Vanheim and blood
 

With vanheim (any theme), who is supposed to blood hunt? The *cheapest* person you get costs 280 I think, and only has 1 blood skill. Am I supposed to do that with my pretender whom I give higher blood skill? (Actually, all Van folk have 1 blood max. Cant cast many spells with that, so I suppose the pretender should do that, so he must have some blood skills or ignore that school altogether.) Seems a sort of lowly job to do for a god.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Use lots of scouts, Saber Cherry's recent data showed that they are more efficient (for the gold) than most other blood hunters anyway.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thank you.
But:
1. Dont you need at least some blood slaves to be able to make a dousing rod?
2. I read that post, and am also confused about it. Didnt all other searchers perform better than .95 slaves/trn? Wasnt that the results?

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

The results were prompted on a discussion about Blood Slave gathering effeciency (as some people prefer to hunt with hunters, which as you can see not all nations are afforded cheap ones).

The way to make up for some of this initial loss is to use scouts hunt for slaves. Scouts don't use/wear anything to hunt. You just put them on Blood Hunt and let them go at it. You can use your initial slaves to equip a Vanjarl with Dousing Rod if you are extremely hard up for slaves and want to put some Van's on Blood Hunting.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1. Scouts don't need dousing rods to blood search, infact they don't help scouts at all.

2. Other searcher find more slaves per searcher, but scouts are so cheap to pruduce and maintain that they are usually the best deal.

EDIT: triple crosspost http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 15, 2004, 02:58: Message edited by: quantum_mechani ]

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dousing rods cost 5 blood slaves base, which means you need at least blood-1, or Forge of the Ancients and any magic skill, to make one.

However, a dousing rod is not required to find blood slaves: An untrained scout still has a chance to find blood slaves, and scouts are fairly cheap.

According to Cherry's data, a blood-1 mage hunting with a dousing rod is roughly 4 times better than a scout at this...

But Vanjarls are $280! For the cost of a single Vanjarl, dousing rod not included, you could hire 14 $20 scouts. Vans are sacred, so their upkeep is reduced by half, but for that money, you could pay the wages of 7 scouts. A Vanjarl will only hunt as well as about 4 scouts. So for Vanheim, it appears to be somewhat more efficient to hunt with scouts. One other benefit of scout-hunting is that you can spread the hunting out across many provinces easily, to avoid savaging the blood-hunted province.

Mictlan can afford to hunt with their priests, as the Mictlan priest is $80 and sacred, so has the upkeep of a $40 unit, or two scouts, and hunts as well per unit cost as a scout, and twice as good with a rod. Vanjarls are much more pricey, however, so it's not quite as economical to bloodhunt with Vanjarls.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

But isn't unrest generated based on the number of blood hunters, not slaves taken? If it is, then Vanjarls might be a better option for full-scale blood hunting. In my experience anything more than 3 blood hunters in a 0% tax province will send unrest through the roof.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Nope, each slave taken adds like +1-2 unrest. The actual act of hunting itself doesn't add much at all, maybe 1 or 2. In addition, with scouts you can spread the hunting around more easily, so you get more unrest dissipation. Scouts are *definately* the best choice unless you have very cheap blood mages (like Mictlan).

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

It's based on unsuccessful hunts and successful hunts.

You get much more unrest for successful hunts than unsuccessful.

You can usually put 5 hunters in a province with 0 tax (1 blood +SDR) and do fairly alright. Sometimes you have to wait a round if you get lucky (with alot of slaves).

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Scouts also tend to allow you to diffuse your blood hunting across provinces: One advantage of this is that you don't actually have to drop taxes to absolutely zero, and therefore give up income entirely in what are otherwise good provinces: Successful blood hunts tend to produce a LOT more unrest than a failed one, particularly if the take is large: I've done a blood hunt with a blood-10 hunter, raking in some 20+ slaves at once, and immediately sending unrest into the 100+ range.

In contrast, scouts usually fail their hunts: The unrest is minimal and even a successful hunt will yield only a modest take that doesn't overly annoy the province. A province being hunted by scouts will therefore tend to average out to a smoother unrest generation, as opposed to a blood mage hunter's spikes of successes.

Plus, costwise, scouts are far, far cheaper, and can be built nearly anywhere, even many provinces which are devoid of fortresses. There are also other benefits of having scouts diffused throughout your empire: Should an enemy attack you, once his army rolls through, your scouts may be able to easily reflag the province and allow your defense force to totally annihilate the enemy force, since they will not have anywhere to rout. Only Mictlan really benefits from using actual blood mages with SDRs to hunt, since their blood hunter priest is a mere $80 and sacred, to boot. Other potential blood nations have hunters which are just too expensive to use for such a task.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

im playing a game as pangea lately and im using a bit of bloodmagic as well, though just for summoning, not for battle. My tactic to get JUST enough bloodslaves is to to get approx 3-4 Pandemoniacs, they have nature 3, blood 2. Send every pan in a different provine with approx 2-4k population and let them hunt for 1 or 2 turns, just so you get 15 slaves. Put the tax to 70 % (it wont make a difference income-wise anyway, since the provine only gives 20 or so at 100%) Now let each forge one rod and continue to hunt. Now You should get approx 15+ slaves per turn.
Of course this wont be enough income if you rely on blood magic, but its enough for some fiends of darkness or dark vines.

hope i helped you.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Thanks a lot.
Finally understand: slaves/turn PER GOLD. Get it now. Such long-term thinking had escaped me (me want slaves now!). Obliged.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

A lot of these cost per slave analysis start from the premise that the mage searcher has no other uses, which is not true in the case of the Vanir.

