Blood Indies
 

Are there any good indie blood mages in the game?
I've found only some with a 2.5% chance to get a random blood pick so I guess they arent worth it.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Garnet Amazons and Sorcerers both get blood. Elludian moon mages have a 1/4 chance of blood.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Bloodhenge druids have blood by default I think.

Re: Blood Indies
 

I'm always disappointed that you don't get to recruit Bloodhenge druids after you've beaten them.

There is a site that has them, right?

Re: Blood Indies
 

If not, I'm willing to be there soon will be, considering we should be getting site-modding in the next update :)

And yeah, I felt the same exact disappointment, the first time I beat a bunch of Blood Druids.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Agree with that :)

Re: Blood Indies
 

I think I´ve had recruitable bloodhenges.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Now if we can just get Population modding...I've been wanting to stick an Independent population of Sombre's Warhammer Ogres in the game.

Re: Blood Indies
 

I've had them. But they are very rare.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Yep, the recruitables from the B1 Blood Henge site, not a poptype.

If you're EA Arco or Lanka, you can easily seduce some of the blood druids (well, Lanka doesn't really need to).

Lore Masters also have a blood random.

Indy scouts are pretty cheap for blood hunting.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Scouts depend on the age.

They're always cheap, but you need a ton of them to bootstrap blood with any efficiency. In EA, I consider myself lucky if I find an indy scout province in the initial expansion. And I do want to use some of them for scouting.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Rare site gives Circle Masters, 2D/2B - it's amazing for jumping into Blood.

Also Lore Masters get 3x100% picks of all paths, so good chance of single Blood on them, and small chance of 2B.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Thanks for the answers so far.
A related question - does a saguine dousing rod also have an effect on someone who has no magic at all? And what kind of effect does it have (blood +1 for hunting only)?

Re: Blood Indies
 

Sanguine rods only help blood mages.

Re: Blood Indies
 

You could add "Ogre Playground" site after next patch. They won't defend the province they're in, but they could be recruited. It'd be nice to have a big mod which added all kinds of modded units (or existing units that could use some help, like drakes or fire lords). The problem would be in adding lots of sites without changing the gem economy too much in any direction.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Sanguine rods give a +4 to your level for hunting. Good hunting indeed. :D

Re: Blood Indies
 

Source?

I've never heard the rods give more than +1. Use seems to bear that out as well.

Re: Blood Indies
 

+4 to hunting level would mean that even a B1 mage never fails in a good province (over 5000+ pop and 0 unrest). Dousing Rods aren't that good.

SDR are supposed to give +1 extra for blood mages, and I think that's what the manual says.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Hmmm personally I don't think it's worth the effort of going into blood and do the research there if you aren't a blood nation.. working with indies for your blood income.. seems unviable.. first get some slaves with your lousy indies and then forge SDR, then you can still only get one weak bloodmage a turn etc etc.. why even bother and why not focus on the strenghts of what you do have?

Re: Blood Indies
 

Depends, Ulm has plenty of uses for blood without researching blood, which is also true for pretty much all nations with lots of earth mages. Then every nation with expensive old capital mages loves blood.

True if your only blood mage is lore master/spectre/etc. then it is not worthwhile to research blood until all other useful field are researched. But if you do get lucky and stumble upon garnet or blood henge, there are several good blood spells early on, esp. if you are using CBM, which greatly reduced the level and cost for many blood spells.

Lastly blood has some of the best bonus sites.

Re: Blood Indies
 

There are also several nations who have national spells that summon blood mages once you've got one blood mage empowered enough to use get them.

The Monkeys and MA Mictlan come to mind.

And for some nations, Blood Stones and other blood items are enough to justify spending some time with scouts.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Forging.

Even if all you do with it is Lifelong Protections and Bloodstones, you will be better off than before.

But if you find a good site in the first year, that is more than plenty enough time to ramp up a good economy, but it still doesn't force you to go to Blood9 in order to get useful things done.

Re: Blood Indies
 

You can also recruit Conjurers and Circle Masters from The Lodge (blood) and Black Tower (death).

*edit* Thread had more than one page... :doh:

Re: Blood Indies
 

I think if you can get bloodhenge druids or circle masters it's worth running a small blood economy - either unit is about as efficient as many of the national blood hunters. If you can only get garnet amazons or similar, then it might be best to just hunt for item construction.

Re: Blood Indies
 

And don't forget Marverni, they can blood sacrifice even though they have no natural blood paths on national mages. So it's worth it for them to get into some hunting too, even if it's just with scouts.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Oh yes - now there's a nation begging to diversify. They may not be begging quite as hard as BL or MA Mict, but they're up there.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Hmm, I'm playing Marverni right now so that's why I asked.
So you'd say getting blood for them is a good idea?
Appart from blood stones and maybe a reinvigorating communion it seems not to offer very much. Blood sacrifice isn't really needed I think, as you can build temples for 200 gold allready.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Mass blood sacrifice is AFAIK quite a good way to suddenly get a dominion kill on somebody. And when your best researcher and main battle mage can do the sacrificing, it's a tool waiting to be used.

