Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Blood magic is, basically, a method of reverse alchemy. It allows a nation with the proper mages to convert gold into blood gems.*

However near the end stage of Dom3 development the gold produced by provinces was doubled, yet the amount of blood slaves/gems produced was not modified ( note: the number of blood slaves/gems was changed to increase/decrease depening upon the number of magic sites ).

Perhaps it was determined that in Dom2 blood was far too powerful or maybe it was not considered. I don't know.

*the cost of producing blood slaves is equal to the sum of the following 3 costs:

(1) the cost of reducing the unrest caused by blood hunting, this is commonly, but not always done by setting the tax rate to 0.
(2) the cost of maintaining the blood hunters
(3) the amortized cost of purchasing the blood hunters.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

I suspect it was done to keep gem and bloodslave production more or less in balance. It's easier for the right blood nation with the right lineup of mages to produce large quantities of bloodslaves than it is for a water nation for instance to produce water gems, and bloodslaves can be obtained from any province. Doubling bloodslaves would just make bloodmagic wildly over-powered.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

It was already overpowered in Dom2 because the availability of blood slaves was fixed rate instead of tied to site frequency, so you can probably imagine what happened in large map games with low site frequency. Especially since anyone who had sorcery randoms would eventually get blood mages and empowering a blood mage or two from scratch was also plausible.

Edi

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

It does seem more powerful to me, but then it also takes more set up and more micromanagement, so I don't mind a little more bang for buck, so long as it's not completely scary.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

It wasn't done near the end stage.

I don't understand your point. Are Blood Slaves now too easy to catch? Or should blood hunt have become easier, but it hasn't? Or are you talking about the fact that there are now much fewer gems compared to gold? I'm sorry, perhaps it's just that I haven't slept well, but I just don't understand your post.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Endo, what he means that gem and bloodslave income was not similarly increased by a factor of two. Which is just as well because a high site frequency already results in a ridiculous accumulation of gems.

Edi

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

My main 'bloody' complaint is that the one really useful Blood Mage summon (Not including Demon Lords) to me is now a Marignon national. Marignon, of all nations! They only ever dabbled in the path!

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Father illearth, heliophagi, ice/arch devils, devils, demon knights, storm demons, maybe fiends of darkness, mictlan nationals and lanka nationals are all good imo.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Dominions_2 was more centralized around the summoned creatures thus different nations only meant different mages on the battlefield while the armies were mostly summoned creatures. The change you mentioned was done so national units are a larger part of the game especially for early and middle.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

So what is the 'best' way to setup a steady supply of blood slaves? What is more important, population or magic sites? Do you rotate your blood hunters around? Or just build a lab in the spots you are hunting? How useful is the Sanguine Dousing Rod versus increased blood magic skill?

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

I meant summons that know Blood magic. It's nigh-impossible to get any Blood economy unless you have nationals for it. Father Illerth and Heliophagi are sort of impractical.

And I actually very much like Mictlan's choice of national summons, but, again, that's just one nation. You can get a decent amount out of any other path with just a Pretender that knows it.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Lamia Queen and Sceptre

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Yeah, but neither of those are very effective Blood Mages. Definitely not enough to start any meaningful income.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Well if lucky you can get two blood from each yet if unlucky the summon will arrive with zero blood. Besides the level_9 Tartarians which usually need healing and/or gift of reason I can't think of any other summons which will arrive with blood magic. Maybe the Unfrozen mages have a chance?

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

The point is that Blood is different than other gems. Blood is not a random resource it is a way to convert gold into a type of gem.*

Blood gems are not like other gems. Other gems are *resources*. Blood gems are a *choice* between gold and blood gems. That choice is made by weighing the *exchange ratio* between gold and blood. That ratio was changed in Dom3 vs. Dom2.

I do not know if this was factored into the design of Dom3. I have a feeling it was not as blood scales with *gems* and not with *gold*.

*Note: different nations have different conversion ratios. For non-blood nations that ratio between gold:blood is large for blood nations it is much lower.

Almost certainly deliberate.
 

Ease of access to blood becomes a differentiating factor between nations, rather than the fairly odd case of early patchlevels of Dom 2 where any nation with some scouts and some income headroom could bloodhunt to get SDRs, and then use the SDRs to accelerate this (since they did help even non-B mages for a while), in addition to the ubiquitous sorcery or unrestricted randoms.

There's no reason that blood magic should be any easier to achieve regardless of nation than, say, fire-immune infantry or flying assassins, especially when there are nations for whom blood magic is intended to be a major strength.

Might also be noted that blood magic is associated with some very nice national summons (Mandahas, the Tlaloques, the Devatas for instance) and also received some unresistable literally-go-to-Hell combat spells. Also, unlike gems, you have a lot of freedom in deciding where you gather them instead of being reliant on protecting possibly inconvenient locations; if you need to pull back, any surviving blood hunters can fall back, and your opponent does not get your blood income like he would from a magical site.

Regarding SDR, it's only 10 blood slaves paying full retail, and IIRC it acts as an effective +1 for a blood hunter that's already at B1 or higher, so if the hunter is a dedicated hunter it's a bargain compared to the cheapest possible empowerment of B1-B2 at 30 gems. It's cheaper than the Athame, Brazen Vessels and Armor of Souls too.

