Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous - really !!
Never do that !!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...0&d=1231853443

.. and this was the first province I searched ...

:):D:p :cool:

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

What are the stats of Conjurers and Circle Masters?

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

They're excellent blood/death mages. Very nice indeed.

Man you like to play zoomed in though, don't you OP?

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Circle Masters are 2B/2D. I can't remember the cost, but it seems when I got them, I considered them pretty cheap (but it was late game with an income of 7000+). They are an excellent source of efficient Blood Hunters, better and cheaper than many recruitables.

I gotta say though, I hate when I search 30-40 provinces and find nothing but so many Brigand Lairs I want to cry (especially when you find them in your hunting provinces!), which happens 3x for every time I find a really nice site in Blood. But, the best Blood sites are SO good, that you are insane not search for them as early as possible, before you start spending major amounts of slaves, if you can.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I also consider it VERY important to at least check a location for blood and death sites before I decide to place an important castle on it. It can totally mess up a location for some of those to show up later. In fact, I generally consider it to be one of the cost effective uses of Acashic Record.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

You can't afford to be that picky about fort placement in MP.

I don't really see how it would be a disaster for a fort to be in the same place as a blood site. Inkpot end,.. maybe, even then it isn't so bad it's worth delaying forts and going out of your way to check.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Aren't most (all?) of the nasty sites easily identifiable by their effects anyway?
You may not know what site is causing disease or massive unrest, but you'd know soon enough there is something there.

I guess if you built right after you took it, you might not notice.


It isn't something I ever think about and I've never run into a problem.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Circle Masters are D2B2 for 140 gold or thereabouts. Conjurers are D1B1 for less than 100. One of the cheapest mages around. They also have a base undead leadership of 40, so they can haul masses of undead and demons around.

Ebony Tower gets you sorcerers, which are D1B2 with a SDB randomm IIRC. And blood magic bonus sites like Mount Chaining are huge, especially in early game.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Lanka + Summoning Circle = Pure Awesome :D

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I guess MP would make a difference. Particularly in the smaller faster games? Or would it be the other way around, big games make it less of a concern?

Just any old fort maybe not. But I was talking about an important fort. If its at a major chokepoint up against a major opponent and you have plans to build up large armies there for awhile before sending them forth, then its a concern. Often the province next door is almost as good a location.

But then another reason I like to Acashic it is in case Im going to get a free fort which I hate seeing after Ive built one.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Sombre:

It can be pretty bad :) I put a fort once on disease site and I had old mages. It was really bad, fortunately in SP. Now in MP I have 6! provinces with death 3 scales around my capital. I really hope there are soem really really good sites there.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Correct me if I"m wrong -
but if you're seeing unrest, aren't the odds that you *don't* want to search there? Perhaps unless you can quantify the size of the unrest.

My remembrance - faulty perhaps, is that the odds vastly favor a *bad* result.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Why not search? for fear of wasting gems?
There are many things that can cause unrest. Events, spies, etc.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Gandalf, in MP, you have an opportunity cost. Like I said, my memory may be faulty but my remembrance is that on a probability basis you are more likely to get a villain recruitment or one of the purely bad sites.

There are some indicators that tell you to search a province..
order thats higher than your order, luck higher than your luck - sloth higher than yours.

I'm just saying unrest higher than it should be probably is a waste of a search action - yes it can pay off big. But probabalistically, you'd be better searching elsewhere. I think.

MP is all about squeezing the maximum probability out of every action.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I can see that as far as general searching. The OPs original thought Im guessing.
But in my case it was whether it was worth it for a primary strategic castle location. Id hate to wave off such a location just based on unrest which might have been temporary.

I probably should mention to the lurkers that unrest is a false indicator in many of the games on my server. If I programmically alter the maps then unrest, defense, and who owns the white banners are some of the things I regularly alter.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

That I'd agree with. I'd have to be pretty sure that unrest was site-driven before I chose not to build a castle at a strategic location.

And I might not care anyway. Dropping taxes will keep the unrest down to a level where it hardly affects building troops and if it's just holding a choke point I won't even care that much.

