Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

Anybody got any tips on how to get some nice blood slaves? Preferably scantily clad, and not too thin? Oh no sorry forget that.

I haven't been having much success. I send my catchers out to provinces with low income, so I can keep taxes down. Happen not to have too many of those in this game, but whatever. But even my Sun Fellow (the big 3-blood priest of Mictlan) with a dousing rod turns up 0 slaves 3 out of 4 times. My whole strategy is failing, because I could make all of these great items and summon all of these interesting-sounding critters, but I simply lack the slaves.
Do I have to go to provinces with big incomes and bring a patroller along? Seems like just such a waste of income and personell. I had hoped I could find some slaves with the lowly Mictlan Priest (it sez so in his description... he should perform blood sacrifices and blood hunts while waiting for the hotshots from the capital to arrive), but I never found even ONE slave with them, even with a dousing rod. I sort of would like to see Mictlan be fun for me, because I like the theme, and it looks like the only race I can play without using a rainbow mage (I am using a fountain of blood).
Ah by the way, the description of the fountain sez it has affinities for blood slaves (quelle surprise) -- does that mean IT gets a bonus when searching? Whcih means I must search in my capital? (How distasteful.)
Ok well thanks in advance.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

As I understand it:

The Fountain of blood 'searches' as if it were 4 levels higher (in Blood) than it is.

You do better searching in provinces with high population.

Unrest might affect hunting - the message about searching becoming difficult and dangerous seems to bear this out.

I have had great sucess putting three or four Mictlan priests with dowsing rods in a domain with four to eight thousand population (the really high populations have high income I would prefer to keep) and zero taxes.

If you build a lab there, you can gather all blood slaves from all your bloodhunting provinces by just clicking the 'pool' button in the lab - handy but expensive, and you can't leave other priests on auto-sacrifice. Otherwise if you group your bloodhunters (by control-clicking so they are all selected) you can easily gether the blood harvest in each province by clicking any one of the searchers (thus selecting your whole bloodhunting team) then pressing Z.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

Mictlan's Blood Sacrifices combined with the pool slaves command really can create somewhat of a nuisance. It would be nice if the pool command would ignore any commanders performing sacrifices that held only the proper amount of slaves, as these appear to be auto-replenished next turn, and blood hunters automatically put their slaves into the lab if one was present. Little things that ease the the pain and all.

It's quite a nuisance as it stands now: My Mictlan game got bogged in the immense tedium of blood slave management....and it really takes a rather large level of micromanagement to bug me, as an Ermor player. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

Also, it should be noted that while Mictlan priests can be used to hunt for slaves, this is generally considered somewhat more expensive and only justifiable in well-patrolled provinces: The more successful a blood hunt is, the more the population seems to get annoyed. One way to rake in the blood slaves is to strew any province with > 5K people with a scout or two hunting, and take the taxes down to maybe 70-80: The fact that the individual scout doesn't hunt all that effectively will mean that the unrest level won't get overly high even without a patrol in place, but the fact that you have so MANY scouts hunting everywhere will give you a good income stream.

Also, scouts are cheap and can even be produced in provinces without fortresses and temples. $20 can net you a fast blood hunter right there. Scouts are just so useful, for anything from the baggage train of an army to cheap blood hunters to stick in podunk provinces.

[ February 11, 2004, 10:22: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, the pool thing works with blood sacrifice, provided you leave enough slaves in the pool at the end of the turn to resplenish your sacrificers. It's only when you pool your slaves, then "spend" them all, that you will have a problem (you'll have to manually reorder all your sacrificers to sacrifice the next turn).

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

tips for finding bloodslaves:

- Avoid downtown back alley.
- Nightclub isn't great either.
- Contrary to popular thought swiss girl pensionnate is less productive then expected.

Serious tip:

- Find a 10K population province.
- Lower taxe to 0.
- Build a laboratory.
- Bring every heroes there and hunt, scout can have nice success even without blood.

You can try hunthing in your home province if you make enough buck elsewhere and/or dont need your capitol unit too much.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I find it hard to believe that a zero blood scout will hunt more effectively than a 1 blood mictlan priest with a dousing rod. Especially when that priest costs only twice as much per turn.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You might try provinces with the "Catholic Girl's High School" special site.

P.S. Blood hunting with tentacle monsters should give a big bonus... I hope that can be modded http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 11, 2004, 16:22: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

Are you familiar with Frank Zappa's song "Catholic School Girls" (on Joe's Garage)? Just a thought.

