I am still doing the Abysian tests. (results soon)
As to the gold cost of the scout strategy...
I need to do some more tests to try to optimize the situation. In the test from the first post I did no patrols, nor did I farm the best provinces (I farmed some big expensive ones).
However I can tally up the approximate costs and results from that slightly sub-optimal test:
Gold costs of taxes lost, scout costs, and upkeep = 3005 gold (approximate, I had to estimate the times of acquiring some provinces, but I'm pretty close)
For this 3000 gold I got 420 blood slaves.
That comes to 7.14 gold per slave.
Think of it as 214 gold for a Horde from Hell or perhaps 392 gold for an Ice Devil.
As per Pocus's "20 turn challenge", it seems that competitive play yields a turn 20ish income of about 1500.
420 blood slaves could be;
almost 8 Ice Devils (3 more than exist)
14 Hordes from Hell (14 Devils and 350 Imps)
21 Lifelong Protection Contracts
The ability for Jotunhiem to cast the global spell Illwinter 3 times (and have 60 slaves to spare)
I think this might help put things into perspective.
[ November 04, 2003, 04:12: Message edited by: apoger ]