A disease site would be more problematic. Or one of the holy fire type sites if I'm relying on demons/undead.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I once got three(!) of those sites that give you devils :D

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Must have been scripted or you got three different sites that gave you different monsters. There are two sites that summon beast bats, one that summons devils and two that summon fiends of darkness. One for imps as well. Nearly all of these are unique, so if there was e.g. more than one Devil's Den, one was scripted and one appeared at random.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Well back to the original poster, its always worth searching for blood sites if you are a blood nation. Well rare they are usually very powerful. I got a 40% blood site ( or thereabouts) in MP as MA Abysia, I was casting Horde from Hell for fun, cost about 27BS rather than 44BS (approx.), I quickly ended up with 1,000 imps and 40 devil thugs. That 1 magic site alone could well have won me the game.

Sadly, the hosts computer got nicked and the game ended before I could fully exploit the site.:(

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Well, I would say that the Devil's Den by itself is a reason to do Blood-searching. Also, isn't the Vale of Infinite Horrors one of the few random ways to gain a Horror Mark? As such, knowing its location can be incredibly important.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I wouldn't say incredibly important. Who cares about the odd random minor horror mark? Other than OCD people.

Once people learn a bit more about forts they tend to forget about 'strategic' placement which slows them down and focus almost entirely on where forts can be built quickly and cheaply. The most important thing about them is the fact they make another commander a turn, after all. I consider a few other things about forts, obviously, but definitely not to the extent I would go out of my way to search provinces before building them.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

No other single sites will bring you 15 unrest per turn like Devil's Den does. As you are expanding in MP, it's very likely to notice an independent province with high unrest. And you can calculate it with the turn number to know what could be here. Never waste your blood slaves for Devil's Den itself.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Doesn't Devils' Den give you one free Devil per turn? It's hard to imagine how free Devils could be a waste.... :confused:

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He's saying don't bother bowl of blooding all over just for that site, because it's easy to spot anyway when you're conquering new territory due to the unrest.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

They're 1D/1B + 2 100% SDB picks. I have that site in another game right now, it's lovely. Also has a 30% Conj bonus. (Not Blood bonus, but Conj.)


As far as Inkpot End or another disease spreading site, I think it's kind of foolish to say it doesn't matter. Not only is it a huge hassle, but the last SP game that I ended up with a castle on one of those sites, about 1/3 of my commanders were diseased by the time I could get them out, that is a HUGE impact to your cost effectiveness, and your long term capacity to build up mages.


And Chris, while a little unrest probably is indicative of a Brigand Lair, there is never a guarantee that it is the only Blood site present. Things like 40-50-70% Blood, as well as incredibly cheap but potent hunter recruitment, among other things, I think necessitate searching Blood, if you are able to. It's the one path that I always go back over -every- single province that doesn't have 4 sites yet (or is a capital), just on the off chance I missed the jackpot.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Inkpot end is level 0 and most other disease sites (except the crown of darkness I think it is) are 5% chance or less, so you can easily build there and then move to another province...sure, it'll kill every 20th unit and waste a turn of research from the rest of them, but the odds of landing on such a site are pretty low and generally not worth worrying over. If the fort happens to be a chokepoint that's awesome, as you now have a nice deterrent to sieging armies. Tie them up with some call of the winds ravens or something else disposable while they soak up the diseases. =)

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

in wheel of time i have disease sites all over the goddamn place. big deal. I even have one of my major centres plop on top of one. Disease can be a pain early on, but if you have half an eye it will be obvious that there is one there, as mages don't get diseased for no reason.

Micah: i can assure you that there are a number of non lvl 0 disease sites - plaguewater stream, leper fens, pool of unearthly rites, chillsick... most of which I have ;)

leper fens is the one you want to avoid - 10%

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Yeah, but you've got half the map on a 75% site game. I don't even want to hear about the good sites you have! :D

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Right, Leper fens and crown of darkness are the two at 10%, and if the database is right the fens are forest only, and both are unique. Crown is also a hefty discount site, so having it forted isn't a bad thing, although it might not be the best use of resources before you get some research done.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Most frustrating thing in one MP game:
Ooh, Garnet Amazons 2 steps from my capital.
Guess I'm going for Blood.
Attack with starting army.
Inkpot end.
Prophet diseased.

Seemed like a lot more than 10% of those amazons were diseased...