Thanks for the tips people. I think my problem was I was trying in provinces with too low population. Just: larger pops tend also to be richer, and one doesnt want to upset and/or lower taxes on those rich provinces.... ah tradeoffs. I like this game. I miss sleep. Wife angry. Must sue. Ah no sorry forget that.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I find it hard to believe that a zero blood scout will hunt more effectively than a 1 blood mictlan priest with a dousing rod. Especially when that priest costs only twice as much per turn. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Priests are more effective. But there is no unrest if the scouts don't get any blood slaves. And they can't find too many each time, so the 70-80 tax rate take care of the unrest when that happened. So, you could in theory flood a moderate size with 4+ scouts and let them blood hunt. Collect the slaves only once in a few turns.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I find it hard to believe that a zero blood scout will hunt more effectively than a 1 blood mictlan priest with a dousing rod. Especially when that priest costs only twice as much per turn. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Priests are more effective. But there is no unrest if the scouts don't get any blood slaves. And they can't find too many each time, so the 70-80 tax rate take care of the unrest when that happened. So, you could in theory flood a moderate size with 4+ scouts and let them blood hunt. Collect the slaves only once in a few turns. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Scouts suck period. I find it hard to believe that it is more cost effective to use 4+ scouts than 1 decent mage with blood on them (and the dousing rod, which if I recall correctly doesn't help non blood powered commanders anymore). Beyond that your blood mage can switch to summoning demons when needed, the scouts can't do squat, well they have their value as scouts, but that's only useful outside of your provinces...

Scouts can be useful to ferry slaves from hunting commanders in provinces without labs though...

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

I've had those Telestic Animation statues go and find blood slaves !! Yes actually it was catching them.
--- how it happens who knows ---


example of how the statue goes blood hunting:

Statue sitting in an open field.
For some strange miracle a virgin lady walks by asking, " what are you doing?"

Statue says, " Aha... now you're captured to be used as a blood slave for our pretender. "

Virgin Lady says, " Get Lost Stupid statue ! " and she begins to walk away laughing.

Statue says, " Hey wait... if you stick around and just keep me company I'll take you shopping. "

Virgin Lady says, "Okay... and I'll tell you about all the gossip in my village plus my sister should be coming by soon where we can all gossip. "

********** two hours later ************

Imperial Guards of the pretender arrive to check on the statue.

Statue says, " Please kill them now... stop this torture.... AHHH ! "

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Scouts have quite a few benefits over most nations blood hunters.

1.) They are not capital only. Any province with a Scout can make a blood hunter cheap and effectively.

2.) With the variance of the blood hunting process, 5 scouts (100 Gold) will hunt up more slaves than 1 Mictlan Priest, though it may be sporatic (meaning one or two turns you might get only a few, and another turn you could get 20+).

3.) Scouts are stealthy, most blood priests are not.

4.) Scouts can hunt in a province you are still taxing and not get unrest because of the variable system in which they are used. Thus if you want to have 1-2 scouts in every province 5k+ in population and set the tax to 90% you can do so, without reciving much in the way of a unrest hit. This also provides a way of hunting across your empire and not getting your blood hunting interrupted by a CotW or CotWild that hits your hunting provinces.

Scouts are far superior in my mind, as well as being able to blood hunt earlier. While getting and placing hunter with Blood Magic and Dousing Rods is something you do to increase your Blood Hunting Capability, more often than not, I'd rather just make a bunch of scouts in 3 or 4 provinces and make a new mage in my castle provinces.

[ February 11, 2004, 19:09: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Scouts have quite a few benefits over most nations blood hunters.

1.) They are not capital only. Any province with a Scout can make a blood hunter cheap and effectively.

2.) With the variance of the blood hunting process, 5 scouts (100 Gold) will hunt up more slaves than 1 Mictlan Priest, though it may be sporatic (meaning one or two turns you might get only a few, and another turn you could get 20+).

3.) Scouts are stealthy, most blood priests are not.

4.) Scouts can hunt in a province you are still taxing and not get unrest because of the variable system in which they are used. Thus if you want to have 1-2 scouts in every province 5k+ in population and set the tax to 90% you can do so, without reciving much in the way of a unrest hit. This also provides a way of hunting across your empire and not getting your blood hunting interrupted by a CotW or CotWild that hits your hunting provinces.

Scouts are far superior in my mind, as well as being able to blood hunt earlier. While getting and placing hunter with Blood Magic and Dousing Rods is something you do to increase your Blood Hunting Capability, more often than not, I'd rather just make a bunch of scouts in 3 or 4 provinces and make a new mage in my castle provinces. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good points Zen, I'll still disagree that scouts are *better* blood hunters in general though. It does depend somewhat on what kinds of provinces you have, and what access to blood mages you have. Diabolical faith has a 90gp 1F1B mage for example, also useful for pumping out scads of Demon Jesters when needed.

