Quote:
Originally Posted by Valerius
15 slaves/turn is fine for forging and some blood sacrificing but you won't get too far with summoning. I'd say 100 blood slaves/turn for a heavy blood nation is too low. When playing MA Aby (good, but cap only, blood hunters) I'm looking for at least 150, preferably 200. With Mictlan (which I haven't played) I'd expect even higher numbers. When playing Van my goal has typically been 75-100/turn (if I can get GoNB up then Van's horribly cost-inefficient blood hunters become more tolerable and I aim for higher numbers  ). Of course map size affects these numbers but this is roughly what I'd aim for in an 8-12 player game.
As for Van post-SDR, I'd suggest using all of your B2 Vanadrotts for blood hunting. Additional, you'll want some blood boosters around and when they are not being used in forging/combat give them to Vanjarls to get a few extra blood hunters. I haven't played any post CBM 1.6 games but I can't see using Vanjarls without a booster/SDR - just too cost inefficent at that point. So, if by turn 50 you've split your cap recruitment 40% dwarves and 60% Vanadrott's you'll have about 7 B2 Vanadrott's hunting and maybe another 3 Vanjarls with boosters. This doesn't seem that bad but the fact that you can't offload most blood hunting duties to Vanjarls means that those B2 Vanadrott's will have to stay focused on that and also be your main options for forging, summoning and combat use (blood magic does have some useful combat spells). I'd suggest summoning Vampire Lords as soon as possible to help with all this.
The thing with Vanheim is that while they are very inefficient blood hunters, and in that sense are a "miniblood" nation, blood magic is very important to them and I recommend making it a high priority and making the best of the current situation (which will hopefully be addressed in a future CBM release). |
Thanks for the reply Valerius your post was the answer I was looking for.
Agreed the 15 blood slaves/turn is low, but before I started really playing around with what could be done I figured I'd get a bench mark first.
I slightly disagree with your post sdr analysis. I'm thinking more to start it up with as many B2s & B1s as soon as possible and get it going. Then get blood boosters (con4) and pass them to B1s to make them B2s so as to free up some of the B2s for summons, etc. and continue to scale upward. Perhaps an inefficient approach but I don't see much else. Even waiting for turn 50 with ~7B2 drotts, isn't ideal. And while I agree vamp lords would be a nice add on that's really pushing mid/late game with respect to research (blood7) when there are other tasty battle spells that could be researched up the alt/evo/ench trees.
Definately not counting either out, but imo the blood econ should already be pumping at a relatively good pace by that point (even if only 25 slaves/turn that's 1 booster/turn which will lead to more slaves, etc.), and in all likelihood I won't be putting blood on the the pretender so I'll need to empower one drott to B4.
I also agree that blood is important to Van, and should be exploited to it's fullest (def cloud trap jarl sabbaths sound sneaky and fun
).
Curious though on your 75-100 blood slave eco, what exactly were you making/summoning? Item wise Vans choices are meh. Was it simply to field mass amounts of storm demons?