Magic sites rarely contribute blood slaves; there's the Damned Merchant (+1/turn) and some national capitals (Mictlan's, for instance), but bloodhunting (with B mages...) or wishing are far, far faster. That's not to say that there aren't some extremely interesting blood sites (some giving large summoning bonuses, some 'blood mages may enter to summon some type of devil or demon' sites), but they're pretty rare.


~~~
Edit (addition):

It also occurs to me that blood magic provides the simplest way to deal with aging -- Boots of Youth. Non-blood nations need Elixirs of Life, which are a bit more complicated to make and take a miscellaneous slot -- arguably more important than a foot slot for mages now that quickness no longer accelerates casting... or Gift of Health, which can only be used by one nation at a time and can be dispelled.

Re: Almost certainly deliberate.
 

I wish blood hunting took the size of population into account in determining how much unrest it causes.

Surely snatching up 10 young homeless people from a 30k city would cause much less of a stir then snatching 10 people from a small town of 1000 people.

It would be nice if you could conservatively hunt in your capital without utterly destroying your income. I've noticed that even if you patrol and completely eliminate the unrest it still effects your income for that turn.

I don't remember the exact unrest formula but I'd like to normalize the existing amount to 10,000 people (or similar) and then scale it up or down based on the population.

Re: Almost certainly deliberate.
 

I understand what you mean, Taqwus, but 'flying assassins' seems to be a pretty long shot from an entire magic Path and School. It would be nice if some more universal summons for Blood mages would be added.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

No, I disagree. In point of fact, blood slaves are probably EASIER to get now than before. With the additional money you can buy even more blood hunters and expand your blood hunting operations into EVEN MORE provinces.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

But the more provinces you hunt in, the faster unrest increases and the more gold you lose.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

That's thrilling. Did you actually read my post? I explained *exactly* the costs associated with blood hunting. Here, I'll cut and paste them JUST FOR YOU:

the cost of producing blood slaves is equal to the sum of the following 3 costs:

(1) the cost of reducing the unrest caused by blood hunting, this is commonly, but not always done by setting the tax rate to 0.
(2) the cost of maintaining the blood hunters
(3) the amortized cost of purchasing the blood hunters.

And now *WITH MORE EXPLANATION*:
#2 and #3 are do not vary between Dom2 and Dom3.
#1 has changed.

Thanks.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

You leave one thing out of your condescending little explanation: That people will have more money in the first place to foot these bills. You lose more gold, but each single gold matters less. For that reason, it could quite easilly even out before you even factor in the effectively reduced cost of Blood Slaves.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Oh my mistake. I did not know that all gold costs were scaled upwards in Dom3. No, no, wait. They were not. A basic unit costs 10 gold in Dom3 just like it costs 10 gold in Dom2.

Each single gold matters the exact same as it did in Dom2. This is the "problem." I put it in quotes since I do not know if this was intentional or not. If it was then fine.

Again, given that blood yeilds scale wrt. gems and not wrt. gold I do not think that this was thought through completely.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Ironhawk and Uninspired are right (and much more polite). Reducing to the essentials:

* Gold increased in dom3
* Gems didn't increase in dom3
* Blood hunting equation: gold + time + unrest = slaves

Since gold increased and slaves come from gold, slaves are easier to get relative to other types of gems (but harder to get relative to gold because of unrest).

Thus blood magic got stronger in dom3, not weaker, because it should be compared to other forms of magic - not to recruitable troops. Of course blood got weaker compared to recruitable troops, everything did, no one disputes that.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Gold costs weren't, but army size was. 20 troops won't get you nearly as far as they did in Dom2. And even then, if troops/defense/buildings (Including labs, which make Blood Hunting easier, by the way) were made easier, saying Blood Magic was made harder while everything else remained the same is an inaccurate simplification.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Reducing to essential points:

1. There is now more money.
2. Blood hunting is a way of converting MONEY into slaves
3. The exchange rates are the same
4. the cost of blood hunting has increased by a factor of two, since the provinces are twice as valuable
5. this increase in cost is exactly proportional to the increase in money.
6. Gems have not changed in frequency, and are irrespective of gold.
7. therefore, gems have been nerfed in comparison to bloodslaves.

I think at least one of you people will see the flaw here.

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

Uhhh... yes, actually I did. I read your post, and then read the entire thread. And just cause I have a different viewpoint than you doesnt give you the right to come off all lordly and condescending. As if no one could possibly disagree with you because there was simply no possibility of you being wrong? Why did you even make a post on a forum if you didnt want feedback? Get a grip!

Re: Blood magic nerfed in dom3?
 

The entire point is that one uses blood *instead* of using recruitable mages/troops. Since to get blood one must *sacrifice* gold. Summons obtained with other gems are *in addition* to troops/mages.

Blood *is* a summoning school.
 

And you spent gold to get those other mages, and to pay them to run around and find sites, and to keep them on the battlefield to cast the battle magic that other paths place far greater reliance on. You also spent money on mages to research spells scattered in up to seven other schools -- and this is more expensive now, since research has been slowed, while blood is much more unified.

Oh, and blood nations will have far fewer expensive mages dying of old age than your average human nation, once they research Boots of Youth.

Re: Blood *is* a summoning school.
 

I agree with Sheap and Valandil - I don't see the problem. Thanks for summing it up so well, I couldn't have done that myself.

However, this discussion raised an interesting point (for a second time in relatively short time): there are no low-level Blood summons for Blood mages/commanders with lots of undead leadership. Would Blood 3 (research), B2 (magic), 21 slaves for a B1 lawyer demon be all right? If he needs a downside, causing some unrest or something would probably be possible. He'd have Undead leadership 40, +5 from Blood.

Re: Blood *is* a summoning school.
 

"Would Blood 3 (research), B2 (magic), 21 slaves for a B1 lawyer demon..."

uhhh... Lawyer demon? Like a courtroom lawyer? That's a little odd.

Re: Blood *is* a summoning school.
 

Why? One of the Arch Devils, or perhaps it was one of the Heliophagii, is dressed as one. Devil's Advocate, you know... There's been a lawyer-demon in Illwinter games from Conquest of Elysiun II!