The most slaves I've ever gotten with a Scout was 4, that was in a 10k pop province. Mostly my scouts get 2 or 3 slaves, and thats every 4th turn or worse. A 1blood with a dousing rod (and what true blood nation isn't going to employ those...) averaged 6 or 7 every turn. That equates to more than 4 scouts... Well that's my experience anyway, sure you can use scouts to blood hunt, and you may even be better off in the short run using them before you can muster up enough blood mages to do the work for you.

As to stealth... well I dunno, but for pure blood hunters I don't think stealth is really all that much of an advantage. There is something to be said for spreading your hunts, but I'm not convinced you get zero unrest hits for unseccusful hunts, in fact I'm pretty sure this isn't the case, I've had unrest up in provinces with scouts who were unsuccesful, perhaps not as much as if they were successful, but the unrest will still accumulate, and for a zero return at that.

Anyway, I overstated that Scouts suck (imagine that, hyperbole on a message board http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) but I still think the case for them in lieu of blood mages is poor, then again, alot depends on the actual dynamics of the game and what you can and can't do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree that some nations (DF and Mictlan) have very decent blood hunters, that don't require as much work as scouts. But those are the only two nations who could do that, and they are limited by the fact they can only produce them in castle provinces. These nations are aided by the fact you can scout and use their own cheap blood hunters to ramp up a quick blood economy. In the early game, you need research as much as blood slaves. So this is the best of both worlds, then when you need to convert to a higher blood output you convert ~5 priests with dousing rod to your 5k+ province with 0% tax and watch the blood roll in.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have found the opposite. I get anywhere between 0~7 with scouts. From my tests, a 1 Blood w/o Dousing Rod mage will hunt about as effectively as 3 Scouts. With a Dousing Rod it is between 5~6 Scouts. But this also accounts for constant unrest, so it's best to place your Blood, blood hunters in a 0% Tax province with others, while you let your scouts take slaves from numerous other interior provinces.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest accumulates from unrest. So if you are unable to completely kill the unrest of a turn by tax or patrol, it will breed more unrest. So if you have a set tax rate that will not clear the unrest you currently have, produced by your current unrest, and will squelch the unrest caused by next turns blood hunts, you will accumulate unrest.

An unsuccessful blood hunt gives you 1 point of Unrest. So even if 5 scouts fail, you will only get 5 points of unrest, which will be cleaned by 90% taxes.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. There is a fine line between the speed at which you get your slaves (for a sudden advantage by using Blood Summons/spells) or the steady income. I prefer speed, since that is my particular playstyle and because there is significant advantage to the speed of blood.

The main point of Scout blood hunting isn't for DF or Mictlan, but for other nations who have no ability to hunt for blood without sacrifice. Vanheim, Jotun, Abysia, etc. If you relied on your mages because of their cost to blood hunt, it would be far more pronounced than DF or Mictlan.

[ February 11, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

"Unrest accumulates from unrest. So if you are unable to completely kill the unrest of a turn by tax or patrol, it will breed more unrest. So if you have a set tax rate that will not clear the unrest you currently have, produced by your current unrest, and will squelch the unrest caused by next turns blood hunts, you will accumulate unrest.

An unsuccessful blood hunt gives you 1 point of Unrest. So even if 5 scouts fail, you will only get 5 points of unrest, which will be cleaned by 90% taxes."

Are you sure about this? I was not aware that unrest produced more unrest, I thought that it was the tax rate (sites and other events nonwithstanding) that controled unrest. I'll have to pay more attention to this, but I've had provinces with ~10 unrest where I just left it at 100% tax and saw no movement in either direction...

Further I'm not sure that a failed blood hunt gives only 1 unrest, I'll have to check it more closely, but I seem to recall a ~4k province where I had 2 scouts blood hunting where the unrest would jump anywhere from 0-10+ on a given turn (even with both scouts unsuccesful), and this with the 90% tax. Granted I hadn't done a complete search to see if there may have been some site present...

I will try scouts out some more though, perhaps my test games where I employed them just were unlucky, or perhaps you've just been luckier http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif There is flexibility for either system, and I do tend to augment my research abilities in other ways if I do plan on using my national mages to hunt early, then again to get to Blood3 and Const4 isn't all that difficult usually for early game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Scouts have quite a few benefits over most nations blood hunters.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Assuming that by "most nations" you mean "nations/themes without a good blood hunter". (Unfortunately this includes Abysia at the moment. Warlock Apprentice would have been just what they needed - if he had been cheap and not capitol only instead of another big-ticket mage. Maybe in a future patch...)
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think you mean not *fortress* only. Diabolists and Mictlan Priests aren't capitol only either.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mictlan Priests are sacred (half upkeep). Aside from this, I don't think 5 scouts will outperform 1 mictlan priest. Scouts fail a lot. Most of the time with 5 scouts, no more than one will find ANY blood slaves (IMX anyway). And more hunters means more unrest, even if they are unsuccessful.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
If you could hunt while sneaking (in enemy territory), then this would be useful; otherwise not. Anyone on hunt orders isn't sneaking if an enemy army happens to show up, and they're not going to live long enough to switch to sneaking.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
One mictlan priest in every province accomplishes the same thing.

