[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by apoger:
>>but I cannot follow how you conclude from that that Blood will be worse in Dom II than in Dom I.

>Could be due to the (in practice) lower costs of the big blood summons.

I don't think you have proved that they are lower cost.

I'd like to see the total amount of gold you spent on buying the scouts, paying upkeep on the scouts, and lowering taxes to 0% in several provinces.

Oh, and buying and paying upkeep on the extra researchers so that you can research Blood Magic while remaining competitive in other research areas.

I think that if you look at that amount of gold (much of it spent or not collected in the crucial early turns) and compare what else you could have gotten with it (including faster expansion) you will see that blood is not so cheap.

Or, on the other hand, it may be that slave hunting by unskilled hunters (or possibly by anyone) needs to have a lower chance of success than currently, or be more limited by province population (obviously the cost to lower taxes to 0% in a high population province is quite significant, even aside from the upkeep of the hunters).

>This is a circular argument that doesn't hold. If scout empowering makes blood summons cheaper in Dom II, scout empowering + rod makes them even cheaper in Dom I.

How is this a circular argument?
I said it was the lower costs. I didn't say scout empowering was the reason why blood magic is worse in Dom II than I. You are misreading what I said.

Scout empowerment is an issue that needs to be looked at. But that is not what I answered in response to your question.

I think part of the problem is that you are not stating your point clearly.

I believe you are not saying that blood slave hunting is cheaper in Dom II than in Dom I, but rather that other things have had their costs increased more in Dom II while blood magic has had its costs increased relatively little (thus blood magic is relatively cheaper in Dom II).

However, I don't think that the cost to obtain gems has increased much in Dom II, while the cost to obtain blood slaves clearly has increased (you need more expensive hunters or get lower success rates, and it's harder to counter the unrest - even if your test reveals that both effects are smaller than one might suppose) - so a straight comparison of gem costs vs. slave costs is flawed.

>Soul slay is now 100 range, paralyze is stronger IMO, same with mind bLast, spiders, that maggot thing, missile weapons & in particular the magic ones are more usable, blessed troops, stronger pretenders...probably more that escape me.

Soul slay - needs the extra range due to larger battlefields.
Paralyze is stronger.
Mind bLast doesn't seem better. Perhaps I'm missing someting there.

I thought mind bLast now did a paralyze effect instead of fatigue damage. But I haven't played R'lyeh in the demo .

Spiders as a counter for SC. Possibly, but I'd need to see more before commenting.

I wouldn't consider this an adequate counter anyway - only Machaka gets it. (Or are there spider summons I'm forgetting? Independent provinces with spider riders?)

Maggots - Only works versus undead. The blood SC are now demons.

There may now be inadequate demon counters. Banish Demon is only available to blood mages (and there is no equivalent of Wither Bones, Control the Dead or Undead Mastery for demons, even for blood mages).
Most holy effects (Holy Pyre, Just Mans Cross, Herald Lance, Solar Brilliance) still work on both, IIRC - but some allow an MR check, and demons have high MR. Maybe these types of spells should have higher base magic penetration, to counter the expected higher MR of their targets.

IMO, demons shouldn't have 0 base encumbrance - they aren't lifeless anymore (IIRC). Low base encumbrance is fine, maybe even some built in reinvigoration for the more powerful ones. But 0 encumbrance also makes you immune to item-based encumbrance and is thus an extremely powerful ability. It's fine for undead which have lots of counters, but with demons having so few, it is unbalancing for them to be fatigue immune.

Magic Missile weapons. Possibly, but will have to be seen.

The new Vision Foe is scary. Automatic eye loss with no MR save. A couple Firbolg or even Druids packing those things could really ruin your day (except for Old Wormface of course ).

Blessed troops - I don't think they'll make a dent in most SC.
Stronger Pretenders - Yes, but that's a balance issue in itself.

Considering what's been lost, that's not a very big list. I'd trade that all in for Dom I's star fire and the ability to use control the dead and wither bones versus 'demons'.

(snip some personal attacks - can we calm down please?)


I think the whole issue should be re-evaluated once the full game ships (or more precisely, arrives). For now I would say that there may be inadequate counters to demons, and they probably shouldn't have 0 base enc anymore.

Also, blood slave hunting by unskilled hunters may have too good a success rate. However, if I understand your post right, you had dozens or maybe even hundreds of scouts hunting to get "20-50" (a pretty wide range) slaves per turn. Even a scout costs 2 upkeep, so I make that roughly 5 gold per slave - not counting the lost income from the provinces. And of course if you don't have a blood skilled pretender you need a lot of items and/or empowerment to be able to summon anything big.

It's certainly possible for other nations to get into blood magic. But I question whether it is cost-effective compared to other things they could do with that much gold.