[Graeme Dice]

dirtywick said:
I usually average about 10-15 per hunter, sometimes more or less, but I blood hunt in provinces with pops of 10,000 or more, including my capital, and get better averages.

I suggest that you should re-read page 69 of your manual where it describes blood hunting. The only effect that the population of a province has is that the blood hunt can fail if the province has less than 5000 people. Population has zero effect on the number of slaves captured, which is d6+blood skill. Hunting in your capital is an extremely bad idea, unless it's the only province you have, and you need blood slaves very quickly at the start of the game. The rest of your arguments seem to be based on the misconception that high population provinces have an effect on how many blood slaves you gather.

Any Warlock can be anywhere on the map the next turn if you can forge a Starshine Skullcap, some don't even need it. There's not many mages that can do that.

In the middle age, the nations that can teleport given the same conditions are Pythium, Ermor, Arcoscephale, Man (Cloud trapeze only needs air 2), Marignon, Mictlan, T'ien Ch'i (1/4 masters), Caelum, Vanheim, Bandar Log, Atlantis, and R'Lyeh. That's more than half the available nations.

It adversely effects blood hunting and age, and income eventually because the population would increase over time and with it income. What are you gaining that's worth giving that up? A supply bonus and short term income an some pretender points? I don't agree with that at all.

The death scale has zero effect on blood hunting, except for the minor population loss. At 0.6% population loss per turn for death 3, it takes 49 turns to lose a quarter and 116 turns to lose 50% of your population in your home province. Your other provinces will take even longer to lose their population, since your dominion takes time to spread to them. The winner of even a massive game is almost always decided by turn 50.

Abysia is supposed to be relatively unaffected by the death scale, which is why they do not lose any income nor supplies from it. The problem, is that those two effects are minor and are negated by the increased affliction rate suffered by your mages.

I don't really think that they need the pretender as a few turns of recruitment can yield a second army that can conquer provinces just as easily, and since most pretenders need a few levels of research in a school that's not particularly helpful to your other mages, like Alteration, I don't feel you're gaining much by having it awake except a few afflictions.

I don't think you understand how necessary it is to explode out of your home province. Ideally, you'd want to have captured 10 provinces by turn 10, although that can be difficult at times. If you're doing really well, you'll have captured 20 provinces by turn 10, especially if you took a dragon that can capture a province per turn starting at turn two.

You could take identical scales to what you have now, make the pretender dormant, and add Magic 3 and you'll probably be better off overall.

Magic 3 is a strategy for people who plan to survive to the late game, I'd prefer to survive the early game through a powerful pretender, then have extra gold to power research, instead of spending design points on it.

With their protection as high as it is, the nearly double hit points is huge, it's like getting hit two or three more times against average units.

Abysian troops have a protection of 16, attack and defense of 10, and 15 hitpoints (not 20). This is virtually identical to every other heavy infantry unit. The 15 hitpoints is 50% more than normal humans, but only 2 more than the emerald guard, which also have a 13 attack, 15 defense, and 17 protection. With the guard's higher base defense they will also actually get to use the 15 protection from the shield in close combat.

The radiant heat is worth it too. Just MA Abysias starting army, 9 times out of 10, can take all of the provinces around your capital without stopping for reinforcements and taking few losses, except knights and elephants really.

Just about every nations starting army plus the first turns recruitment can do that on independents 5.