February 11th, 2004, 10:09 PM
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Re: Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here
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Originally posted by licker:
Good points Zen, I'll still disagree that scouts are *better* blood hunters in general though. It does depend somewhat on what kinds of provinces you have, and what access to blood mages you have. Diabolical faith has a 90gp 1F1B mage for example, also useful for pumping out scads of Demon Jesters when needed.
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I agree that some nations (DF and Mictlan) have very decent blood hunters, that don't require as much work as scouts. But those are the only two nations who could do that, and they are limited by the fact they can only produce them in castle provinces. These nations are aided by the fact you can scout and use their own cheap blood hunters to ramp up a quick blood economy. In the early game, you need research as much as blood slaves. So this is the best of both worlds, then when you need to convert to a higher blood output you convert ~5 priests with dousing rod to your 5k+ province with 0% tax and watch the blood roll in.
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The most slaves I've ever gotten with a Scout was 4, that was in a 10k pop province. Mostly my scouts get 2 or 3 slaves, and thats every 4th turn or worse. A 1blood with a dousing rod (and what true blood nation isn't going to employ those...) averaged 6 or 7 every turn. That equates to more than 4 scouts... Well that's my experience anyway, sure you can use scouts to blood hunt, and you may even be better off in the short run using them before you can muster up enough blood mages to do the work for you.
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I have found the opposite. I get anywhere between 0~7 with scouts. From my tests, a 1 Blood w/o Dousing Rod mage will hunt about as effectively as 3 Scouts. With a Dousing Rod it is between 5~6 Scouts. But this also accounts for constant unrest, so it's best to place your Blood, blood hunters in a 0% Tax province with others, while you let your scouts take slaves from numerous other interior provinces.
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but I'm not convinced you get zero unrest hits for unseccusful hunts, in fact I'm pretty sure this isn't the case, I've had unrest up in provinces with scouts who were unsuccesful, perhaps not as much as if they were successful, but the unrest will still accumulate, and for a zero return at that.
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Unrest accumulates from unrest. So if you are unable to completely kill the unrest of a turn by tax or patrol, it will breed more unrest. So if you have a set tax rate that will not clear the unrest you currently have, produced by your current unrest, and will squelch the unrest caused by next turns blood hunts, you will accumulate unrest.
An unsuccessful blood hunt gives you 1 point of Unrest. So even if 5 scouts fail, you will only get 5 points of unrest, which will be cleaned by 90% taxes.
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Anyway, I overstated that Scouts suck (imagine that, hyperbole on a message board  ) but I still think the case for them in lieu of blood mages is poor, then again, alot depends on the actual dynamics of the game and what you can and can't do 
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I agree. There is a fine line between the speed at which you get your slaves (for a sudden advantage by using Blood Summons/spells) or the steady income. I prefer speed, since that is my particular playstyle and because there is significant advantage to the speed of blood.
The main point of Scout blood hunting isn't for DF or Mictlan, but for other nations who have no ability to hunt for blood without sacrifice. Vanheim, Jotun, Abysia, etc. If you relied on your mages because of their cost to blood hunt, it would be far more pronounced than DF or Mictlan.
[ February 11, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: Zen ]
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