Blood Simple?!
 

Howdy!

After extensive reading and searching I have noticed a tendency for folks to speak of blood as being an easy path to shoot up in. You speak of late games with hordes of soul-contracts and I look at the 80 blood cost and wonder how in the world..?

I've tried races that have blood as one of their "strong" magic paths as well as those who only get it on a random but I am missing something methinks..

It just seems to take so long to get anywhere with it. You can only search one area per turn, it creates a fair bit of unrest which hurts income, and while hunting, your mages aren't researching. Plus, even with dowsing rods, the return is pretty minimal until you have a high (3+) Blood mage which I find difficult to get to with a random pick.

Anyway, I would love some hints on how to use and play blood effectively!

Thanks!

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Perhaps you are not paying enough attention to the population? Below 5000 or so the returns are much less. You can search a lot more than one area per turn, three blood mages per hunting province is normal (taxes 0%), more if you have patrolers to help out. You don't need a blood 3 mage to go hunting, blood one mages with sanguine rods are quite efficient.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

For soul contracts and other items, try to first forge a dwarven hammer (you'll need E3 and twenty earth gems for the first one) and use that to make it cheaper to build the items. If (when!) you make another hammer, use the first one while you forge it.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I think the easyness comes from Sages. 1 in 8 sages have Blood, and with even a few of them your blood income can easily be twice that of any other path. And as you can generate more blood slaves using up population (=money), you can get absurd blood income. And the 80 slaves/contract gives you one Devil each turn. Each of those critters cost 7 slaves to summon, and would need a BBFF mage to boost. Using a Dwarven Hammer to make a Contract out of Blood Slaves may sound stupid, but it lowers the cost to 60. As you can see, Contracts cost the same price 8 Devils would.

Blood is easy to get, not with powerful mages, but with many.

In addition, after one high-level Blood mage, you can boost the level by Blood Athame, Brazen Skull and Armor of Souls, and possibly Earth Stone. I'd estimate that with 10 crimson Sages, empowering an Earth mage to Blood 3 and forging 4 boosters (or few Soul Contracts) can be done in 10 turns.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Rathar, when I started I had the same reaction you did: these people must know something I don't.

I guess what is so 'contrary' about mass-blood strategies is that, in a way, blood slaves replace gold as your primary resource. I'm not saying gold isn't important (you need it to buy your commanders/temples/forts), but blood slaves are the primary source of your armies.

As you may have learned from other threads here, non-summoned troops have a very limited usefulness period. After a certain point, they become more or less superfluous. Blood Magic is one of the better magics because it plays into this fact. You're using your troops for one of their few useful abilities at any point in the game (patrolling), and you will be commander-heavy and summon-heavy from a relatively early point in the game.

However, all of this is not in the least clear from the perspective of someone coming from more 'traditional' strategy games, where the summons are, at best, equal to 'normal' troops. To be quite honest, I don't like the obsolescence of national troops in Dominions II probably because of this fact.

The end result is that the Dominions mindset, especially vis-a-vis other similar games, rewards a different approach. Playing with Blood Magic basically _requires_ this approach. That is why new players are often baffled by Blood Magic. I know for a fact I was.

Anyway, I hope this helped. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Blood income is fairly easy to get going.

Basic rules are, make sure pop is over 5000, pref about 8000. Set taxes to 0. Have a mage with blood level 1, forge a sanguine dousing rod and then blood hunt. Dont have more than 3 mages per province doing that unless your patrolling.

That being said. Blood spells can EAT through even a big income. The contract is good if you can build one fairly early as it takes about 8 or 9 turns to see a profit from them. So the first few tend to really profit you but depending on how long your game is, the returns diminish. Of course it means you dont have to keep mages summoning the buggers...but bleh.

I would probably say its harder to get the multipath blood stuff outside of the blood nations. Sages are easy to get as blood 1 to get an economy going. Getting mages capable of summoning blood stuff that have additional path requirments with your economy is slightly harder I would imagine.

Spiro

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

i took a high blood god with ulm and gave a hamer of the forge lord to my empowered smith :p 75% forge bonus meant that the contract made its cost back in 4 turns

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Aye, there are ways of course to make it cheaper.

Of course, getting construction 8. Forging a fire 3, Earth 3 Unique, Choosing Ulm, Then a blood 5 mage or god is one of the ways.

I wouls say contracts are something you really have to want to use to make a big difference.

