[llamabeast]

As I understand it, the reasons for the artifactification of dousing rods were:

1) Including a choice which should *always* be taken is basically a bit broken or at least pointless. Almost without exception, blood hunters should be given rods if possible. So they weren't adding much to the strategy of the game.
2) Their inclusion added non-fun micromanagement.
3) Blood is generally considered to be overpowered, so the resulting fairly large nerf was desirable.

Now it's obviously a bit unfortunate that this affects some nations more severely than others. Vanheim stands out as a victim, and this will be addressed in CBM 1.9.

As for how to hunt without them: yes, lots of blood hunters basically. If you are, say, Mictlan or Lanka they are so cheap that this is still a good strategy. Giving blood hunters 25-slave boosters is also not unreasonable, but represents a genuine choice. If you are short of blood hunters but can be reasonably sure of their safety, giving them boosters is a sound investment (I'm not sure of the break-even time but I bet it's <10 turns). If you have lots of forts, blood hunters coming out of your ears but they are often killed (e.g. you are fighting a raiding nation), they're a bad idea. There's also the question of whether you need the blood slaves more now or later.