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Blood Magic
I have seen a great deal of foolishness writen in the Last few days concerning blood magic.
A lot of this has to do with the numbers. Yes the number of blood slaves required to summon the big blood guys has been raised. However we must compare that to the other game economies that have also been changed. Conjured elementals now cost 100% more fatigue and cost gems. Seasonal spirits now cost 100% more. Star Fire costs quadruple the fatigue and does about 50% damage. Furthermore the gold economy in Dom II is much weaker than in Dom I. In comparison the blood magics had a cost increase of about 50%. While the cost did in fact go up, when considered in relation to the rest of the game the practical cost is effectively lower! The blood summons were a huge balance issue in Dom I. Now that they are effectively cheaper, I cannot see how this has done anything but make a bad situation worse. Keep in mind also that many spells that were vital for countering the big blood summons, are changed or gone. So not only are they cheaper, but there are less counters for them. There have been two changes that in theory should counter blood magic. First there are a limited number of summons. Unfortunately there are still plenty of big demons to summon. Enough that most blood nations will have plenty to work with. Furthermore after using up the big summons (if possible) there are plenty of other blood magics that can be used for great effect. I fear that blood nations will have no shortage of things to spend slaves on. Second the sanguine dowsing rod is no longer useable by non-blood mages. This is good since it will help keep some non-blood nations out of the blood business (more on this shortly) but it does nothing to slow down the potential abuse from the blood nations. Illwinter got pretty heavey handed in it's attempt to supress player economic investment. They removed patrols, depleted the economic scales, and playing with taxes gets population killed but not grown. I find this ironic since the blood economy is vastly more controllable by the players and is much more of a threat than extra gold ever was. I just got finished doing some testbeds for blood magic and the results are sickening. Even without the SDR's players will be plenty able to abuse blood magic. Please feel free to duplicate my testing. Playing Arcoscephale, a non-blood nation. I took a beefy pretender (a dragon in this case). I used the dragon and one army to cruise around grabbing provinces. I took about a province per turn. Not fast expansion by any stretch. At any province that produced scouts, I would start making scouts every turn (not counting the capital, I made no hunter scouts there). I lowered the tax rate to 0% and had the scouts do blood hunting. I used nothing for hunting except scouts from expansion provinces. I did zero patrolling. If I had used patrols or had also thrown in cheapie commanders and capital scouts, I could have accelerated the process, but I didn't. I made one mage, whose only duty was to go to the provinces that had blood hunting and place a lab there in order to ease slave pooling. By turn 21 I had three provinces doing good hunting, and two more that were just getting started. At about turn 10-11 I made two scouts at my capital. As I gathered slaves, I empowered my two capital scouts with blood magic. The result? On turn 21 I had two blood-4 mages built from scratch, and was bringing in 20-50 slaves per turn. If I had empowered mages instead of scouts I could have started summoning big blood summons. As it stands I could do some serious damage with 'hordes from hell'. All this starting from nothing and only using spare scouts (and a few labs). It is my opinion that blood magic is cheap and controllable to the point of being a major problem. [ November 03, 2003, 18:14: Message edited by: apoger ] |
Re: Blood Magic
Man, you do have a tendency to dramatization...
So, you found a loophole to circumvent the scout + dousing rod fix, so what? it's not like that is not doable (and much easily, with the addition of dousing rods) in Dom I. Good that you spotted it and I would support an increase of the blood empowering cost in view of this, but I cannot follow how you conclude from that that Blood will be worse in Dom II than in Dom I. In my current Dom I MP game one of my opponents crossed my borders with over 20 IDs. They were quite of a pain to deal with, yet a good number of them are dead now and many of the remaining ones are badly crippled...and know what? all the counters that I used will still be avaliable in Dom II, yet in Dom II he would _not_ have been able to summon 20+ of them. I disagree with your assesment that the counters are severly crippled, I am discovering both new ones & new Versions of old ones. What is crippled is your favoured strategy of 3 order-prod-growth + Wyrm pretender for hyperexpansion & buriying your opponent in seasonal spirits & lesser elementals....just move on, you are capable of more than that. It's worth noting also that the big summons are more spread along the magic fields in Dom II, this dismishes the relative power of Blood in the SC race. I still have some doubts about how the system will work (dispeleable critters?), but one move that I would support is that if one of these unique critters dies, he should stay dead for the game instead of being summoned back. -editted my grammar [ November 03, 2003, 18:38: Message edited by: Wendigo ] |
Re: Blood Magic
>So, you found a loophole to circumvent the scout + dousing rod fix, so what?
