Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Yeah Pangaea got it pretty bad when you consider that even the independent scout has better blood slave/upkeep cost ratio :).

I didn't quite understand what you meant with the term Blood pick and why Kala-mukhas would be better? I would assume Raktapata is the natural blood hunter choice for Lanka since they get the most out of the SDR and have the best slave/upkeep ratio.

And to add some more data, here's the list for the most slaves captured in a single turn by the test groups.

Results for 0-lvl hunters
1 x 0-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 13
2 x 0-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 9
3 x 0-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 16

1 x 0-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 9
2 x 0-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 9
3 x 0-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 20


Results for 1-lvl hunters
1 x 1-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 10
2 x 1-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 18
3 x 1-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 24

1 x 1-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 17
2 x 1-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 21
3 x 1-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 39


Results for 2-lvl hunters
1 x 2-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 15
2 x 2-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 24
3 x 2-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 29

1 x 2-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 15
2 x 2-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 24
3 x 2-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 36


Results for 3-lvl hunters
1 x 3-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 17
2 x 3-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 29
3 x 3-lvl - Most slaves found in single turn: 31

1 x 3-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 13
2 x 3-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 32
3 x 3-lvl w rod - Most slaves found in single turn: 37

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Unfortunately I cant attach the open office calc document where all the raw data and results are but if somebody wants it they can throw me a message and i can email it to you

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

If you want, a statistical analysis on if there is a significant difference in any of these numbers can be done.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Because the Kala-Mukha is 1B + 1NDB. I like the 2B as Blood Hunters, because then I can use them freely, without reliance on the SDR. Since they can reanimate, they can remote search Death, they Preach well as H2, and they get useful minor forging options (always need Bags of Wine!), I feel they are worth the investment. And I forgot it's 33% that get B2, so really they're a good option, depending on how you like to use them.

Also, you can shift to 2 B2+SDR per province, or do a little patrolling, and really start to milk your efficiency. At a certain point, Lanka is happy with enough gold to buy 1 Raksharaja and X Palankashas per turn, as long as you can pull in enough slaves to destroy your foe.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

one point to make about efficiency, is that even unsuccessful lvl 0 bloodhunters cause unrest, so all in all you will be getting rather less blood per province set aside for hunting. There is a greater monetary opportunity cost per blood slave gathered w/ scouts than w/ actual blood mage blood hunters.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

And another angle to consider is the loss in income from the province, not just the upkeep of the mage. Particularly because the more blood hunting provinces you use, the less and less ideal they are - as you start wanting more bloodslaves you start bloodhunting in higher and higher population provinces. The more concentrated your bloodhunters are, the cheaper the bloodslaves (not even taking into account defensive considerations)

For instance, consider two different ways to go using LA Abyssia as an example. Lets say I'm bloodhunting with 2 B4 Abysian warlocks. Lets also say for the sake of argument, that not only do they have SDRs, but they each also have one blood booster which was forged for summonings/forgings and is not being used this turn, so they're effectively bloodhunting at B6. Extrapolating the trend shown in the graph (and that each blood level is supposed to gain you +1 slave) those two bloodhunters are going to pull in 14.6 + 6 = about 21 slaves per turn.

Alternatively you're using sanguine acolytes with SDRs because they seem on the surface to be more cost effective. Nice, cheap, holy blood hunters. Thing is, to get 22 slaves per turn you need 4 of them (plus the same boosters and an extra rod). Problem is, you can't put 4 B2 bloodhunters in one province or the unrest skyrockets. How's that upkeep difference looking as you switch extra provinces over to bloodhunting? This can be an enormous difference if you (for example) have a bunch of wastelands with a few high pop farmlands. You bloodhunting yet another 10k population province, or would you rather have your hunters spinning their wheels in a 3k mountain?

BTW, this is also the real cost in bloodhunting with scouts. Their upkeep is usually cheap compared to the lost income from the province they're bumbling around to eek out a handful of blood slaves.

Oh, also those two extra castle turns to crank out two extra bloodhunters (Warlocks vs acolytes) are not worthless resources.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

However, using Pangaea as an example, it's probably a worthy strat to start a couple typical hunting provinces with Pans, and roll all of those slaves directly into Empowering cheap indies to B1 and having them forge their own SDR. Done right you will need to be more aggressive about hunting to get a really solid income out of it (because of the cost of 53 slaves per hunter), but your gold/slave will be low, and once the machine is in place your blood income will be great, and all of your Pans will be free to do more exciting things.

I had never thought to treat a Blood nation as a non-Blood nation in such a way, I think it has the potential to reach a better middle ground than that of spending 70g/province in upkeep for the 3 Pans in it. :p Compare to the 2g/province upkeep for 3 Scouts with SDR.....

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Would you.. I would really appreciate it!

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

CP: I don't think I'll be able to do it this week, as I have quite a bit of work plus a conference to attend, but I've just now had to review all of the statistical analytical techniques for hypothesis testing.

However, to do any of these, I need the variance of the samples, as well as the means.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

Well, seeing as the rod *says* it requires skill in blood to use - AND the results to date support that conclusion...

I think its pretty clear that SDR inhibit your chances of success. But if you wish to continue giving these rods to people that can't use them - feel free.

Pending a larger sample size, of course.

Re: Cost efficient blood hunting
 

This is actually the most important point about bloodhunting in Dom3 and is one of the big changes in bloodhunting from Dom2.

The increase in gold/province is a large boost (relative) to less elite blood hunting nations as the majority of the cost of blood hunting is the lost gold from taxes (assuming you blood hunt in stable state by setting taxes to zero, if you patrol it is difficult to compare).

Just for comparison consider two blood hunters:

Mitclan Priest (upkeep 2.66) average blood ~7
Jotun Skratti (upkeep 16.66) average blood ~8

It seems like the Mitclan Priest is far superior. Indeed from the chart above you are getting 2.5 slaves / gold with the Mitclan Priest and only 0.4 slaves / gold with the Jotun Skratti.

However if you blood hunt with 2 per province, in a 5000k pop province (~70 income) the numbers turn out quite different:

Mitclan Priest ~5.3 gold / slave
Jotun Skratti ~6.5 gold / slave

Mitclan still wins, but they are much closer.

PS: the increase in gold / province is actually a rather large nerf to all blood hunting nations, which was noted when Dom3 was released (there were actually multiple nerfs to blood in Dom3 vs. Dom2, most relegated to devils). Given that blood is still considered very powerful in Dom3 this was almost certainly a good thing (along with the nerf to life drain which was excellent).