When I play Van I usually have at least half a dozen Vanjarls set as a quick response force (for either rituals or to Cloud trapeze wherever they might be needed). Until the need arrives the Vanir can use their time much more eficiently as blood searchers than, say researchers with their puny 5RP.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Wendigo makes a good point: If you're holding Vanjarls for military purposes, the cost effectiveness of using them for a secondary task like researching or bloodhunting is far less important: They're going to sit there anyway, why not put them to use?

The relative virtues of blood hunting as opposed to researching vary depending on one's situation, but bloodhunting is definitely a valid solution for an idling Vanjarl who's on a stakeout for military reasons, rather than economic ones.

However, for a dedicated bloodhunter, scouts are unmatched by anything other than a Mictlan priest, and neither scouts nor Mictlan priests are really strong choices for other uses that would necessitate keeping them around doing otherwise nothing.

While you may have a half dozen to a dozen Vanjarls sitting around waiting for a fire to extinguish, it'll surely take more than that to fuel a strong blood economy, however. They may do a fair job earning their keep as blood hunters in the meantime, but never forget that this is simply busywork, not their primary purpose.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Vaetti Hag (Blood-1) is also pretty good at 55 gold.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

With Vanheim, I think you need to make the decision on whether to play them as a blood nation at the pretender design stage. I'm fond of using a water 4, blood 4 blue dragon for this purpose. The dragon can help with the initial expansion (research quickness!), then after an aflliction or 3, retire to a nice life of blood hunting and Ice Devil summoning. The blessings on the Vans and Valks are decent too...

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Vaetti Hag isn't sacred, IIRC, so therefore has the upkeep of a $55 unit. A base hag will hunt only twice as well as a scout, for more than twice the cost, so a Vaetti Hag would only pay off if you hunted with an SDR. Not quite as economical as the Mictlan Priest, but definitely an option for base Jotun.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Even if you opt not to play as a hardcore blood nation, it won't hurt to have a few scout hunt for blood, to be put to use for tasks like blood sacrificing at times when you really need to push out Dominion faster, or forging an occasional blood item like a Black Heart to turn a Vanjarl into a mean assassin.

[ February 15, 2004, 18:17: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

While we're on the subject of blood (and what a wonderful subject it is) I've really been trying to learn to like Mictlan, but their dependence on sacrifice leads me to one inevitable question:

Can priests sacrifice out of the laboratory pool, or do they have to have their victims in their personal inventory?

If the latter, can we BEG Illwinter to fix that in the next patch? I was under the impression priests had to carry their sacrifice supply, and keeping them 'topped up' and tracking their usage is a massive and annoying drain on time and attention. I'd sacrifice much more if I could just turn the command on and forget it. Indeed, my temples would run red with blood!

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sacrificing priests automatically replenish their blood slaves from a laboratory if there is one present. They will take as many slaves as you gave them the previous turn.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Oh! THAT might explain my funky, inconsistent results. So I have to 'prime the pump' with a few slaves, and after that they'll keep themselves supplied?

Hmmm. Means I won't be able to use 'pool blood slaves', but it's still a major timesaver. Enough to make sacrificing useful and convenient.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

I think they restock automatically even if you take the slaves away with the "pool" command, since dominion seems to spread even when I use the "pool" command and don't give them their slaves back. Not sure though.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You just need to put your blood hunters in a control group and press 'Z' to have only them dump their slaves into a lab.

Re: Vanheim and blood
 

Actually, I've found out that pool blood slaves DOESN'T disrupt priests attempting to perform a blood sacrifice. Somebody mentioned that a priest will actually auto-draw blood slaves from the lab if possible, and as Mictlan, where dominion doesn't spread unless sacrifices are performed properly, I've found this is, indeed, the case: A priest with sacrifice orders active will automatically draw slaves from the lab up to his maximum sacrifice limit as long as sufficient slaves exist to be sacrificed and both lab and temple remain operational.

This means you CAN blood hunt with labs and use "pool slaves". However, a priest can't initiate sacrifice orders unless he has slaves in his inventory: Taking away his slaves after the sacrifice orders are given has no effect, however, and next turn he will already have drawn slaves into his inventory again up to his maximum, if a lab remained operational (i.e., didn't randomly explode).