So it's a balance issue, that's what. >it's not like that is not doable (and much easily, with the addition of dousing rods) in Dom I. I complained about it in Dom I because it was a balance issue. I see no reason to stop caring about balance for the new game. >but I cannot follow how you conclude from that that Blood will be worse in Dom II than in Dom I. Could be due to the (in practice) lower costs of the big blood summons. >In my current Dom I MP game one of my opponents crossed my borders with over 20 IDs. They were quite of a pain to deal with, yet a good number of them are dead now and many of the remaining ones are badly crippled...and know what? all the counters that I used will still be avaliable in Dom II, yet in Dom II he would _not_ have been able to summon 20+ of them. That's a very unusual circumstance. Plus if he had 7 big blood summons and thousand imps from HfH, would that have really been better? >I disagree with your assesment that the counters are severly crippled, I am discovering both new ones & new Versions of old ones. Really! Well that would certainly bear on the subject of balance. By all means, let's hear those tactics! >What is crippled is your favoured strategy of 3 order-prod-growth + Wyrm pretender for hyperexpansion & buriying your opponent in seasonal spirits & lesser elementals....just move on, you are capable of more than that. That's the second time you have made this claim, and frankly it's a load of crap. I use every strategy in the book, not just the one mentioned above. I pride myself on comming at the system from every angle possible. When I find unbalancing issues I bring it to the attention of IW/all so the issues can be observed and/or fixed. You are making it out like I am a selfish git who is trying to protect my one and only strategy. This comming from a player that specializes in blood magic and super combatants. Perhaps you need to take a long look into a mirror. |
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Re: Blood Magic
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>>but I cannot follow how you conclude from that that Blood will be worse in Dom II than in Dom I. >Could be due to the (in practice) lower costs of the big blood summons. This is a circular argument that doesn't hold. If scout empowering makes blood summons cheaper in Dom II, scout empowering + rod makes them even cheaper in Dom I. >>In my current Dom I MP game one of my opponents crossed my borders with over 20 IDs. They were quite of a pain to deal with, yet a good number of them are dead now and many of the remaining ones are badly crippled...and know what? all the counters that I used will still be avaliable in Dom II, yet in Dom II he would _not_ have been able to summon 20+ of them. >That's a very unusual circumstance. Plus if he had 7 big blood summons and thousand imps from HfH, would that have really been better? Less big targets to kill, and who says that I could not have claimed some of those 7 myself? >>I disagree with your assesment that the counters are severly crippled, I am discovering both new ones & new Versions of old ones. >Really! Well that would certainly bear on the subject of balance. By all means, let's hear those tactics! Soul slay is now 100 range, paralyze is stronger IMO, same with mind bLast, spiders, that maggot thing, missile weapons & in particular the magic ones are more usable, blessed troops, stronger pretenders...probably more that escape me. >>What is crippled is your favoured strategy of 3 order-prod-growth + Wyrm pretender for hyperexpansion & buriying your opponent in seasonal spirits & lesser elementals....just move on, you are capable of more than that. >That's the second time you have made this claim, and frankly it's a load of crap. I use every strategy in the book, not just the one mentioned above. I pride myself on comming at the system from every angle possible. Such hostility...hey, that's what I have seen you do so far, but if you want to claim otherwise I can take your word on it. See? it's not that hard to acept that one might be wrong...can you do it? >When I find unbalancing issues I bring it to the attention of IW/all so the issues can be observed and/or fixed. And if you can strenghten your analysis by pointing to the changes in one direction while ignoring the changes in the opposite direction, so much the better, right? >You are making it out like I am a selfish git who is trying to protect my one and only strategy. This comming from a player that specializes in blood magic and super combatants. Perhaps you need to take a long look into a mirror Nope, I do not think that you are intentionally doing that with any kind of selfish PoV, yet I do think that your perception of this issue is clouded by your pet peeves. Of course, the same could be said about me, but I am not the one painting an apocalyptic future based on incomplete and premature information. Unlike you, I can actually put myself in your shoes and admit that yes, some old counters are gone. As per your Last assertinon, funnily enough I kill more SCs with magic than I do with my own SCs, but hey, you are entitled to your opinion. Same as I am entitled to mine, however much you might dislike it. |
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>>but I cannot follow how you conclude from that that Blood will be worse in Dom II than in Dom I.
