What is the path of blood for?
 

I don't understand how to use the path of blood.

-Blood hunting generates unrest, which requires patrols in every province

-Micromanaging the blood pool constantly is annoying (blood slaves go into commander slots and not the pool

-Most of the combat spells hurt your side too unless you are using undead only

-Demon summoning...not sure how useful they are?

-Summoning horrors seems pretty dangerous to yourself

-None of the blood items are really impressive from their descriptions...why use heartfinder instead of frost/fire/shadow brand for example?

How do you use the path of blood effectively?

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

The path of blood is for total game-breaking domination as you realize you can turn gold into gems and no one else can (unless they also have blood of course).

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

-You need to optimize blood hunting. Using provinces from around 4k-7k is best, patroling and blood hunting is not so good as you'll kill the population too fast.
You need to spread your blood hunters, I myself, as do most players, use only 3 blood hunters per provinces with taxes set to 0% of course. If the unrest gets too high, which it sometimes will, it's best to let it normalize on it's own rather than patrol. (paroling kills 10 population per every 1 unrest)
-There is a ctr+z command on selected commanders that transfers all blood slaves to the laboratory
-Blood spells are generally not used too often. They are situational since you need a lot of blood slaves to use them effectively and slaves can also be killed in battle, also, most of them are MR negated. You need to figure out which spells (if any) suit you best at that moment.
Horrors can be extremely good if you're facing a bigger enemy, you can direct the horrors by horror marking your enemy. ( if you can cast summon horror you should have horror mark as well ). There are other spells like harm which is excellent for braking enemy troops and forcing them into retreat and blood rain. Combining these three spells for example could make a much bigger army retreat.
-Demon summons are excellent! If you can get ritual of the five gates I'd suggest maximizing it. Every single one of the demon summon is worth their price. Of course summoning demon generals is even better if you want to make SCs.
-Blood items are not that useful actually. On occasion you'll use the black heart to create an assassin or boots or youth to stop old age, but the most common blood item used are boosters normally. Heart finder is also MR negated btw.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

The about Blood items is that they're cheap. Once you've got a good Blood economy going, you'll be pulling in far more slaves per turn than gems. Ritual spell costs reflect this, but item costs can't, since they're tied to the path requirements.
Even things like Armor of Souls (25 slaves) can be spammed, which you'd never do with a 25 (or even 15) gem item. 5 slave items are practically free.
Flesh Eaters are good anti-thug weapons. Ring of the Warrior is good fighting high-def thugs. Boots of Youth spamming is practically required for Abysia at least.

But yes, Blood really shines in the summons. Many blood nations also have national blood summons, usually sacred, that are even better than the normal demons.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Well the high level battlefield spells are also great. All of them are either AN or death iirc.

Bloodletting: Everybody MR or take 1 damage (which is more in practice, as you get the random roll). Caster gets this as lifeforce.

Life for a life. 1 unit gets 40+ AN damage. range 100, prec 100. No MR roll.

Infernal Prison/Claws of Kokytos, one unit is banished into one of the hells. (removes him from the battle at least).

Hellbind heart. If the unit fails a MR save, it joins your side.

Rush of strength. All your units get more strength.

Blood rain. All units get lowered morale.

Call horror. Is your enemy horrormarked? Call a horror in battle.

The problem is that all these spells have high fatigue. So what do you do? Right, make a big communion, and use reinvigoration (removes fatigue, works on slaves). Bonus, communions boost penetration. And we all want more penetration now don't we?

You have something for every occasion. Facing SC's? Life for a life, and the banishment spells. Facing chaff? Blood letting with blood rain. (Using horde from hell to cut of the retreat route, bye bye army).

Facing heavy amounts of good sacreds. Well... a bit hard, but demons with blood rain (Blood rain does not effect morale 30 units) and rush of strength should help. But it is going to be hard.

And the hardest, lots of undead. No spells work directly on these.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

But if you blood hunt too much, unrest will go up and you wont get money anymore.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

You won't need so much money because you'll have huge armies of demons.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

One note about (well two) blood battlefield magic.

Blood magic eats slaves like crazy. If you go for the sabbath communion, always give the sabbath slaves at least one blood slave. Else they will just take a blood slave from the battlefield and mess with your scripts. Which brings an important point. Blood slaves used for powering blood magic can come from anybody. One mage already holding 30 slaves but you want more? Put a commander with 30 more slaves next to him. The mage will now have 60 slaves to use in combat. And yeah, battlefield blood magic is very slave intensive. Using 100+ slaves in a large battlefield is not that uncommon. And what would you rather have? 20 more demons on the battlefield or 20 castings of bloodletting?