A smaller number of more skilled hunters will always produce less unrest per slave found than a large number of unskilled hunters. Even if the unskilled scouts can match the blood mages' slave output through sheer numbers, slave hunting unrest is determined partly by slaves found and partly by number of searchers.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I almost never hunt with unskilled hunters - too much unrest for too few (often no) slaves. Only if I'm playing a nation whose blood mages are RIDICULOUSLY expensive (Pangaea, Vanheim, maybe Jotunheim) will I resort to hunting by the unskilled - and even then, only until I find independents or site-based mages or something like that.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most = All except for Mictlan, DF. Even BF ulm gets a better buy out of Scouts.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I ment castle, not capital. I think I mentioned later castle.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have had different experiances. Perhaps it was because of the luck involved, but over an average of 100 turns, 3 scouts will perform equal to 1 Mictlan Priest w/o dousing rod +- 5 Slaves. I have only done the test twice. Once with Mitclan Priest and once with a Vanjarl (I wanted to see if there were any hidden bonuses for blood hunting based on nation).

This may not be very apparent, because of the variety of turns. You can go through a dry spell with scouts, but also you can go through a gold rush.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It was not intended to be while blood hunting. In my experience in most MP your are flooded with spells like HfH, CotW, CotWild, flying SC's or armies, stealth attacks, etc. Stealth on people outside of a castle is a significant advantage in my mind for a non-fighting utility unit simply because after they retreat (if you have set them to retreat) you could be cut off and die. Whereas when you retreat with a stealth unit, they go into 'hide' and can have the province taken out from under tham and be sitting on it.

Also once you're known to be using blood, or are a blood nation, you are more than likely to be scouted and attacked at your blood hunting provinces. With the exception of Jotun, most cast any province spells will knock out even 11ish PD. And most would cast 2 or 3 of the same spell in order to make sure your Blood Hunters are scattered and distracted and cut off a potential supply. And at times will cut you off of retreat to kill you (depends totally on the situation)

This may not be others experiences, which I freely admit, but it is nonetheless a very real threat in competitive MP with blood in my experience.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is assuming you can field a Mictlan priest for every province and take the significant hit to research that it would require in the early game where Blood is strongest. My arguements are not based on late game, have 6 castles being able to produce whatever you'd like, massive amounts of gold, no need for research, type of situations. But the more real situations of early game where you don't have the resources to do so or spread yourself that thin. Mictlan is not the issue, as scouts are only a bonus to them in their hunting. Unrest from scouts IMO is as managable as single priest, a few extra points of unrest doesn't really matter when you have the same situation where sometimes you don't catch very many slaves and thus your unrest rights itself.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well that categorizes us by having different playstyles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I have had massive success with scouts in the past and will continue to use them unless most nations are afforded a cheap blood hunter and I don't require research/forging/casting of that particular unit while at the same time having the advantages of the current system.

[ February 11, 2004, 21:10: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't played Mictlan, but I tried Abysia with blood.

In fact, I tend to reserve a high population (which normally means high income) province for hunting. It makes sense that, the more people, the more slaves you will find. With this, hunting is OK - a Demonbred (Blood2) will find slaves most of the time, sometimes as many as 15, maybe 6-10 average. If you drop taxes to 0 or maybe 10-20%, a lone hunter should not be enough to drive up the unrest level (high unrest seems to make hunting less efficient). Yes, that means the province is lost for taxes, but if you've got something to do with all those slaves, it should be worth it.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You definetly do get unrest for some unsuccessful hunts.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">5 priests will only give you around 20 blood slaves a turn. If you want enough to make it truly pay off, you'll want 10 priests at least, if not double that.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif The more the better when you get to the point where you need blood more than research. I'd say convert them all actually. But that was just an example.

But I wouldn't place more than 5, Blood 1 + Dousing Rod in a province of 5k+ and reduce the taxes, or your unrest can get out of line (unless you have massive patrollers).