Spiro.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Of course, if you play Mictlan, you can spend a vast ammount of blood slaves on dominion increasing. The lack of temple based dominion spread really screws you up.

In fact I would go as far to say its a little harsh. Though I speak from the point mainly of playing Mictlan and suffering under the lack of dominion. Were I to examine the whole picture maybe I would feel different.

Either way, it can cost a helluva lot of blood slaves to feed 6 or 7 Blood Sacrifice, level 4 priests with Jade Knives.

Spiro

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Actually, you can work the dominion to your advantage by taking very bad scales and have them not mess you up very much. For the most part, Mictlan only spreads as much dominion as it needs to survive.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I almost feel like thats an exploit though. I just think their should be a way, albeit different to others to have the ability to generate reasonable dominion.

I've been searching the boards for general strats on Mictlan, and there doesn't seem to be much. Its mainly what you can or can't do with blood. Mictlan are like a whole other world to that though due to some odd characteristics...the sacrifice being one of em.

Perhaps I should start a thread.

Spiro.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Dangerous if your enemy carries a strong dominion and makes many global spells weak or ineffective.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

If the enemy has a strong dominion, obviously you simply need a little more push to meet that survival level. And yes some globals don't work so well, but you can switch gears and start pushing dominion if you really feel the need to use one.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Thanks for the ideas folks!

The problem appears to be that I don't want to let go of national troops and other such traditional things which cost income but I now see how I actually get more value turning them into magic resources.

Rathar

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

the hard part is taking a prolific high population province and settign its taxes to zero.

the rest is easy. as you go eventually also equip your blood hunters with blood daggers, brazen skulls, and one of the two blood enhancing armors (one of them also enhances nature, but has its downfalls) and continue to push them along. I often get over 10 bloodslaves to a single searcher when doing it like this, you get 3 going and you're throwing out high end blood summons all over the place (not to mention succubus is the one "assassin" available to any nation willing to blood hunt. and with way more HPs than your average assassin)

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Equip blood hunters with blood boosters? That doesnt seem like an efficient strategy to me. Best to spend the least amount possible (just giving them a dousing rod) for the highest possible return. Save boosters for whoever your real bloodmage is and use the slaves to summon archdevils or something.

Another reason not to put anything more than you absolutely need on your hunters is because they are so vulnerable. Unless you've madcastled or something, your hunters will generally be spread out all over your empire with minimal protection. A wise player can raid your hunting operations, killing expensive mages and disrupting your blood supply lines.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Even if you do have all your hunters behind walls (and that should be the case as soon as feasible), Earth Attack and similar spells will utterly slaughter your hunters like there's no tomorrow, so you should expect those hunters to be expendable.

I wonder why those mages don't claim a life insurance or some such.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I am SO glad that for my first MP game I am playing with 7 of my friends, none of whom has ever played this MP..!

I get the feeling that with just about any of you in the game it would be all over now (turn 25, biiig map) as we are still using twigs and rocks to arm ourselves!

heh heh

Rathar

P.S. I am the only one of us who reads this forum with any frequency and I am #1 by a long shot! weee!

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

glad they could help http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif btw if your bored and want to play a blitz against them try something like caelum and just make tons of basic seraphs and script them to quickness and then just false horror spam (take either wizards tower or watchtower and try to make 3 castles + 3 labs straight away and soon as you have some income make 4 seraphs a turn.

they will hate you for it probably after a while though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Yes but it's because of these reasons and the extra micro-management that mictlan is usually avoided as a nation to play, especially for large maps.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Actually, in my experience it is one of the more popular nations.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I would hate to see how long it takes doing a Mictlan turn on day_90 for a map of 400+ provinces. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I would not play _any_ nation on a 400 province map. Though I believe one of the leading nations in the current Faerun game is Mictlan...

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

As long as the population remains over 5000, the population has no effect on the success of the hunt.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Yeah - which is why I really prefer to blood hunt provinces between 4000 and 6500, something like that. The more populous provinces I take the gold income from.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Graeme, spirokeat may be referring how to keep the population 'stable', if you take a growth scale. While 5000+ has no difference on if you succeed at bloodhunting, certainly the population determines its growth, and if it can 'keep up' with the population loss from bloodhunting.

Is this feasible?

