term prospectus (much of which is educated guessing and diplomatic specualtion), and a good executive determination.

For instance, if you have growth scales, but are penned in, then biding your time might make sense, whereas if you had death scales and were penned in, upping your blood levels would make no sense at all, probably regardless of your forging costs.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Really, as a general rule, don't empower bloodhunters beyond B1 or give them boosters. B1 noncap hunters w/SDRs are perfectly viable for most nations. If you are hunting with scouts, go ahead and empower a few to B1, but no further except on those you want to forge/cast rituals with. Boosters almost always have a better use than as hunt assists.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

They are worth ~1.5 slaves for an effectively B2 hunter (a B1 hunder with a SDR or just a B2 hunter) and ~1 for an effectively B3 hunter. With a mad forge bonus, early in the game, or if your need for a higher level caster/forger is on the margin, it might make sense. Note that I just assume a SDR. It might be useful to figure out the other booster that come earlier...

In practice I've never used blood slaves in this way, but I have at times had a somewhat large excess of them. Also, it goes to show that you should really have your blood booster equipped on someone all the time. Finally, I've never had a forge bonus mad high enough bring this down below 10 turns. If you have the proper magic site, plus some items, and maybe even forge of the ancients, this could make sense, especially if it isn't deep into the game and you're in good position.

Also, because I mostly play 2-player, and the games are really very aggressive... so much so that even clam hoarding can be harmful.

....


Armor of souls is lvl 2 and increases b1 hunters harvest by ~((2+3.5)*.9)-(1+3.5)*.5)=2.7slave/turn It takes a B5 hunter 1 turn to forge, at a cost of (probably a pretender turn + oppurtunity of most of a soul contract) and 5+3.5=8.5slave, for a total of 48.5 w/o the dwarven hammer and 38.5 with the dwarven hammer.

48.5/2.7=17.9 which is slower than a soul contract.

38.5/2.7=14.25 turns = now, this begins to pay off somewhat before a soul contract would - whatever benefit you get from the devils in the mean time, but really, that sould contract would not yet have produce a squad really viable squad (15+).

Now, if you couldn't get dousing rods, but could forge the lvl4 booster with a dwarven hammer for 17 slaves + 4+3.5 = 24.5 slaves/2.7 = 9 turns to pay off.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

I don't empower scouts anyway. Once you've got enough to empower, it's almost always better to empower a mage who'll give you a useful path combination. Then they can hunt/forge/cast as needed.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

talking about anything over a 25% forge bonus is really just outside the realm of normality. Also, there's no reason that you HAVE to use those slaves you've got stocked up. You could easily just spam some RoT/HFH/3RS or whatever, since you'll almost certainly not have that big a stock if you're not a blood power.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

In one game, I spammed HFH and lesser horrors, but it wasn't effective, and we left the game at a draw, because I had gotten sloppy with my provicial money and slave management and squandered my lead.