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

database is wrong then. Leper fens is not forest only.
Yah, I don't think that the percents are wrong, so much as the mysterious dominions RNG is at work again... i've had a number of instances where the % getting diseased was far out of proportion for what should be expected statistically.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Isnt it statistical each turn though? Independents now get almost all of the same impacts we do. Age, events, etc.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

But it's a 10% chance per turn, so if you attacked on turn 4, then you'd expect to see something like 33% diseased, wouldn't you? Total % diseased should go something like 10%, 19%, 27%, 34% etc.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Why is the site in the original post named after me? I mean, I'm honored and all, but a bit confused.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

The province name you mean, Lingchih? Its probably that player made map. The designer used names of all the people from IRC and the forums I think. Can't remember the designer's name off the top of my head

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I meant the ones I recruited being diseased as soon as I had them.

I don't remember the original inhabitants. I'd assume the locals are immune. Otherwise there wouldn't be any locals shortly.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Pashadawg :) I think the map is Asia Twist.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Ahh, OK. I'll have to check it out.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Oh, that is RNG trouble then!

The locals are not immune to disease sites, only PD is immune I think.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Sombre, while your own feelings on the matter of site-searching is made quite manifest in your thread, comments like 'only OCD people' care about certain things do not promote discussion. I certainly care about finding such sites, and I don't have OCD. In fact, most people would be insulted by the comparison.

Do I play multiplayer? No, but I don't think that's grounds for automatic dismissal of my comments.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

I happen to agree with Sombre, not because I mind site-searching but because horror marks are incredibly weak (which is why the B9 bless is awful). If your mages at some fort have a 5% chance each turn of getting +1% chance per turn of a horror attack (likely to result in a horror attack in about 70 turns), you may lose a couple of mages over the next 40 turns (gcost: 500 or so), which isn't enough to bother relocating a fort for. I made those 5%/1% numbers up but IME they're ballpark-accurate; horror marks are more frightening than deadly unless they're STRONG or you like to cast Call Horror in battle. Of course if you lose a PRETENDER (as opposed to research mages) to Horror Marks that's a different level of pain.

-Max

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

< is quoting broken? I couldnt get it to work right... >

I'm with Sombre on this one too. I remember reading that line about OCD and Horror Marks and laughing and agreeing completely. A minor horror mark on a single unit is practically beneath notice. To worry about it would be like tracking each affliction that a soldier picked up in detail.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

You don't track your soldier's afflictions in detail?! :shock:

You must separate the cripples out into their own squads, to prevent your lines from being messed up. That's two squads, one for cripples, one for limpers. Mutes, Chest Wound, Weakened and NHWs can be ignored and mixed in with the rest of your troops. Lost an Arm is usually okay unless it's the very first unit in an archer squad. Diseased goes straight to the front lines, as do Blind archers. If your overall morale is weak, then Battle Fright units need to be weeded out, especially for tramplers.

Who thinks it's wrong 'cos I'm splittin' and co-hittin' at. Well if you do, that's OCD and you're not down with it.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

What are you on about? I haven't made a thread about site searching so I don't know what you're referring to there. In this thread I didn't connect OCD and site searching at all. I said only OCD people would care about the odd random weak horror mark so much they'd make out the offchance of accidentally building a fort in a province which had a horror marking site in it to be a huge deal.

And what does whether you play MP or not have to do with anything?

Are you another one of Gandalf's secret accounts? You make about as much sense.

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

Well, Gandalf DID thank him.....! Dun dun DUN!!!


You down with OCD? Yeah you know me!

<3

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

-crip walk-

O to the C to the D to the awg!

Re: Searching for Blood Sites is superfluous !!
 

On the topic of Horror Marks... do the power of the Horror Mark spell depend on the S level of the caster? Can't find this anywhere. I've tested an Horror Marking communion and after some horror mark spells by a caster brought to S5/6 the enemy pretender was assassinated by the HoH the next turn, still I don't know if there's a correlation.

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Hahah, nice vfb. That is some serious OCD action :) But yeah I dont pay any attention to soldiers wounds. When I need archer-decoys I do select from the injured first, but other than that I dont pay any attention to the rank and file.

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Really? Doesnt limping affect the speed they reach the enemy? Doesnt losing an arm or eyes affect archers and make them charge instead of fire? Not too mention too many with morale afflictions. Not checking my injuries once in awhile would seem to affect my formations effectiveness. MicroManagement maybe but as far as OCD?

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On chaff, who cares? If there are too many of them behaving that way you can always just remove them. That's not the same thing as obsessively checking afflictions.

Very, very, very rarely. It seems it has to be the very first archer in the unit. I've never seen it happen.