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

People complain about Mictlan micromanagement, but it's not that bad. Even as a relatively strong nation on a big map (like Faerun) you're not going to have more than 20 or so provinces being actively bloodhunted. This means that at the beginning of each turn, you spend 20 seconds or so clicking on those provinces and hitting ctrl-z. No big deal. And, for those huge long games, growth is pretty nice. It takes about 115 turns with growth-3 before your population has doubled. In Zen's mod, with twice the effect of growth, it takes less than 60. You can, of course, argue (validly) that by turn 60 money isn't that important, but you can also then send an army against 20 decent mages of the nation of your choice and watch it dissolve beneath a barrage of charm/falling frost/orb lightning/falling fires/nether darts/whatever the destructive spell du jour is...

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Heheheh. Just goes to show that Knowing IS Half the Battle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif When you are done thrashing them tho, get them on to the forum or swing by the IRC channel. Always good to have more players in the community.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Thanks for that Graeme, I knew that 5k and below was a serious diminish but thought that it was a finer gradient than simply 5k and over.

BUT ! thats not why I said 8000. I suggest that because it gives your hunters a reasonable stay in one province before the pop does hit 5000 and below and you move em.

One of the things that I do find a pain in the *** is when I pool my blood slaves and I then have to go to each Blood Sacrifice priest and give him new slaves. I hope thats changed in Dom3.

In terms of equiping your hunters. All they get is a sanguine dousing rod. And I tend not to use anything but basic priests either. if I recall you can actually push unrest up despite tax 0, if you use higher level hunters. Three blood 1 priests with dousers seems the best.

As far as changing gear and pushing dominion. Its very hard. Its not just about a temple and a chap sacrificing. You have to keep his blood supply up, which means a lab too.

Plus your good priest is 390 gold a pop, giving you a basic cost to preach basic dominion of 790, plus a 5 slave, 5 nature knife. and then about 8 slaves per turn to keep him going, for every single province you want up. not too cheap.

In my opinion dominion is the single hardest thing for Mictlan to deal with.

Spiro.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Well that's only step one of many... let me list the other steps:
Step2: Checking for unrest because of blood hunters since patroling troops are sometimes pushed to the front or haven't arrived yet. If unrest exists then switching those blood hunters to research or maybe forge a blood axe.
Step3: Providing each blood hunter with 2 or 3 blood slaves... thus increasing survival of the province. Summon Imps is cheap and helps the patrollers and PD.
Step4: Watching Dominion drops where priest hunting for blood has to switch into sacrificing for bringing dominion back up.
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

And that's four other micromanagement steps of Mictlan which were missed.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Step2 can be easily done with F1 screen, and won't be needed every turn. Once in a few turns is enough, and I prefer to do that any way with any nation.
Step3: I thought hunt happens before movement and battles. That would mean that if the hunters catch anything, they can summon the imps. This is most often the case, so I don't worry about leaving the hunters any slaves.
Step 4: Only needed in border provinces, really. Although as it is provinces bordering enemy dominion instead of enemy territory, it can sometimes be hard to notice. This is second step that really has to take time when playing Mictlan, and only if you don't have specialized priests that Blood Sacrifice continuously.
Step5: Isn't that much harder than sitesearching without spells, or for holy/unholy magic, so I don't find it particularly infuriating.

All of these do add micromanagement, but I don't think they increase it as much as you think.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

TRUE, BUT.... as a result you'll be visiting/adjusting many more provinces then other nations since as a nation you're forced to blood hunt to survive.

From what I've seen it does happen before regular battle movement, but not spell casted battles. And to leave them without blood slaves because they usually find some is way too risky in my book. I have more peace of mind sending my turn knowing each low level blood mage can cast summon imp twice during battle.



Unless you're dealing with enemy nations that have stealthy priests. They sneak and sometimes fly in... heavily preach for two turns and move. I've felt this pain.
And even when it's border provinces only, it's extra management not needed by other nations... especially felt for large maps.

True but it's an extra duty which needs to be done instead of having them just sit on research or mass casting some summon spell. I'd much rather have my commanders searching for sites or researching then killing slaves and moving to kill more slaves.


For small maps of 120 or less... it's not noticed that much.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

There's no need for that. The population effect is that if a number chosen between 1 (maybe 0) and 5000 is less than the population, the hunt passes the check. So even 4000 people is 80% as effective as 5000.

Don't pool your blood slaves. Go to each bloodhunting province, make a selection group of your hunters only, and press ctrl+z.