>Could be due to the (in practice) lower costs of the big blood summons. >This is a circular argument that doesn't hold. If scout empowering makes blood summons cheaper in Dom II, scout empowering + rod makes them even cheaper in Dom I. How is this a circular argument? I said it was the lower costs. I didn't say scout empowering was the reason why blood magic is worse in Dom II than I. You are misreading what I said. Scout empowerment is an issue that needs to be looked at. But that is not what I answered in response to your question. >Soul slay is now 100 range, paralyze is stronger IMO, same with mind bLast, spiders, that maggot thing, missile weapons & in particular the magic ones are more usable, blessed troops, stronger pretenders...probably more that escape me. Soul slay - needs the extra range due to larger battlefields. Paralyze is stronger. Mind bLast doesn't seem better. Perhaps I'm missing someting there. Spiders as a counter for SC. Possibly, but I'd need to see more before commenting. Maggots - Only works versus undead. The blood SC are now demons. Magic Missile weapons. Possibly, but will have to be seen. Blessed troops - I don't think they'll make a dent in most SC. Stronger Pretenders - Yes, but that's a balance issue in itself. Considering what's been lost, that's not a very big list. I'd trade that all in for Dom I's star fire and the ability to use control the dead and wither bones versus 'demons'. >See? it's not that hard to acept that one might be wrong...can you do it? Sure can. Show me where I've been wrong and we'll get a start on it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif >When I find unbalancing issues I bring it to the attention of IW/all so the issues can be observed and/or fixed. >And if you can strenghten your analysis by pointing to the changes in one direction while ignoring the changes in the opposite direction, so much the better, right? I have no idea what you are talking about. If you can show me 'changes in the opposite direction' that would influence the discussion, then let's hear them. If you have a problem with my arguments then make a counter argument. >but I am not the one painting an apocalyptic future And you call me dramatic? >based on incomplete and premature information. Yeah, it's not like I did any testing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif |
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>Soul slay - needs the extra range due to larger battlefields.
There's a difference between adapting to the larger battlefield & being able to hit from one point of the diagonal to the other tho. -snip list- Indeed, some counters will be usable in some situations & some in others >Considering what's been lost, that's not a very big list. I'd trade that all in for Dom I's star fire and the ability to use control the dead and wither bones versus 'demons'. You know, if you had worded your argument this way I might actually have supported it. >>See? it's not that hard to acept that one might be wrong...can you do it? >Sure can. >Show me where I've been wrong and we'll get a start on it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Keep reading... >>And if you can strenghten your analysis by pointing to the changes in one direction while ignoring the changes in the opposite direction, so much the better, right? >I have no idea what you are talking about. If you can show me 'changes in the opposite direction' that would influence the discussion, then let's hear them. If you have a problem with my arguments then make a counter argument. You said (paraphrasing, ignore tone): 'SCs are going to rule Dom II more than Dom, because these counters are gone'. I call that painting an incomplete picture because you were ignoring the new counters available (or pending discovery). >>based on incomplete and premature information. >Yeah, it's not like I did any testing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif No doubt you did, likely way more than me seeing as I often run into Rl time issues nowadays. Premature because the game is not even out, and when it be released it will be an initial Version that can, (& will be) fine tuned, same as Dom I was. Incomplete because you are basing a balance analysis on playing a demo with 6 nations out of 14 final ones, and without a chance to test spells over lv4. This is all the more surprising coming from someone like you, who got so much replay & enjoyment out of the 1st installment of the series. |
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>You said (paraphrasing, ignore tone): 'SCs are going to rule Dom II more than Dom, because these counters are gone'.
