Blood Nation Woes
 

I've been having trouble trying to get blood strategies right. I'm at the point where I can make a pretty reliable economy without destroying my income, but I can't seem to make it give a return. So far I've tried three nations, but it never turns out quite right.

Lanka's mages are too pricey/capitol only for massing and too lacking in fire/water/earth for devils/frost fiends/demon knights, and nationals don't seem to give much of an alternative for standard combat.

LA Ulm... I've had some success massing serpent fiends and spamming summon imp, but serpent fiends take a long time to build up and are sort of vulnerable, and members of the second tier only get two summons before collapsing. I can't seem to outfit the Vampire Counts well enough and frequently enough to turn the tides of battle either.

EA and LA Mictlan is a big pain to get a supply of slaves coming in, since you also need them for sacrificing, and all half-decent Blood mages are capitol-only as well as old, excluding tribal kings, but they don't have many useful summons. MA with a 6 or 7 Blood pretender has worked okay as well, but that takes a long time to set up.

When it comes down to it, I just don't know how to spend my Blood Slaves. By its very nature, Blood magic weakens your recruitable military might, but I can't field any worthwhile demons to make up for it. I'm still not that good, and blood strategies as a whole might just be over my head, but I would appreciate any help nonetheless.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Blood magic is a summoning school, by and large, with some amazing direct attacks (x3 rain of toads = 120 unrest = enemy fortress can't produce any more troops and takes massive income hit, infernal disease usually = dead enemy commander).

Lanka will slap anyone up, down, and sideways with an E9/N9 bless. Their high protection demons (forget name) and only recruitable-everywhere sacred are both unstoppable juggernauts under these conditions, and their early blood summons give them more of the same. Their Dakini and Mandaha's are also excellent SCs. Lanka needs to play a reasonable hybrid approach - that is, their basic troops are good enough that they aren't going to go entirely over to blood.

Mictlan - lots of ways to play it, there's another post on the first page telling you many ways to play it. However you play it, you need to be thinking about the following things. 1. If you empower 1 priest king, you can armor of thorns him into being a blood buff maker for everyone else. Once you have this, and starshine skullcaps for your moon priests, they have a lot of ranged offensive options which don't require them to move (although moon priest + starshine -> teleport if you want to five gates from your frontline). You can also use Sun priests with 3 blood buff items to forge soul contracts and pass them to commanders closer to the battle lines. 2. If you have growth scales your old age means less. 3. I can only think you aren't playing with reasonable blesses if you think Mictlans national summons aren't useful. Fire 9 alone makes Jaguar Fiends horrifyingly destructive, and I play a pretty modest (for Mictlan) F9B4W4N4D2 and still have room for a good chaos economy. 4. Your recruitable everywhere B1 priests are incredibly efficient bloodhunters once they have sanguine dousing rods. 5. Most summons (and I think all Mictlan's blood nationals) are free to maintain, while regular troops have maintenance costs; eventually you can bury the world under your demon hordes. 6. Your only regular troops worth using are Jaguar Warriors and Eagles.

LA Ulm - I started a question post about this quite recently, it's also still on the frontpage and there's a lot of good advice there (including a nasty trick with Summon Lamashtas). Apparently, they are about using Rangers to drive the early game, excellent mage/spies to disrupt enemy economies middle while adding in their very tough meatshields, and are unstoppable freespawn juggernauts late. I haven't quite gotten the hang of them, but the advice is there to be read.

I don't think mages of the second tier are meant to be battlemages - try their capital only recruitable priests with boots of earth + blood stone (through your pretender) + summon earthpower - between blade winds / curse of earth / legions of steel on your very tough troops you'll have at least some sort of battlefield magic presence, and with effective E4 + 4 points reinvigoration you'll not be passing out anywhere near as much.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

And here's how I know what I know.

Understanding Mictlan post

LA Marignon vs LA Abyssia + Some on Ulm

Blood Kings - Lanka vs. Mictlan

LA Ulm Info

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Thanks much. Very useful posts, linked or summarized. I'm sort of inept at bless strategies, but practice makes perfect, I suppose.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

If you're having trouble with bless, LA Ulm might be a good place to start (in that they don't use it).