A dousing rod raises your blood skill by 1 for the purpose of hunting if you already have 1 blood skill. The base chance that a hunter will succeed is 10%+(bloodskill*40%). So a blood 1 Mictlan priest with a dousing rod will succeed 90% of the time in a province with 0 unrest and 5000 people. Unrest is a percentage failure chance. The blood slaves you find are 1d6+bloodskill.

That would be the equivalent of about 8 temples in that single province, so that's kind of overkill. A single H2 Mictnal priest without a jade knife sacrificing two slaves a turn should be good enough if you picked a high dominion (7-8).

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen. Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it. You will probably also have your hunters behind castles. Mictlan only needs to spend gold on priests, capital based mages, and buildings unless you took a powerful bless effect.

Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

This is part of any blood nation.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.


In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.


Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.


It's still extra management.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Well, I have to say, having a far clearer understanding of how Dominion spreads and then changing accordingly, I find that as Mictlan I am capable of outstripping the other nations in the SP game I am in easily. Whereas before I was constantly at the bottom of the pile.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Thanks Zen.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Theyn might be able to, but with 0 taxes it will take a few turns usually. Even at 20% unrest, that's just a 20% chance of failure. 4 out of 5 turns the province will produce normally. Avoiding micromanagement is done by not trying to optimize every possible thing.

Blood hunters in a proper hunting province will succeed 90% of the time. With three hunters, you are almost certain to have some success, and as stated, those three hunters will either be enough of a defense, as they are against small attacks, or will be hopelessly defeated.

If your opponent is spending gems on call of the wild, you will win the resources war fairly simply.

That's a problem with the house rules you chose, not the game itself.

You will be managing the unrest every five turns or so anyways.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Damn, I gotta answer this when I'm awake. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

That amount of slaves captured cant be right. I've had B1 and B2 mages pull in 10-15 slaves on a really good day.
Or... is that 1d6oe? I suppose that would be reasonable.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

yah, its OE

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I'm pretty much with Graeme on this one. I played Mictlan on Large Faerun, expanded into T'ien Ch'i, Machaka, and Atlantis' territory, and didn't need to spend more than 2:25 per turn in blood-related micromanagement. Given that turns could easily take an hour or more, this was a trivial amount extra.
One thing that helps reduce the pain a lot is to make sure that you don't use all your slaves in a given turn. If you keep a pool at least as large as the number of slaves being sacrificed, your sacrificers (the ones at labs anyway, which in my opinion should be all of them) will automatically replenish their stores. Also, I've found that three hunters in a zero-tax province can pretty much be ignored when it comes to unrest. It's a self-regulating process; when they're very successful, unrest can really jump, but this makes them less successful in successive turns and so overall you do okay. If you take growth, you also don't have to worry about the population loss, and things really become easy.
Different people have different play styles, certainly. The management involved in supporting mine is pretty minimal. If you like to play in a way that makes blood no fun, either don't play it or experiment with new tactics. At some point there is a tradeoff between being absolutely optimal despite the user interface and enjoying the game.
As a note, in maybe 3000 province-turns of blood-hunting (with three dowsing hunters per) I've *never* noticed all of them coming up empty. Since blood mages share virgins, you're pretty much assured of having enough to summon some imps if need be.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Combined with the chance they will return with nothing even with 0 unrest raises the percentage beyond what I see as beneficial and tossing them into research will not only remove the existing unrest but improve research.
Unlike your games I've seen not only small attacks and huge defeats but very close magic casted and non-magic casted battles. Those close battles really are fun to watch.

You're forgetting the Soulstone allows its wielder to cast call of the wild for free every turn... combined with madmen or a hordes from hell and you'll pray for those blood mages each have a pair of blood slaves.
Players having to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically is a problem to you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif ... sounds like mass-castle building is more the problem since it's expected to be seen in multiplayer games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

The point is Mictlan has to have blood hunters, priests sacrificing and adjusting unrest just to push or keep alive the domain. All which brings extra micromanagement. This was mentioned long ago in previous topics as well.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Mictlan's whole idea is that they have to have blood hunters capturing and priests sacrificing slaves. If this brings micromanagement, it is a pity but hardly avoidable. Both the Z (pool all blood slaves from the chosen commanders) and the automatic refill of blood sacrificers are ways Illwinter tries to ease the burden with. I don't think the burden is big enough to warrant big chances, as the current one works quite well and doesn't increase the micromanagement too much.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

The chance that a hunter fails is 10% for B2 and 0% for B3.

A small attack can be dealt with by moving your bloodhunters back to the province they retreated from to recapture it.