But that's just my preference. If I'm not focusing on Blood as a nation (with a Pretender/nation that can use the blood) I tend to not convert everything to a blood only income but supplement my existing gem income, gold income, with the blood income that can be overlooked.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, I tend to put ~4 Tribal Kings in a province capturing slaves and patrolling, so it's quite posible to keep unrest fairly low. You do run the population down extremely fast that way though.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

Hunting with Priests:
I had actually heard that the expense of a Blood 1 hunter over a scout with a dowsing rod didn't pay for itself (even over time??), but I wanted lots of priests to try out Communion abuse with a nation other than Pythium. So as I was hiring them anyway, I may as well put them to good use while waiting to try fielding a magic heavy army. And they do (unquantified vague impression here) seem to produce a lot more slaves than my scout hunting parties from an earlier attempt did.

As for the pool button working with auto-blood sacrifice:
Does that mean that if I click 'pool' my auto-sacrificers will go on sacrificing their allotted number of slaves every round, despite not having any slaves in their inventory? For that matter, am I wrong about the number of slaves in their inventory deciding how many slaves they will sacrifice? I can't remember where I heard that, but I haven't tested it myself, having had plenty of blood slaves so far.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd also like to know what other people say about this. From my own meager experience, I'd say the latter claim (unsuccessful bh = 1 unrest) is untrue for the nations and hunters I have used thus far.
And I would like to know about the first claim too. If true, there must be some darn complex algorithm which determines how that works; unrest will usually decrease if around 1-20, all things being equal (e.g. not overly negative dominion, not weird events, outragous taxation, etc.) in my experience, and sort of remain the same if around 15-40, and I have no clue for other values.
Anyone know?

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Try it for yourself. Start a game, have a unit blood hunt, if unsuccessful note the unrest. Assign someone to patrol or lower taxes, stop the blood hunter. Next turn when the unrest is 0 again, try to blood hunt. If unsuccessful, note the unrest.

In these tests, it is anywhere between 0-7 unrest for an unsuccessful blood hunt. This might be modified by the size of the population. In low provinces you seem to have less unrest per unsuccessful than high provinces.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More than likely this is just a perception issue. I did tests before where unrest does not move without outside influence at 100% Taxation. But I remember reading somewhere that having unrest has the chance to increase that unrest and at times it seems to work that way, but it just as easily could be a factor of something else.

Edit: Here is some information from Dom1 that I dug up, some of it has been modified (Like the FoB) but most of it is still fairly accurate AFAIK.

http://www.freewebs.com/sunraybe/blood.html

[ February 12, 2004, 09:13: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

i got 7-20+ blood slaves per turn with with each of my bloodhunting mages from abysia which had 8 in skill for bloodhunting.(warlocks 3 blood + dagger + armor + brazen skull + dousing rod).

That's the best way of collecting them i think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

this was with territories with 3000-9000 in population.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Whoa, that's crazy... I mean to invest to much into one blood hunter... 2 WAs with rods should match that... Hell I had a WA with no dousing rod in an 11k province picking up 17slaves for a while, strangely when I stuck the rod on him it droped to less than 10, though by that time there were more hunters and more unrest http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Getting back to scouts for a sec... I did some testing with Abysia Last night and found that they still do suck compared to WAs. Of course I had the luxury of time and being able to take research more slowly (didn't find a library or other cheap mage site in 15+ provinces http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ). The 5 scout province brought in fewer slaves and had worse unrest than the 1 WA+rod. Of course it should have been 7.5 scouts to 1 WA, but whatever http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif From this simple test (both provinces were ~11k pop) it seems to me that if you have the extra gold you can easilly take every 3rd or 4th WA and set him up as a BH, using scouts only to ferry the slaves around if you don't want to build a lab. I'm still unconvinced that scouts are *better* (in some situations sure, but you'll have to adjust on the fly in your games anyway) even for the themes without cheap blood mages.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

i think the blood items are very cheaply made tho, they dont cost all that much.

the armor is the one thing that costs most of all of those(40 blood or 20 blood and nature) and all they need are 5 devils or blessed troops as bodyguards to pretty much survive anything(not to mention leech(25+ damage 100% accurancy + alot of bloodslaves since he's collecting....) to kill any assassin or aid any defense you might have set up.

Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Without actually looking up the costs I think you're looking at around 80 slaves and some assorted gems. 80 slaves is one soul contract, which is worth a ton more than a decked out blood hunter. I suppose if you've nothing better to do with those items you can use that commander to search, but I think he'd be more useful summoning the big bad boys, or leading your forces somewhere. Anyway, 2 WAs would probably equal his output in slaves, and there's not much need to protect your hunters with big baddies normally. Besides if your hunters are cheaper there's not as much imperative to protect them heavilly in the first place...