You might also try MA Abyssia for a low bless blood hunter nation - ridiculously good fire mages recruitable everywhere and no friendly fire on your own troops + demonbreds from capital make for good bloodhunters (costly, but sacred, highly mobile, and excellent in battle). Again, you'll be mixing regular troops with blood to get your power (and demonbreds are too expensive to go pure blood anyway), but boots of youth, demonbreds leading five gates raiding parties, infernal disease, and eventually Astral Corruption (backed up by Infernal Prison to let your ubermages still cast non-blood overland spells, although you'll also do fine with just fire battle magic) will let you experiment with blood while also annihilating enemies hand over fist.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Blood has some excellent low-level summons. Fiends of darkness don't require any other paths and you don't need many to make a big difference early on. Spine devils are excellent in terms of raw combat stats for the price, but don't fly. If you have elemental magic then any of the 4 elemental/blood lesser demons could be good. I especially like devils (best raw combat stats) and demon knights (huge prot, fear... easily better than, say, Ulm's black knights)

I dislike blood battle magic - the micro needed when every spell costs slaves is just too much hassle. I also don't like serpent fiends or bone devils.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Serpent Fiends are ok, but pale in comparison to the Mictlan low level blood summons. Bone devils are completely useless. A longdead with a few more hitpoints, two attacks and no armor and dies in droves.

Edi

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Another thing to keep in mind when going blood (which I mentioned briefly in another of those threads) is that there is an opportunity cost to blood hunting – the gold you could have had if you weren’t doing it. This is quite different than other gems which are more of a bonus – there is no trade off. What this means as far as your strategy is that whenever you “convert” a province from giving you gold to giving you blood slaves you need to adjust how your economy functions. Every time you crank up your blood slave flow, you need to adjust the rest of your strategy to the lower gold flow to keep from grinding to a halt.

In a practical sense, that means the more you blood hunt, the less you can recruit troops for gold. Done properly you can switch recruiting nationals for summoning demons (a pretty good trade off), but done haphazardly your economy will crash leaving you unable to support enough of an army to defend yourself. Since you specifically mentioned trouble balancing your economy I’m guessing this is what you’re running into.

Specifically from a blood economy point of view, try this. Do minimal blood hunting initially, use your gold for troops and your mages for researching. Always keep in mind when you start blood hunting you’re giving something up, so don’t do it until you can get a payback greater than the cost. What this point is depends on what nation you are and what your strategy is, but will generally be a certain level of research in construction or blood. Also keep in mind that there is going to be a lag from when you start blood hunting to when you get that payback, so switching to blood hunting when in an intense war is a decision that takes quite a bit of thought.

Another thing to keep a close eye on when you start giving your gold economy the axe is upkeep. If your upkeep is running 40% of your income you’re fine, but if you cut your gold income in half when you start blood hunting suddenly you don’t have enough gold to replace that lab that just burned down because your upkeep is 80%. Mages in particular, but don’t recruit any troops just because you’ve got the resources for it – once you switch to blood let the demons be the workhorses (and this is something you have to start managing BEFORE you start blood hunting!). Of course, this isn’t an either-or question, you can crank your blood up just a bit and keep some gold flowing in, but you’ve always got to keep in mind that balance. If you start blood hunting much with Lanka, for instance, that means less of those kick-*** national infantries so make sure that fits the strategy you’re pursuing. If you’re reliant on a steady stream of them for a war you’re fighting, blood hunting will grind your nation to a halt.