The soulstone is an artifact and only gives you a single call of the wolves per turn. Your province defense of 10 should be enough to hold that off by itself. If your opponent has the astral income to cast multiple madmen spells per turn, then you have to have comparable income of some other kind or you've already lost. Hordes from hell is not going to be defeated by the six imps that three B1 mages will likely be able to summon.

No, players complaining that their house rules mess up game balance is the problem.

I'm well aware of what you think the point is. The actual fact is that the micromanagement is not that much worse once you've built the basic infrastructure needed.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

And combined with a 20% from unrest is too likely in my book. You never have close battles anyway so there's no need for you to worry about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

One turn lost blood-hunting/researching since it's a magic casted battle and another turn lost to recapture the province. And if the blood hunters were unable to retreat into a province without a lab then you're sending them into battle without blood slaves making them virtually powerless.

Call of the wolves v.s Mictlans 10 PD http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
way too risky in my book.

Summon imps casted by 3 blood mages is 18 imps... when casted again during battle that is 36 imps plus PD. And this has won battles for me against hordes from hell.

House rules are set before a game starts... no one forces them to play these games with house rules. If they don't like the house rules they should host their own game.

Guess you're just in a total different game experience compared to others since this has been mentioned before yet you deny the big micromanagement with Mictlan. Obviously you don't believe me or anyone whose complained about this before, as I've listed below:

As you can see these quotes CLEARLY indicate the extra micromanagement is not a small issue as you seem to believe. I'm sorry you disagree with all of us Graeme Dice... maybe you just play small maps to not notice this.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

The chance that all three blood hunters will fail approaches 2%. Why are you worrying about events that will only happen in 1 out of every 50 attacks, when your province is only likely to experience 5 attacks in a game.

This would be a problem for you with any blood nation thanks to your choice to perform unnecessary tasks.

You'd be better off to buy a single Tribal King and have him capture slaves than to worry about supplying blood slaves to your hunters. Your hunters are expendable, your play time isn't.

Of course, you could have just had your hunters retreat, then move them back in to retake the province the next turn.

You are complaining that Mictlan can't use castles to protect its blood hunters. That is micromanagement created solely by the house rules you chose, so you certainly can't complain about it.

Maybe you should learn to read while you go about learning that repeating the same assertion does not make it anymore true. I have issues with your complaints about micromanagement. Please don't bring up irrelevant appeals to popularity.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I'm not saying they all will fail, but even 15% of increased failure compared with zero unrest is not a comfortable setting for me. And if they don't fail then unrest increases even more dropping population and decreasing chances even more.

Yes but those blood mages might not need to flee if they were originally setup with blood slaves at the start of a magic casted battle. 36 imps for holding a province is well worth the six blood slaves the mages hold... sorry you don't agree.


Three blood hunters each with 2 or 3 blood slaves adds good protection for a province... thus winning is worth my playtime.


You know... keeping that province and killing the attacking force is better in so many ways then your retreat and recapture strategy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


The micromanagement exists with or without the house rules... did you not read the quotes from the other gamers? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif


NO... you've been saying the micromanagement wasn't that bad. These quotes from many other gamers CLEARLY indicate the micromanagement is painfully noticed with Mictlan. The only reason I see you not experiencing this is if you've been playing small maps with Mictlan.

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Somewhere amongst this argument I recall a post stating that blood sacrificiers for Mictlan are automatically replenished. Is that really true, and how does it work?

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

Oh...and I demand that the vicious ad hominem attacks cease immediately!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Blood Simple?!
 

I'm not sure where you pulled out a 15% failure rate. The failure rate is about 28% for 20% unrest and a B2 hunter.

Unrest doesn't cause population losses, and the decreased chance of success will bring your unrest back down. At the map sizes you are complaining about I'd assume that you'd have maybe 20 hunting provinces. Most of the will succeed, making the occasional failure pretty much unnoticeable.

You claimed that this was additional micromanagement for Mictlan. Given that it's a playstyle choice of yours that you would apparently use for any blood nation, it's certainly not a Mictlan problem.

And yet, it's still not a problem isolated to Mictlan.

Not really. Retreating allows you to trap your opponents.

The micromanagment does not exist if you have your bloodhunters in a castle. You complained that your house rules prevented the use of castles. That's your own problem.

No, I didn't read the quotes, since they have no real purpose here.

That's because it isn't compared to any of the other blood nations.

Actually, they indicate that you think that a popular belief is a correct belief.