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Originally Posted by Dragar
There is something a bit messed up with the quoting there, those were Baalz's comments
I agree with the sentiment about demonbreds and the efficacy of the tactics you describe, but it isn't feasibly that achievable that quickly. Abysia isn't exactly a research powerhouse. Unless perhaps you have a high research rainbow awake and hitting the books straight away, with all of your demonbreds either blood hunting or casting blood spells, and even then..
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It's feasable to get Blood 3 by the end of the first year w/o a pretender, but yeah, you won't have any blood slaves in reserve because your mages will have spent the first year researching, not bloodhunting.
My perspective is somewhat biased by the pretender choices. I prefer either an awake enchantress or a dormant lich (either of them with at least 5 magic paths). I want to be able to leverage the late game blood summons to give me my magic diversity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragar
20 devils = 140 blood and 20 casting turns. Summon imp costs a slave, and you won't be casting much hellfire/agony/bloodboil without a heap of slaves for fatigue. Remember also that demonbreds have awful precision, so a lot of these spells don't work well early when you are only fighting against small armies and have no way to boost precision. They are only really combat effective with the later blood spells, and in casting battlefield wide spells like blood lust and blood rain.
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6 demonbred blood hunting my first 3 captured provinces seem to average about 120 blood slaves by the end of the first hear. It admittedly comes at a heavy price in terms of gold income but it adds up to a nice reserve. I don't have to turn them into devils or use the slaves for combat magic but it's nice to know they're available if I need them. Converting those slaves into Devils would only take 2 turns. Also, demonbred, unlike warlocks, tend to start the fight with blood slaves because if I have to commit them to combat then they probably just flew over from their blood hunting province and have a load of slaves on them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragar
I believe that blood is the key for MA abysia in the mid game and onwards, but in the early game you need your mages researching and site searching a bit, and using non-blood casting in combat support.
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If we were talking about EA Abysia, I'd agree with you but I'm not convinced that that's true in MA. I seem to be having the best results when I start my research with Blood 3 then Construction 4 (for SDRs).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragar
In terms of blood summons I don't think summoning devils is worth it, I only grab them through soul contracts. Even demon knights are a bit iffy for a mage's turn, you will be really struggling to keep up the research. Only the higher level blood summons are really worth it except in emergencies.
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The operative words there being 'except in emergencies'.
It isn't worth summoning devils if you're just building a standing army, but if I've been recruiting Demonbreds instead of warlocks then I have the option to summon devils if that emergency arises. But you need a critical mass of demonbred to make that possible.
I do think you underestimate the sinergy between devils and demonbred. Devils alone aren't that useful but combine them with a flying commander....
Maybe I just need to tune my early game better for Warlocks but right now I just can't make them work as well as the demonbreds even if they are better researchers.