PS.
I keep seeing people mention Mictlan's need to blood sacrifice as a significant drain to their ability to blood hunt. I don't really see that when I play Mictlan. It seems like Mictlan is just made to seriously focus on blood hunting, and when you've got 30 or so blood slaves coming in from each blood hunting province (for the upkeep cost of 3, holy, 60 gold blood hunters!) 5 or 6 slaves per month blood sacrificing just doesn't seem significant. Because of the cheaper upkeep of your blood hunters you can have more of them, which I find more than compensates for the drain of the blood sacrifices.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

One thing about Mictlan - most likely, you dont want your dominion to spread. Vice versa, your domain is so terrible, you want to conquer somebody as fast as possible with your blessed jaguars and live in his dominion from now on.
Just make sure you have some candles in your home province, and you will be fine.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

That's actually not a good way to play Mictlan. I much prefer a milder bless with decent dominion. Not using Mictlan's ability to power-spread dominion and thus not taking advantage of the potential bonuses from fighting in friendly dominion is workable but it's ignoring one of Mictlan's strengths.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

You shouldn't be cutting your income in half blood hunting anyway.
Bloodhunting is most effective in provinces above 5000 population. It doesn't get anymore effective with higher population, so concentrate on provinces just over 5000, to allow for losses.

This leaves your big high income provinces untouched.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Yes, but generally provinces with more than 10,000 population are pretty rare. I find that if I blood hunt in every province that has a population between 5k-10k that it often cuts my income about in half as the ones under 5k don't give that much income and the ones over 10k aren't very common. That's an expensive trade off, but in exchange you can easily get 100+ blood slaves a turn with which to do all kinds of nastiness. Again, in general, this is about the maximum you can effectively blood hunt unless you don't care about the diminishing returns of blood hunting in more populous provinces.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here Baalz, should I blood hunt in 5,000 - 6,000 pop provinces or in 5,000 - 10,000 pop provinces or 10,000+ pop. provinces. I consider you an expert when it comes to playing Mictlan by the way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Also do you recommend as Mictlan researching construction first for dousing rods/jade knife? I figure if you go with a double/triple bless for your sacreds your very safe the first 20 turns or so...

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

If anyone else knows the answers to the above questions in the post, I am keen to know... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

You should start blood hunting in 5k provinces and working yourself upwards.

I think the post meant that you can afford to blood hunt in all 5-10k provinces unless you have some 10k+ provinces that will give you income.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

As Mictlan I would go all the way to to Const6 since a F9W9B4 (maybe add a D5) bless will make you fairly safe with a Dom of 8.

This way you get the rod, jade knife and boots of youth for your High Priests in addition to all the nice path boosters and other goodies. Depending on the circumstances I might find myself forced to go for blood or summons earlier, but mostly try to stick to Const6.

In addition I would leave 10k+ provinces alone (in order to get gold) and bloodhunt in the 6k-10k ones. Most often I try to use 6k-8k ones.

5k-6k provinces go below 5k way too fast and this might lead to some bad hunts. And when I (effectively) exchange RPs for blood I want my exchange ratio to be as high as possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Usually I can get 100+ slaves each turn by "just" farming 5 6k-8k provinces which should not be THAT bad a drain on you income (likely "wasting" between 200-400 gp depending on where you hunt).

CharonJr

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

This also depends on your scales.

With death you'll need to use larger provinces since the population will drop below 5000 faster.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Yup, and scales should depend on the length of the game, but even for fairly short/small ones I would try to avoid death with Mictlan due to old mages (getting everyone of them boots of youth will get expensive in slaves and wasted research time for forging) and bloodhunting.

CharonJr

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Awww, thanks Bob. Basically how it boils down is that there is no difference in the blood slaves you get for any population over 5000, so blood hunting in a 10k population province will get you the same blood slaves as the 5k province, but (all other things being equal) will cost you twice as much gold. The other thing to keep in mind to is depending on your scales, and if you're patrolling to reduce unrest your population may be dropping, so if you start hunting in provinces real close to 5k you could drop under that before long and you start getting diminishing returns.

So, to answer your question as to where to blood hunt, as always this depends on a couple things. Always start with the provinces closest to 5k (with no mines or other gold boosting sites) as these will be the "cheapest" blood slaves. As you start wanting more and more blood slaves, start moving up the chain to higher and higher population provinces but keep in mind each one will have a higher cost in gold than the one before it. How high you go really depends on the strategy you’re following, you’re almost always going to need some gold so this is where you need to focus on balance. If you're going for a very tight blood focus (a good strat with Mictlan), I find that in very general terms by the time I end up putting blood hunters in the territories close to 10k population my gold income has dropped to the point that I enter more of my “blood mode” and stop recruiting units every turn and instead save the little gold I get for buying mages for specific needs and building labs and temples. By that time you’ve got enough blood slaves coming in that you can get a good amount of summoning done every round to compensate.