My second point. A lot of the high powered blood commander summons work very well with a reverse communion. Have a bunch of vampire lords set as a sabbath slave. Have some masters cast the elemental resistance spells, +mr, darkness, soul drain, mistform, invulnerability, etc. And last have one master cast reinvigoration. Boom! A lot of suped up vampire lords. (add darkness to the buffing mix!)

One note on reinvigoration. It can be a bit tricky to get your masters to cast this spell. It will only cast it if the master has some sort of fatigue itself. Having a b1 master with 2 slaves should do the trick. One slave for the sabbath master putting the master at 50+ fatigue, and one for the reinvigoration.

Well three notes then.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Give me enough slaves, and I will crush the world!

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

So the entire point is not to use national troops? Doesnt that remove a lot of diversity? Since nations tend to play pretty similar if you use the same summons...

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

National troops (most of them) became obsolete at a certain point in the game, and by that point you'll be switching to blood summoned troops, be it national summons like Mictlans or Lanka, or sinergetic summons like storm demons for Vanhaim, devils for Abysia, etc.
In any case, you'd ideally want to stop recruiting regular troops and indies altogether (except for mages) and completely switch to a blood economy, even blood forts are relatively cheap, 120 slaves I think.
Strong blood powers should play it so at least.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

You still use national mages, and every blood nation worth the name ha some pretty good summons. You have Mictlan, and their capacity to mass armies of nasty jaguar demons, bats, and monster toads (that are basically hydras and elephants rolled into one). You have Lanka, and their gigantic demon that autocasts darkness in every battle, along with a unit that can have Mistform going while also having Blood Vengeance up.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Why do national troops become obsolete? Right now im playing Niefelheim, and the best demon summon i can do en-masse are frost fiends.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Frost fiends are great. Super stats, ranged attack, immune to one element, demon (both a plus and a minus, minus anti demon spells, plus, no need to worry about disease, darkness, or supplies), no upkeep.

And they get stronger in cold dominion.

And you should also be able to mass just normal fiends, which are also great. And the normal spine devils, and undead devils (forgot the name) have their uses.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

National troops effectively get obsolete because at a certain point various thugs and super combatians that are capable of destroying large armies became available to everyone (Tartarians, Golems, Air Queens...). This usually happens around turn 40+. Protecting all those armies isn't really an option since you cannot possibly know what will get thrown at you and you might end up losing even more stuff.
So fielding and spending gold on various troop types becomes a disadvantage since they became all too counterable with every passing turn.
Certain troop types are always good of course, Mictlans jaguars, or Kailasa Yavanas and such, but that is usually limited to some gold effective (as in cheap) sacreds.

At a certain point troops are used mostly as chaff, something for the enemy mages to kill while you try and kill the enemy, and as siege weapons, breaking down fort walls of course. But keeping in mind that chaff still costs money and upkeep you don't want to have too much of them, which is why summons are often used to replaced recruitable troops, every gold piece you spend on troops is one less you have for mages and forts and that's what wins the game in the end.

Most common end game strategies consist of using various SCs and remote spells to raid and capture enemy provinces to weaken their infrastructure, and fielding a few large armies backed up by quite a few mages. But even when armies are used in the later stages of the game, they are always protected by various buffs that, and this is crucial, are always cast in the very first round to prevent tragedies like getting anhiliated by rain of stones (which is usually countedred by a mass protection or army of gold), or by master enslave (anti-magic) and so on.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

It's just how the game is balanced. Troops and mages are at a fixed gold cost, and after you get 2-3 forts up gold is your limiting resource. Mages arn't as good at troops per-gold in the early stages of the game, but as magical research continues they become more powerful to the point of obseleting troops.

Things that affect this balance are the cost/effectiveness of troops, the cost/effectiveness of mages, and the rate of magical research. Setting magical research to difficult or very difficult makes troops relevant far later in the game. The relative effectiveness of troops vs mages for cost depends on nation and era.

Take for example MA Ulm. A Sapper has a Crossbow that fires an armor-piercing projectile every two rounds. At the start of the game, a Priest Smith can cast Flying Shards... which makes him about equivalent to 2-3 crossbowmen at most. With some research in Evocation, though, that Priest Smith can cast Iron Darts, a volley of several armor-piercing bolts each round for as long as the priest remains able to cast. This uprates him to being competitive with about 10 crossbowmen (roughly). With a bit more research, that Priest Smith can cast Iron Blizzard, a similar spell that throws 30 or more bolts, making him equivalent to 60 crossbowmen in sheer firepower....for as long as he remains conscious, of course.

A larger number of sappers still has some advantages, in terms of morale//endurance//being able to soak enemy fire. But it is that point at which you are considering your troops as chaff and your mages as doing the real work. An army with a couple more mages can beat an army that spent that money on troops instead, as long as you have a certain minimum of troops.

