Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Okay, today, I am here to address a very important issue people. Blood Magic. Blood Magic, is seemingly the most daunting and confusing school of magic to even dream about using... to even the slightest success. After the fact that everything demands those pesky blood slaves, theres the wee confusing thing about GETTING blood slaves that really has me flabbergausted. The amout of micromanagement invovlved in keeping a healthy number of blood slaves around is nauesating.

Is there any thing that eases up this process of moving commanders around provinces harvest blood slaves? To be quite frank, considering the amount of time that is needed micro-ing all of those little blood mages, we should start a fund for research of an ethanol equivalent to blood.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you have the extra cash, building a lab in the province where you are doing the harvesting will help a lot - slaves will be available on the turn you find them, and you can pool them from the "lab" screen.

I tend to hunt in a very few select provinces. A high population helps a lot, and if you want to keep unrest at a reasonable level, you should lower taxes considerably - basically, to 0 once you have several efficient hunters. Yes, high population also means high income, so you're losing a lot of gold this way; hopefully the slaves will make up for it.

If you go the Scout way for your hunting, then you can choose to have only 1-2 hunters per province, and can get by with maybe 80% taxes; but then, you'll have to micromanage your harvest, most likely. Also, scouts don't benefit from Sanguine Dousing Rods like blood mages do, so your hunting will be slower and more erratic.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, according to Saber Cherry, a blood-1 hunter without an SDR hunts about as well as 2 scouts. With an SDR, a blood-1 mage hunts about as well as 4 scouts. A scout costs $20. If you have a blood mage that costs less than $40, or a blood mage that is sacred, has an SDR, and costs less than $80, you'll do better than scout hunting, if you neglect the cost of the SDR. If you do NOT have a blood mage that's really cheap, blood hunting with scouts is actually the most economical, goldwise. Micromanagement wise....well, building a lab anywhere you want to hunt is a fixed cost.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

however, hunting with scouts causes more unrest per unit blood slave and, as such, requires either lower taxes or greater patrolling, again, per unit blood slave.

so the economic benefit of the scout strategy is unclear, IMO, for any nation that has reasonably priced blood-1 hunters. As well as being a PITA.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Not really. By far the most unrest is generated by actually taking blood slaves, and the unrest does not *appear* to be a linear scale. In other words, my blood-10 Fountain of Blood with a SDR taking 25 slaves with no one else hunting raises unrest to ~120. 2 Scouts each nabbing 5 slaves raises my unrest to ~20. 2 Scouts failing to nab any slaves barely impacts unrest at all.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Uhm. Considering you can hunt with 8 scouts in a province with 0 tax and have virtually no unrest problems. It's not that unclear. On the other hand anything over 4 1 Blood with SDR's will ramp up the unrest beyond what is feasible to use taxes to control and you'll have to use patrollers.

Scouts are both more cost effective, time effective, safer and universally usable than blood magic blood hunters because of this.

There are only a few nations with the ability to hunt 'better' with less loss while at the same time not sacrificing something.

Other than that and needing a specific amount of Blood Slaves per turn for your progress, there is no reason not to use scouts except for the micromanagment aspect which could be nulled with a simple "Pool to Commander" command.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

well, I stand corrected.

I guess I just hate the micromanagement cost, which surely counts for something - your attention to detail can only go so far, esp. in a multiplayer game.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">or, better I think, a simple scout nerf...

[ March 13, 2004, 23:16: Message edited by: archaeolept ]

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

I don't think a Nerf is especially in order. Then it would effectively hurt at least 1 nation (Vanheim) and limit the use of Blood only to nations with cheap searchers. The only reason that you use scouts is they are the cheapest most availiable form of unit to do the job. It's only a bonus that they are stealthy. If they nerfed the Scouts ability to blood hunt then you'd just use Indep Commanders (50% Increase in Gold and significant resource cost which wouldn't allow you to recruit them in many provinces). If the entirety of all non-blood units blood hunting were nerfed, that would have a significant impact.