On blood hunting the provinces under 5k it’s more a question of the upkeep cost of the blood hunters because the gold income hit isn’t as much. With Mictlan specifically the blood hunters are so damn cheap, I find it’s also worthwhile to put them in the 4k-5k population provinces as well. You won’t get quite as many blood slaves (4/5 the blood slaves for a 4k population), but when your blood hunters cost 60 gold and are holy you’re not paying much for the blood slaves either. And again, it all depends on what your other options are, how valuable the blood slaves are to you, how easy it is to defend those blood hunters, what other territories you have, etc.

The thing to keep in mind is that you’re always “paying” gold for blood slaves, you just need to decide what price you’re willing to pay. The more blood slaves you want, the more expensive they are…but getting to the point that you’re sucking in 100+ blood slaves a turn is a pretty sweet spot if you can do it while remaining stable.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Oh, in answer to your other question I almost always go to con-4 first with Mictlan, though of course there are different ways to play it. The main reason is because up until around that point your mages are more useful researching than blood hunting. You don't need any blood summons immediately because your holy troops are tough enough to deal with whatever they need to initially, and you're capitol's naturual income is enough to keep you blood sacrificing at first. The nice thing about using all those Mictlan priests to research is that the very turn that you finish researching construction-4 they can all forge themselves sanguine rods. Obviously you don't have many blood slaves at that point since you haven't been blood hunting, but I usually aim to have at least 15 ready at the same time by limiting how much I'm blood sacrificing. From that point I more or less send three new blood hunters with sanguine rods out each turn (I usually aim to have three castles at this point as well), each "squad" setting up in a new province.

So, how this works out is that just as you start having blood slaves flowing in you've still got a decent chunk of mages researching (blood now), so you start hitting those good blood spells relatively soon and with blood slaves in the bank. Also, since you've hit con-4 you can forge skull mentors and/or owl quills if you've gotten one of the national heroes (I usually have a high luck scale with Mictlan for this among other reasons).

Compare this with researching straight for blood. If you do that, you've got to split your mages between research and blood hunting (no point in having spells you can't cast!) - and the blood hunters are half as effective without the sanguine rods. No owl quils or skull mentors to help you out, and you're taking an immediate hit to your gold while you're sill relying on your national troops to take out the indies. I guess you could make this work, but it seems much more of an uphill battle to me.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Thanks Baalz and everyone else for the advice, I am going to aim for that 100+ blood slave income per turn, that sounds really, really good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Oh, another thing I also mentioned in another thread but I'll repeat for the benefit of anybody reading this one. There are several blood magic sites which give you a significant (40-60%) reduction in cost to rituals. I think a lot of people neglect searching for blood sites because they are a lot less common but just think about the impact of having a 60% discount while pulling in 100+ blood slaves per turn. It's worth some effort to look for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Some things to add:

-Blood items: Blood Stones are one of the best non-artifact items in the game, so having some earth on a god and Empowering him in Blood is a good route to building a huge Earth income (which you can turn into something good like Living Statues).

Sanguine rods are required for blood hunting. Period.

Soul Contracts are designed for astral casters. Let the Horrors attack you as you sit and research in your capital and free spawn Devils, as you'll be gone on turn 1 of battle with Returning before the Horror can even attack you.

Protection Contracts are cheap, and in battle they send imps off to do one of the most important battle functions, which is to divert enemy fire. Put them guys you don't mind dying(like scouts), and send them with your armies. Don't underestimate the power of five Protection Contracts in a single battle, especially one heavy in archers or evokers.

-One thing to remember in a blood economy is that the troops and leaders you get are free of upkeep, fill new roles in your armies, and generally are quite good if you invest properly in them. Blessed summonables can easy be super troops, so turning 5-6 provinces into blood provinces to produce summonable Blessed in a sure route to victory. Blessed troops are usually produced in small amounts from a temple/castle combo because they are crazy good with a proper Bless, so by using blood you can not invest in temples and castles and summon up a bunch in a hurry.

