[Norfleet]

A "blood" nation, obviously, can hunt with its blood mages. A non-blood mage is limited to either trying to inefficiently hunt with scouts, which is still doable, but no longer more efficient than doing so with all but the most expensive B1 mages, as it takes 9 scouts to achieve the hunting odds of 1 B1 mage with a rod.

Otherwise, sages are a popular choice: You're usually hiring a sage a turn anyway for research purposes, and at least a few of them will turn out to be B sages.

How much blood, and how fast you need it, greatly varies depending on your competition: At a basic level, blood is useful for forging the very nice blood items to equip your SCs with, or if you feel like Soul Contracting. There are also some very nice unique blood summons: However, if you're facing a real blood nation, it's likely that they'll get them first.

It's not absolutely *VITAL* to get a blood economy going at ANY point in the game, but it *DOES* seem necessary to get either Blood, or Death, working for you: Otherwise you have no access to lifedrain, which in turn, severely limits your options for equipping things. As a non-blood nation, I generally start thinking about a blood economy around turn 15ish, and set to work implementing it as soon as my more pressing and immediate concerns are filled. If I'm pitted against a blood nation that's actively playing his blood, this is probably too late to make a meaningful grab for the commander summons, but the forging is still nice.