Rather than say "rule" I'd say that they are a balance issue. The important issues raised here aren't the lack of counters (which is an issue) for SC's, but rather the problems of blood magic being having low cost summons and easy blood hunting. >Premature because the game is not even out, It's never to early to consider gameplay issues. IMHO. >and when it be released it will be an initial Version that can, (& will be) fine tuned, same as Dom I was. Good. Let's get that process started. >Incomplete because you are basing a balance analysis on playing a demo with 6 nations out of 14 final ones, and without a chance to test spells over lv4. This issue of this thread was ease of hunting and low cost of blood summons. Both these issues can be demonstrated with the tools at hand. The exact measure of the balance between SC's and potential counters will have to wait until the full game can be examined. I have never said otherwise. If you look at my original essay, you will see that I offer my tests as fact but my conclusion as opinion. If the full game changes the situation I'll change my opinion accordingly. >This is all the more surprising coming from someone like you, who got so much replay & enjoyment out of the 1st installment of the series. And as such I shouldn't bring potential game imbalances to the attention of Illwinter? Quite the opposite. I feel that hiding the issues and allowing gameplay to suffer does no justice to a game that I enjoy so much. [ November 03, 2003, 22:38: Message edited by: apoger ] |
Re: Blood Magic
[quote]Originally posted by apoger:
>This issue of this thread was ease of hunting and low cost of blood summons. Both these issues can be demonstrated with the tools at hand. You will have noticed that rather than addressing just your post in this thread I have been talking about your (broader) point regarding the topic in various other threads. >The exact measure of the balance between SC's and potential counters will have to wait until the full game can be examined. I have never said otherwise. It could certainly be deducted otherwise from other previous Posts, good to hear you clarify this. >This is all the more surprising coming from someone like you, who got so much replay & enjoyment out of the 1st installment of the series. >And as such I shouldn't bring potential game imbalances to the attention of Illwinter? Definitely, so long as the aproach is balanced by a look at both the pros & cons, and with a tone as neutral as posible. It didn't look that way, for the reasons previously stated. I am not apealing at your emotional atachment to the game to turn an eye away, rather apealing to your knowledge that these guys have indeed done a good job in the past and there should be no reason for them to not do so now. Leaving aside whether there will be more blood income or less, (on which we do not seem to agree), an argument of the type 'These counters have been lost, and the gain of these others does not make up for it' would have been much stronger on your part than the one you initially used. |
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I think you guys might get a more productive discussion if you narrowed the scope of debate a bit...
For instance, how do the blood economies of Abysia compare between Dom 1 and Dom 2? How does the income difference between them look when scaled by the diminished Dom 2 gold income? How much worse are the patrolling side effects in Dom 2 than Dom 1? |
Re: Blood Magic
The point of this thread was issues with blood magics low costs and ease of hunting. That is what I made my "strong argument" about.
The reason I failed to make a strong argument for 'These counters have been lost, and the gain of these others does not make up for it' is beacuse that was not the topic that I was arguing for. There has been commentary about super combatant counters in other threads. I saw no reason to add such discussion to this thread as it had little to do with my testing or the blood slave economy issues. Since this seems to be the central theme to your criticism, perhaps you would like start up a thread dedicated to discussing it. |
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>I think you guys might get a more productive discussion if you narrowed the scope of debate a bit...
Focus is good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif >For instance, how do the blood economies of Abysia compare between Dom 1 and Dom 2? How does the income difference between them look when scaled by the diminished Dom 2 gold income? Now that's a complex issue! I'll give that some thought and start a new thread on it. >How much worse are the patrolling side effects in Dom 2 than Dom 1? I have found that lowering taxes supresses unrest totally until blood hunting gets moderately heavy. So you can get away with -no patrols- for some time. Longer if you spread out the hunters. In some ways this makes things faster than in Dom I. In Dom I it was hard to shut down taxes totally since each province provided more revenue. Since less gold is generated in Dom II, lowering one or two provinces to 0% seems inconsequential. Patrols in Dom II seem to do more population damage. However since we are talking about 0% taxes, the gold/population is already being sacrificed. Again, a complex issue. I'll do some testing and see if I can put together some coherent thoughts on the matter. [ November 03, 2003, 23:41: Message edited by: apoger ] |
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In my limited blood experience so far I had 5 apprentice warlocks blood search for 1 turn in a 0 tax province. I got 17 blood slaves and the unrest shot up above 100. Unless that was a really unlucky blood search turn it seems to me that unrest will be a major problem for blood.