And of course the benefit of a host of blood stones can't be understated either.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Occasionally, you can also recruit a Jaguar Priest with Blood1. Given the 10% chance of any random path on them, and the fact that there's five possible paths for them, it wouldn't be worth mentioning at all, except for the fact that the various Tribes seem much more common poptypes then the Amazons... I've had the Jaguar tribe somewhere in just about every game I've played, but Amazons of any sort only a couple times, much less a specific sort of them. Not to mention the rarity of finding the proper sites for powerful mage recruitment... or for that matter, finding much in the way of blood sites at all except by use of Achasic Record.

Re: Blood Indies
 

I think the Jag priest was one of those implied in the OP. You have to be very lucky or work very hard to get into Blood if you don't start with it. Garnet Amazons do seem to be one of the rarer types to meet though, you're quite correct there.

Re: Blood Indies
 

You don't have to work all that hard. 10 indy scouts have a 65% chance of a successful hunt, and that's for just 200 gold. Garnet amazons are 180 gold for a 40% chance; or if you build the priestesses, it's around 240 gold for a 40% chance, for less maintenance and a spare H1 with 40 leadership and fire resistance. Plus you had to build the lab or temple.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Garnet Amazons are the luck bit. The scout bit is the hard work, as you're spending quite a while getting things to the point where you have an ongoing Blood economy.

Edit: I wasn't as clear as I might have been. Hard work = spending a lot of turns in this case - there isn't that much admin, but you'll need quite a few turns of preparation and searching before you get even 1 B1 mage out of it.

Re: Blood Indies
 

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)
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But even a small Blood economy gives access to some nice items too. A single blood point enhances most mages as there are nice joint path magic items and it opens up communions to the none astral ones. There are also the horror overland spells for joint blood/astral mages.
<O:p
Even a single blood 1 mage with a SDR is going to gather a lot of slaves and the blood economy can quickly snowball. It is far easier to create a blood economy once you have blood mages than become strong in say death if you are not to begin with. But the difference between a Level 1 (especially with the SDR) and a Level 0 hunter is huge. And you need 50 slaves to empower the first one. So I am not sure it is worth trying to use zero level blood hunters by themselves (I have tried it a few times with miserable results even using dozens of indie scouts and commanders). I am not sure hoping the extremely rare Jaguar Priest with blood turns up is really worth it unless you want those Priests anyway either. But the (rare) blood indie mage sites give decent hunters and a SDR is just 5 (??) slaves away.
<O:p
You won’t match a dedicated blood nation’s hunters but they are not too inefficient compared with the part time ‘heim hunters. The idea is to empower a decent multipath mage with blood, rather than the often magic limited mages of the part time blood nations. So a none blood nation who finds a source of blood mages can be especially effective. Plus many of the dedicated blood nations have their own decent blood SC summons and may not bother with all the standard blood uniques so there may be some left even if you are getting in to it quite late.
<O:p

Re: Blood Indies
 

I'm even more disappointed in the fact that the bloodhenge druids don't have the magic to actually summon Dark Vines. That doesn't make sense, as they are found with them :confused:

Re: Blood Indies
 

I tend to like recruiting whatever indy mages become available. A lab (and a temple, where relevant, though I do tend to temple spam just for the dominion, so that's not asking a lot) is much cheaper then a fortress... and the indy mages will usually offer some new magical paths that you'd not normally have access to... even if only by niche chance. Even if you don't get the particular niche you wanted, you can always use the extras for research/support.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to actually do this? I've been taking some Blood on my pretender and dedicating him to bloodhunting sometime during year 2, and then empowering a national mage and moving my pretender to other duties. I used some indy scouts together with my pretender. Once I have the one B1 mage and forge a Sanguine Dousing Rod, things are easy, but any tricks towards getting there would be nice.

Also, since bloodhunting reliability is supposed to be linked to site frequency, is it noticeably harder to hunt with scouts in LA than in EA (default site freq. goes down in MA and again in LA).

Re: Blood Indies
 

Based on anecdotal evidence from just one game, I have to say hunting is easier for scouts with higher magic site frequency.

I've only added blood to my god once, with the intention of him hunting. And I think I spent a total of 2 months hunting with it, there was just too much else for him to do. It was a waste of points for me (well, I did get a little B4 bless).

I don't start using scouts and indy commanders to hunt until the second year at the earliest. At that point I will start hunting with whatever scouts or commanders I can spare, in a ~5K pop province. I've even used scouts instead of my expensive nationals to hunt when I was MA Van. I'll put up to 10 in one province and usually one or two of the hunters gets a few slaves.