****

A good starter blood nation is MA Abyssia, IMO. The 'Soul contract spam' strategy using Demonbreds (it's in the index) really clued me into blood.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Deadly,
Quite well summarized...
ssj

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

But you can only build a single mage a turn per fort(and you cant even queue them), which is a pretty huge limiting factor (not to mention collecting them from all the forts), and they are so squishy they die to cavalry/flyers in melee. And you probably need to give them boosters to cast decent battlefield spells too.

Im surprised by how deadly frost fiends are though. With only protection 9, i expected them to die a lot...but im fighting Formoria with the "stop AI from building chaff independant troops" mod, and facing mostly Formoria giants...and im taking almost no casaulties at all despites being outnumbered 4-1 and not even using any buffs or battle magic at all. How is that possible?

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

How is that possible, indeed?

In the turns messages you will see an option to "view battle", I'd watch a battle and see exactly what those fiendish frosty demons do
;)

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

If the limit on the number of mages you recruit per turn is anything other than your available gold, then you haven't built enough forts.

Except for the nations with the most powerful recruitable sacred troops, Dominions 3 endgame in MP is dominated by summoned troops backed up by massive number of mages, by thugs, by super-combatants, and by raiding.

Note that I said in MP. The AI is so poor that you can obtain victory on any difficulty level in SP using only national recruitable troops and a few mages, but that doesn't cut it against actual opposition.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

I tried that. All i see is that the frost fiends dont seem to be taking much damage from the giants even with protection 9.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

I thought building forts in every province was a bad idea because it would screw up resource collection?

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

After a certain time, only being able to recruit a mage matters.

Also, forts double the normal resource collection of the province they are in. So it isn't that much of a problem.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

The only time this is ever really an issue is if you have a good capital-only unit that isn't otherwise limited. (Sacreds are generally holy limited, although high-resource sacreds can fall into this category. There are a few non-sacred units in the game that are capital only a quite worthwhile: Nemedian Warriors (Fomoria), Jotun Skinshifters (Nieflheim), and Knights of Avalon (MA Man) come to mind.)

Otherwise you just hire units from more total forts, and ultimately have more resources to do so with (although more distributed).

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Blood

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Incidentally, defense skill helps a lot against giants but protection does very little. They hit hard, but they have mediocre attack skills and there's only one of them in a square. Units with above-average defence (like the Frost Fiends) will be pretty resistant to giants.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

on the topic of blood, I just realized (much to my annoyance) that blood-casters can use their slaves to boost death-spells...is this only true of blood and death? I was super-pissed because the caster was supposed to cast a battle-changing spell but instead used his slaves to boost a "raise-dead" :(

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

r u sure? how does it work? like burning D gems?

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Good question:

I first thought that all the slaves disappeared in the same instant that he cast his d-spell, but upon double-checking it seems the truth is that other bloodmages used his slaves to cast their own spells right before the mage in question could use them...he was relatively far away from the other blood-mages but there were a lot of body-guards crowding the place, so I guess that some of his slaves got "lost."

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

It looks like B mages can use any slave on their side of the battlefield. Do not store spare slaves on other commanders in the battle, use scouts for that.

I don't know if you can use bloodslaves from the other side of the battlefield. But somebody should check that out. Determining the range of the blood slave use is irritating work.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

wow, I've heard about b-slave-sharing before, but I didn't realize it had such a wide potential area.

That does explain what happened, since some of the other blood mages used the slaves just to cast "sabath slave" and they were not even close to the sabath master whose slaves they used.

So does that mean that if you have a large sabath communion you need a lot of extra slaves just to make sure the master can cast some expensive blood spell after "sabath master?"

It seems there's no guarantee that the other blood-mages won't use as many of the master's slaves as the want, leaving nothing for the so called master to use.

Thanks for the info Soyweiser!

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

If the Sabbat Master casts before the slaves, the slaves couldnt use up the virgins.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

Good to know, its too bad that would prevent a reverse communion.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

If you assign blood slaves to each mage individually, and keep the communion master well away from the communion slaves you might be able too prevent communion slaves from using communion master blood slaves. Of course, doing this does tend to concentrate your slaves in two areas, leaving them vulnerable to, say, bladewind. How much that matters is up for debate, given that they were already one earthquake away from annihilation.

Re: What is the path of blood for?
 

There is definitely a range on blood slaves, but I'm not sure how far it is. I was testing out a call lesser horror strategy with Warlock Apprentices in CBM 1.92. I had three on the board, one at the top rear, one middle rear, one bottom rear, 3 slaves apiece:

s
WAs
s

s
WAs
s

s
WAs
s

On the first round, the top WA used his two slaves to cast. The middle used the top's third and his own first. The bottom used the middle's second and third.

On the second round, the top could not access any and cast body etheral. The middle used the bottom's first and second. The bottom used his third. So whatever the range is, it's less than the full height of the battlefield, but more than half the height.