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I'd like to see the total amount of gold you spent on buying the scouts, paying upkeep on the scouts, and lowering taxes to 0% in several provinces. Oh, and buying and paying upkeep on the extra researchers so that you can research Blood Magic while remaining competitive in other research areas. I think that if you look at that amount of gold (much of it spent or not collected in the crucial early turns) and compare what else you could have gotten with it (including faster expansion) you will see that blood is not so cheap. Or, on the other hand, it may be that slave hunting by unskilled hunters (or possibly by anyone) needs to have a lower chance of success than currently, or be more limited by province population (obviously the cost to lower taxes to 0% in a high population province is quite significant, even aside from the upkeep of the hunters). Quote:
I believe you are not saying that blood slave hunting is cheaper in Dom II than in Dom I, but rather that other things have had their costs increased more in Dom II while blood magic has had its costs increased relatively little (thus blood magic is relatively cheaper in Dom II). However, I don't think that the cost to obtain gems has increased much in Dom II, while the cost to obtain blood slaves clearly has increased (you need more expensive hunters or get lower success rates, and it's harder to counter the unrest - even if your test reveals that both effects are smaller than one might suppose) - so a straight comparison of gem costs vs. slave costs is flawed. Quote:
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Most holy effects (Holy Pyre, Just Mans Cross, Herald Lance, Solar Brilliance) still work on both, IIRC - but some allow an MR check, and demons have high MR. Maybe these types of spells should have higher base magic penetration, to counter the expected higher MR of their targets. IMO, demons shouldn't have 0 base encumbrance - they aren't lifeless anymore (IIRC). Low base encumbrance is fine, maybe even some built in reinvigoration for the more powerful ones. But 0 encumbrance also makes you immune to item-based encumbrance and is thus an extremely powerful ability. It's fine for undead which have lots of counters, but with demons having so few, it is unbalancing for them to be fatigue immune. Quote:
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I think the whole issue should be re-evaluated once the full game ships (or more precisely, arrives). For now I would say that there may be inadequate counters to demons, and they probably shouldn't have 0 base enc anymore. Also, blood slave hunting by unskilled hunters may have too good a success rate. However, if I understand your post right, you had dozens or maybe even hundreds of scouts hunting to get "20-50" (a pretty wide range) slaves per turn. Even a scout costs 2 upkeep, so I make that roughly 5 gold per slave - not counting the lost income from the provinces. And of course if you don't have a blood skilled pretender you need a lot of items and/or empowerment to be able to summon anything big. It's certainly possible for other nations to get into blood magic. But I question whether it is cost-effective compared to other things they could do with that much gold. |
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I'm blood hunting with 3 scouts and 5 generic commanders in a 4250 pop province (is this too small?). That's 210 gold initially, 14 upkeep, and 22 forgone gold per turn, plus another 25 archers and commander on patrol (230/15) for a total of 440 gold and 51 gold/turn lost. I get about 4-10 slaves per turn, averaging maybe 8.
Of course, I haven't tried optimizing it, so maybe I don't need the patrol (though unrest sometimes spiked previously) and maybe I should use a bigger province. But in this example... it does not seem very efficient. |
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I am still doing the Abysian tests. (results soon)
As to the gold cost of the scout strategy... I need to do some more tests to try to optimize the situation. In the test from the first post I did no patrols, nor did I farm the best provinces (I farmed some big expensive ones). However I can tally up the approximate costs and results from that slightly sub-optimal test: Gold costs of taxes lost, scout costs, and upkeep = 3005 gold (approximate, I had to estimate the times of acquiring some provinces, but I'm pretty close) For this 3000 gold I got 420 blood slaves. That comes to 7.14 gold per slave. Think of it as 214 gold for a Horde from Hell or perhaps 392 gold for an Ice Devil. As per Pocus's "20 turn challenge", it seems that competitive play yields a turn 20ish income of about 1500. 420 blood slaves could be; almost 8 Ice Devils (3 more than exist) 14 Hordes from Hell (14 Devils and 350 Imps) 21 Lifelong Protection Contracts The ability for Jotunhiem to cast the global spell Illwinter 3 times (and have 60 slaves to spare) I think this might help put things into perspective. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif [ November 04, 2003, 04:12: Message edited by: apoger ] |
Re: Blood Magic
This thread has moved quite a lot, let's see if I can pick up:
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I still mantain that setting up a blood economy will be more expensive (as in trade-off for the investment) than in Dom I when all it required was to get a cheapo Blood Fountain pretender. You have rightfully pointed out that gold economy has taken a severe hit, yet you have ignored gem economy & the dependences between gold economy & blood economy. That harvesting does come at a cost. I also mantain that the product from such blood economy will be 'less', in the sense that the requirements have been upped in both research & cost, and the availability limitted. The point of whether there will be enough counters available will need much more info than what we have right now, tho indeed new counters are showing to make up (or not) for the lost ones. It's easy to spot the lost ones, not so easy to spot the new ones with our limited info (for example, Dom I undead demons benefitted from undead invulnerabilities in addition to the weaknesses, we will have to check if those invulnerabilities are still there in their new demonic-non undead form...). By all means keep testing and writting essays, regardless of whether I agree or not with your points you are always a good read. |
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In any case, I don't think 400 for an unequipped Ice Devil is necessarily unreasonable. How do they compare stats-wise to the 500 gold Niefels? Quote:
21 Lifelong Protections could be really annoying if they were all on assassins. Otherwise they're not that much of a threat. 3 Illwinters is pretty nasty, since Dispel takes research now. But I think that someone is likely to have it - and in any case, Jotunheim is not a non-blood-using nation (AFAIK - I haven't played Niefelheim yet). Quote:
As I posted on one of the supercombatant threads, I think there should be more battlefield spells that increase the effectiveness of regular troops, which would allow players to more effectively combat summons and supercombatants with conventional armies (backed up by magic). Of course Hordes from Hell could use those spells too, but if the effect is to make their attacks more deadly, it will tend to favor superior numbers. |
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Hi, I have some questions.