When a nation is geared towards blood, then a player is going to use scouts + whatever blood searchers he can grub up (Sages/random cheap blooders) in order to suppliment his blood slave economy. So it only helps blood nations in that regard by allowing them to use their blood mages to research early then go to blood hunting when they need it.

A Nation type that has a bonus (or penalty) to Blood Hunting (People allow it more or less) would be much more in line of what would be appropriate in my mind. However, how hard it would be to implement is as much a factor.

It has been talked about; but I don't know if there has been any real discussion about it.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Whew... lot of information there, esp. for a newbie. Let me try to summarize this.

1. Use scouts to harvest, because they are cheapest unit and cause the least unrest.

2. Build a lab in the provinces ur harvesting from to null the microing.

3. Give scouts SDR(what is that btw?)

4. Keep taxes down to prevent unrest

5. The pool resources button is your friend.

Now my only concern is the unrest. For nations like Marignon with Diabolic theme, they have to be slanted towards turmoil, making unrest even more common. How do you supress this with out eventually wasting the entire population of a province? I doubt that a high growth for domain would compensate.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, it does. With Growth 3 you can do quite a lot of blood hunting in a province with 0% taxes and still have the population actually grow.

If you just can't afford a positive growth scale, though, you just have to move your hunting to another province once the population of the first one gets significantly depleted.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Kind of off topic but as Mictlan do you need a lab to make your blood sacrificers automatically restocking slaves? If the answer is yes (which I think it is) do you have to use scouts to ferry slaves around? Or build a lab in every province with a temple? Or put temples in your blood hunting provinces?

Also if you do "pool slaves" it removes all slaves from your blood sacrificers too. Is there any way to play Mictlan without them being a micromanagement nightmare?


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sanguine Dowsing rod, a level 4 magic item.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Saves alot of time and frustration.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sanguine Dousing Rod. No, do not give scouts those, only Blood Magic Blood Hunters. It gives an Effective +2 Blood Level for Blood Hunting. Look at the MIQR for more information.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unless you like patrolling and moving your blood hunting teams around when the population drops to ~4k.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Turmoil doesn't increase Unrest at all, only reduces gold income and increases chance for events. Growth is a good option if you plan on eating away at your provinces for blood hunting, but I don't particularly like it because the point/pop increase isn't what I consider the best investment if there are other options (Productivity, etc)

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You only need a temple for them to sacrifce and automatically restock.

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Hmm.. This relates to Dom 1, as I havent tried it with Dom 2 yet since I wont own that game till battle speed is adjustable (heheh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ) Anyways, playing as Ermor, I had a Dusk Elder that came with level 1 in blood magic. I empowered him to 2 and since they are stealthy, had him go harvest slaves from a highly populated enemy territory, with a SDR. Now, my question is: does that still increase unrest there, even though you dont control the territory?

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You only need a temple for them to sacrifce and automatically restock. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh good. That also means that pooling slaves doesn't take theirs away then?

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You only need a temple for them to sacrifce and automatically restock. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You sure about that? I just gave an independent priest 6 slaves and sent him off to a temple. He sacrificed 2 per turn and when he ran out he just stopped.

Edit: Tried it a couple more times with the independent priest and a national priest and he never restocks at just a temple.

[ March 14, 2004, 07:07: Message edited by: Yossar ]

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can assure you that many medical students worldwide are working hard to find out just how much of their blood can indeed be replaced with ethanol. I'm sure they would appreciate any funds you could spare to help in this vital research, however! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

The easiest way I found with Mictlan to gather blood slaves and still auto-sacrifice at temples was:

- have bloodhunters in a province with a lab
- have the bloodhunters in each province grouped together. That is, select one, then hold 'control' while you select the others. You should end up with all of them selected, and (until you split up that group somehow) selecting any one of the bloodunters would select the whole 'group'.
- each round you just have to go to your blood hunting provinces, click on one bloodhunter to select them all, then use the single key command to dump all bloodslaves into the lab ('Z' I think)

Re: Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it
 

Unless things have changed, you need a lab in the province as well as a temple to auto-restock with sacrifices.