Tha being said, use Blood Leaders to fill new roles in your army. For example, if you only have Death on your god, then summoning some Vampires can get you into death casting. Use Archdevils for Fire, Ice Devils for Water, and Demon Princes for everything.

-A note on vampires. Most people try to use them as regular leaders, which is a mistake. Don't give them equipment, but do give them gems, and throw them into defensive battles in your dominion. It doesn't matter if they live or die, because they are immortal and if they kill any troops before they die then you are golden. They also really want Growing Fury and Mass Protection/Armies of "..." cast on them, so a mimimum investment in Nature and Earth Magic and a Sabbath can be a killer tactic. The fact that they fly means that every turn that they are killed and return to your capital they can be immediately be sent back out.

-Don't be afraid to Empower Leaders in Blood to get that killer app you need. Blood slaves come in much greater amounts than gems (3 or 2 to 1, in my book), so Empowering is much less of a big deal.

-Experiment with Hell Power. Thats all I'll say on that subject.

-Sabbaths are exactly like Communions, so experiment with Commununions in general.

-A note on Lanka. The national summons you get are in many cases better than your capital troops, so its worth it to summon Rakshase Warriors for most fights and the red girls for battles that you have Mass protection or other armor spells for.

Mandaha's are not Supercombatants, and anyone that tells you this is not your friend. They cast Darkness at the beginning of every battle, and that means that your demons will not be affected by it and your enemies probably will, meaning that every Mandaha is "one free winning battle per turn" if you play your cards right. Fly them out when your armies look like they are going to get crushed, and don't put them in situations where they die needlessly (like the front line).

--A note on Globals. Given the amount of blood slaves you can produce with a mimimum of effort, you can toss down an Astral Corruption so big nobody will ever be able to drop it. The Utterdark also has no effect on demons in batle and no economic effect on armies of summonables.

Just think about that.

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Wow, great thread!

So, after getting construction-4, and then researching blood for a while, does construction-6 ever kick in as a priority? With non-blood nations I love those lightless lanterns, and I like to make them sooner rather than later, but is that important to Mictlan?

Also, one of the biggest problems I'm having with my Mictlan setup is that I'm reluctant to put earth on my pretender, and I'm not seeing any good way to get over to earth, except for maybe hoping to find an indy, or maybe summoning spectres. Do Mictlan players always put earth on the pretender, or simply live without, or am I missing some possibility here?

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

Heh, this is morphing into another Mictlan thread. I'm going to try to put together a guide to Mictlan like FrankTrollman's guide to T'ien Ch'i.

Anyway, yes con-6 does offer some really nice stuff for Mictlan, but its usually a good idea to try and get some demons into your armies before you head there. Jaguar warriors will only carry you so far, you need to have an answer ready when your opponent starts countering them. About the time you get to the nice SC bases (Ice/Arch devils) I usually switch back to construction. Lightless lanterns are the only research booster you can forge with recruitable mages, and water bracelets, astral caps, and blood thorns are gonna give you a lot more versatility. Not to mention all the nastiness you're gonna want to slap on those nice fresh ice devils.

Yeah, earth is a tough one for Mictlan to crack. I usually can't justify putting it on my pretender because it just doesn't have a good synergy with the rest of Mictlan. I usually just keep an eye open for the chance to snag an earth mage (succbi, hell bind heart, indie mages) and consider it a bonus if I get it- I plan my strategy without any earth magic. Even if you take earth on your pretender it's going to be pretty hard unless you plan to have your pretender spend a good portion of his time site searching and forging blood stones. I have had decent luck snagging earth mages with succubi as long as you don't mind losing a few in the process (what's a couple hundred blood slaves between friends?)

Re: Blood Nation Woes
 

By all means do! Near as I can tell you're certainly well qualified to do so.

Anyhow, I certainly appreciate the comments on research and earth magic. That fills in two key gaps in my knowledge of Mictlan, and will speed me along towards my first MP game!