If I am blood hunting, the unrest will grow. How can I decrease the unrest? Blood magic is the best? Is it worth to make a pretender with 10 in blood magic? My scouts won't find any blood slaves. I must enpower them in blood magic? What is a good startup for a blood magic nation? [ November 04, 2003, 10:53: Message edited by: Serpico ] |
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An average income of 75 slaves per month is freaking ridiculous; am I right in guessing the actual income at turn 20 is around 150? |
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2) Depends on what you're aiming for. For summoning, yes. For direct damage spells, e.g., no. 3) Depends on what you want to do, how you want to play, and who you are playing. Same as 2). 4) The higher the skill in blood magic, the more likely the commander is to find blood slaves. It also depends on the population size of a province, and unrest (more pop & less unrest = higher chance). You might consider empowering mages instead so as to get nbenefits from other things as well, such as combining the magic paths and magic & undead leadership that come with blood skill (scouts cannot command). 5) I'm not sure what you mean, but if you're looking for an advice in pretender design etc., I guess there are people here who can give a far better advice on that than me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Hope this helps. |
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All right I am not a big blood magic fan, but I try to help.
Abysia is a very good choice for a blood pretender. I guess the Fountain of Blood is a perfect choice with Abysia. That pretender and that nation seems like a very good combo. |
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Hmmm. I think blood hunting increases unrest more than it used to, and with lower gold income, a fountain of blood with gold-hungry Abyssia might be pretty painful... unless you could move it to another province... which, supposedly, you can no longer do with immobile pretenders.
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You can try a blood 9 death 2 fountain, and use it to summon scores upon scores of immortal vampires (a spell which give you more creatures if your level in blood is high). |
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What's the problem with the immobile Fountain? I think its a prefect choice for Abysia. I am using this pretender as well. What is the point to move it to other province at all? I mean the Fountain is not a SC. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif
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You get a lot of your gold income from the home province... and unrest reduces gold income. Blood hunting increases unrest and kills population. Thus, blood hunting in your home province cripples your gold economy.
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The point would be not to create unrest/pop loss at your capital via hunting with the fountain, which it does well.
I'm not sure how much I like the Blood Fountain in Dom II. Need more tests. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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Speaking of bloodhounds, that would be a neat blood summon or even National unit - you could put them under a commander to increase his blood hunting ability. They'd be expensive and bad in combat, though. Oooh!!! I got another one!! The Giant Leech, for land, and the Giant Lamprey for water. Both would have life-drain attacks and be good blood hunters. "Knock-knock... hey, it's me, Lord Leechy Lewis. I'd like to talk to your daughter, please... no, nothing serious. No, I'll pass on the coffee, I'm in a hurry, but thanks..." [ November 04, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
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IIRC, there is a demon prince who has an effect of automatically gathering blood slaves. I think that the description from the devs was something along the lines of "fathers give their daughters to him willingly, but the god's dominion suffers".
edit: I really hate my typos... editedit:found it; quote from Johan K Quote:
[ November 04, 2003, 20:54: Message edited by: HJ ] |
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Just on a side note, the new nation of Mictlan has a starting site that gives it 5 blood slaves a season. They have to perform blood sacrifice to spread their dominion, so it balances out somewhat in the end, but it does give them more early-game flexibility.
I haven't used blood magic enough to know if it is balanced or not, so I'm keeping my mouth shut on the rest of the issue. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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Oh. I see. Well then, you're fine! Though you might go with an archmage/sage instead, as they get more research points, can have more constructions and summons, and you can always empower them in blood later... just start the archmage with enough blood to forge all the +blood magic items.
