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.