I usually empower a nature mage in blood first, so that later down the road I can make Thorns armor to get up to B4.

Re: Blood Indies
 

This is exactly what I did in the Megagame as Jomon. I think I gave my Ghost King blood one and forged him a SDR ASAP. He also had a bit of death (2) and had been site searching after the first few expansion turns.

With my first few death gems I had managed to summon a Revenant to cast the remote Dark Knowledge on my remaining unchecked provinces. But it was clear my death income was never going to be huge. While a few turns blood hunting with my Pretender had empowered my first mage. Who with the SDR and a half dozen (practically useless) scouts was building up another another 50 fairly quickly.

I survived to about half way through the third year before being quickly snuffed out. But the difference between my death and blood eceonomies was huge. My Pretender spent more time site searching (and casting Revenent) than blood hunting. But I doubt I got 50 death gems in the whole game. Enough for a Ghost General & 2 Revenents with a bit of remote site searching. Compared to about 100 slaves from just over a years hunting with 2 different level 1 blood hunters (Plus scouts). My Pretender was already on to other things. I felt my blood economy was up and running and on the verge of decent expansion while I realised my death economy would never really meet either my Thug or forging needs.

So I think the blood on your Pretender can work well. It has for me. You only need blood one as the SDR is cheap and very effective at that low level. So if you have a rainbow its well worth getting. There is also the excellent blood spell which eliminates the casters fatigue. Very useful for scripting after the casting of that big spell and it gets you in to communions without the risk of having low levels of Astral on your Pretender. If you build a Rainbow it is almost a no brainer for a none blood nation, especially if you intend doing any manual site searching. It's cheap and opens up decent options.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Well, one could consider (I do) spending a pretender's turn trying to get a few blood slaves as a bit wasteful. A rainbow, the only option that makes it worth buying level one in a sphere, should be site searching manually for a lot more gems than just death - surely he'd be searching for 4 or 5 types?

Also, you can't equate one blood slave with one death gem. And it will be along time before that blood economy is using blood slaves for anything other than empowering and SDRs. There is also the factor of income reduction due to the unrest caused.

The only time I'd bother setting up a pretender to blood hunt is if doing it seriously - have several levels to enable very effective blood hunting, and to have the paths to forge the really useful to get early blood items, namely blood stones and soul contracts. If you're able to get soul contracts in the early game it starts to justify having a pretender blood hunting. I'd at least get to level 4 so I can use items to boost him to 6 (soul contracts) and to get some kind of bless out of it. I really want to try it with abysia actually, as there is a lot of synergy with producing devils and generating earth mana.

Re: Blood Indies
 

A strategy I played around with in my head (and a little in SP) is using the Blood Fountain (which combines a low cost with a significant bonus to blood hunting) to quickly get LA Man a blood economy. With Growth-3 and patroling Judges taxes can remain at 100% with out generating excessive unrest and still increase the population (though not as quickly). Problem was I just couldn't figure out how to translate an enormous early advantage in blood economy into success on the battlefield while sacrificing an SC or a rainbow.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Give him Blood 6 & Fire 1 and bring on the soul contracts real early!

Re: Blood Indies
 

This sounded like a neat idea, so I tried it in SP. I thought with CB1.3 I'd be able to leverage the reduced cost and research for Call Lesser Horror.

Order-3, Prod-3, Grow-3, Luck-2, Drain-3, Blood-4 fountain.

So, I spent the first year slowly expanding with just vanilla troops and the prophet, and then by the second year I empowered 2 Magisters Arcane in blood. They can take a province together with (Call Lesser Horror, flee) -- well, they turn it into an uninhabited zone that a Judge/scout/whatever can walk into the next month and steal. Another scout can sneak around carrying slaves for casting in his pocket.


But. Here are the problems I found with this strategy:

1 - It's really slow expansion

2 - With drain dominion, they get 120 fatigue from one Horror cast and can't flee the battlefield for a while.

3 - The horrors can be lost to lances, etc. Then the mages are toast.

4 - Even with Grow-3, both Magisters I empowered got diseased in Late Winter! :(

I was thinking of going with mass Lifelong Protection, researching Const-4, but gave up before I got there.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Rejuvenate/boots?

Re: Blood Indies
 

IIRC, LA man has a stealhty 1-1-1 mage. He'd make a great assassin. Give him a black heart or a soul contract....

Also, iirc one of LA Man significant weaknesses is lack of SC worthy chassis. Blood might be used to overcome that.

I've always thought it would be interesting if some units could perform blood sacrifice without a temple. Stealthy blood sacrifice in an opponents dominion just sounds.. well.. cool.

Re: Blood Indies
 

how about using you're pretender for blood summons, you have the heliophagii to make use of and and arch devils and such.

Re: Blood Indies
 

Your pretender is not going to be able to summon anything that will help with your initial expansion. And later you'll have a tough time competing with the real blood nations to get the unique blood summons.