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Sammual |
Re: Blood Magic
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The reason I don't find the results you are talking about scary is that in my experiance a fast expanding race will have make a great deal of use of the resources the blood race is consuming. Depending on the circumstances a fast race may well overrun the blood race before its returns come through. My worry was the blood was going to be nerfed and I am greatly relieved that there are 7 Ice Devils. Blood requires serious effort which could be used on reinforcing expansion and has a narrow range of uses. To ascertain the value of blood you should not be comparing it to air elemental summoning - one feature of a well rounded field - but to what you can achieve by investing the resources elsewhere. Blood requires alot of investment and yields no immediate return thus the rate of return that comes through in time is higher and so it should be. Blood is a nod to players who arn't focused on winning through extreme speed and as such its nice that it works as often such strategies don't and it could se easily be nerfed. I tried blood up because it distracted me from overrunning my opponents before they were prepared. Sure I then did horrible things to them when they were prepared but which do you think they would have prefferred? To die to a speed monster race that doesn't let you set up or be beaten by a race whose setup proved more deadly than yours? I think many extremely powerful strategies exist in dom II and I hope and expect blood to one of them. As it should be. Quote:
Don't worry, be happy . . . Keir |
Re: Blood Magic
Sorry for being late into this thread, but I just feel I must respond to Mr. Poger's initial statements. First:
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1. Ice Devil - changed from 30 to 55 (= 83% increase). Limited numbers. No free water gems. +1 lvl research. 2. Pazuzuu - Now Demon Lord (I think, haven't actually summoned all DLs yet though). 150 slaves, 9th lvl research. 3. Father Illearth - Cost increase 50 to 75 (Yes that's 50%). Unique. +2 lvl research. These were the big ones IMO. They have all been severely nerfed. The other big blood summons were much less of an issue, and were thus less changed (about 50% cost increase http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) Now, blood hunting were also made harder to in Dom2 since only blood mages benefit from dousing rods. Here Alex makes a very strange statement Quote:
Looking at the numbers for blood hunting on Sunrays page, a non-blood commander (with rod) brings in 3.2 slaves/round compared to 4.4 slaves/round for lvl 1 blood mages with rods. Thus, getting 50 slaves with a scout in Dom 1 would cost you 41 gold (cost + upkeep) whereas 50 slaves with a Vanjarl would cost 386 gold - 'nothing to slow down' indead... Now, new cheap(er) blood mages are available in Dom2. Mictlan has one lvl 1 holy for 80 gold. Getting 50 slaves with him would cost 110 gold. Still, compared to the cheapest blood hunter in Dom1 that is more than 2.5 times as expensive. And Mictlan really really need those slaves. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif For the 'second best' nation Abysia the Warlock apprentice cost 150 gold. I don't know the number for a lvl 2 blood mage, but let's assume it's 6 slaves/round (with rod). Getting 50 slaves is then 233 gold - almost 6 times as expensive as it would've been in Dom1. It can of course be argued that cost + upkeep of blood hunters are just a part of the total cost for blood hunting. Still, I think that not addressing it properly when comparing to other changes from Dom1 was quite unfair and doesn't give an appropriate picture of the changes that has been done to blood magic. Altogether, it has been nerfed more than anything from Dom1 (possibly with the exception of lesser elementals). |
Re: Blood Magic
I'm not going into a huge analysis of percentage change between Dom I & II. That was never the point of the test. The point was to offer my opinion that blood magic may be abusive in Dom II. I still think it will be.
>This is ridiculous!! Did ANYONE (I am certain you didn't Alex) use the native blood mages as hunters in Dom1? Don't be so certain before putting words in my mouth. In fact I often used native blood mages to hunt with. While less efficient, they bring in results fast, and there is a LOT to be said for speed. Furthermore their blood income was MORE than I would get with SDR/scouts alone. The point of heavy blood hunting was to make it HEAVY. I used every resource possible. That included blood mages. When I was dropping 12 hordes from hell on my enemies every turn, I never bothered to judge the gold cost. I was sure of it's value. In Dom II I will probably be reduced to only sending 6 per turn. However in the lower gold enviornment this seems plenty abusive, and I don't see anything stoping it. >For the 'second best' nation Abysia the Warlock apprentice cost 150 gold. I don't know the number for a lvl 2 blood mage, but let's assume it's 6 slaves/round (with rod). Getting 50 slaves is then 233 gold - almost 6 times as expensive as it would've been in Dom1. The current rate for the warlock apprentice seems to be about 5 per round. I see this plenty fine. It's about the same as a blood-2 mage in Dom I. The apprentice is cheaper than Abysia's old blood-2 mages, but the gold enviornment is weaker. Seems about the same to me. Where do you get the 6X figure from? That seems outrageous. I can assure you that blood hunting is not 6X as expensive in Dom II. And how are you getting these slave versus number figures? You are submitting absolute values of slaves gotten by method. I must ask "over what time" are you doing the hunting? You can't just say X bring in Y slaves. It only has relevence if its X brings in Y over Z time. Without this it's hard to judge what you are saying. >Altogether, it has been nerfed more than anything from Dom1 (possibly with the exception of lesser elementals). On this we will have to disagree. And even if true, I don't give a fig about comparisons between Dom I & II. What I care about is the balance of Dom II. I think blood hunting endangers that balance. |
Re: Blood Magic
Alex, the first half of your initial post was essentially about blood magic being more abusive in Dom2 than in Dom1. I have not seen anything like that in beta (Mictlan is good, but have so many other weaknesses). I think limiting sanguine rods to blood mages is a big part of the answer also for blood nations. Of course my examples were limited (I didn't think they would be that hard to understand though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).
The speed factor is very important, I agree - still even for Abysia in Dom1 I found it both much cheaper and faster!! to use blood mages primarily to forge sanguine rods for cheap commanders (which of course come in unlimited supply). I am sorry for thinking you did the same (out of curiosity though - was the majority of your hunters mages or cheap commanders?) Now, I am really sorry that I don't have the time to do anything like the extensive tests you excell at. I do think that to prove to us sceptics that hunting with scouts is a valid strategy you must show that you don't lose to much speed in expansion. I saw that you conquered 36 provinces in 20 turns in Pocus test and consider 1500 gold income by turn 20 to be a standard for competitive play. What is the best you can do by turn 20 while reaching 420 slaves and blood 5 in research?? |
Re: Blood Magic
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And here is another I hope: Arco Hopilites cost the same in Dom I as in Dom II and as their gold cost is largely irrelevent for expansion their power early has not been meaningfully affected. I experimented with Arco in Dom I and I found that Arco Hopilites could provide the basis for appalling fast conquering armies which generally didn't take a casuality in the early expansion phase and with priestess didn't even build up afflictions. The result of this fast start certainly ecliplsed the fast starts I achieved with Abysia AND left heaps of gold free for mages etc so I don't sacrifice long term power. This in my opinion was the grossiest race (other than Caelum or Pythium which I didn't consider) I could have played in Dom I MP and so I did't - I tend to do well enough without choosing the grossiest races. Abysia on the other hand never seemed as powerful - so what has Arco lost if you follow my approach rather than the classic Hypastpist one? When given the choice of long term power or short term power in mutli-player it is generally right to go for short term power because the faster expansion leads to long term power. Alex you have been very concerned with strategies being nerfed and the loss of fun. IMO you are desperately arguing for the nerfing of one of the key alternatives to ridiculous speed. Ridiculous speed is so overpwoered in MP - the alternatives have to be gross and really appealling or no-one will even consider playing them. Generally all the cool slow race designs in Stars! did was unbalence the game by providing easy kills to early game predators of the ilk of me and you. Quote:
Yes I used Demonbreds extensively for blood hunting in Dom I. Its a speed question - early fire gems = gold, gold = anathement dragons to lead the HI (fanatacism)and Demonbred with Moloch created Demons providing the fast start and lotsa gold to buy more demonbred to research conj 4. This leads to 2nd phase of summer lion abuse in which the Demonbreds leave the research to indie's and kick start the blood economy while impacting less on gold income than commanders with SDR's would helping to maintain the impetous at the front - I hate fighting wars in my own territory. The key point is that all the way through this gold was not the limit to building HI and demons so spending it on good, multi- use mages was a perfectly reasonably option and their research gives a quicker route to Conj 4 which, back then, was truly abusive. Its all about speed - getting the key summons equipped and to the front a turn before your opponent has their main army able to counter you. Instead they are crushed and their lands go up in unholy fire - Muhahahahah!! Sorry did I lose track of the point? Oh yes - speed, speed, speed, speed, speed. Blood is inherently a slower strategy now the FOB is no longer abusable (8-9th turn ID's with Caelum in Dom I - wohooo) so it is harder to play and should in the long term be more powerful than the faster approaches. I'm not saying blood races are slow but that the decision to invest in blood is the decision of when to slow your expansion race down and its a tricky one to get right in MP. Don't worry, be happy . . . Keir |
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