Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it

[Spacepain]

Okay, today, I am here to address a very important issue people. Blood Magic. Blood Magic, is seemingly the most daunting and confusing school of magic to even dream about using... to even the slightest success. After the fact that everything demands those pesky blood slaves, theres the wee confusing thing about GETTING blood slaves that really has me flabbergausted. The amout of micromanagement invovlved in keeping a healthy number of blood slaves around is nauesating.

Is there any thing that eases up this process of moving commanders around provinces harvest blood slaves? To be quite frank, considering the amount of time that is needed micro-ing all of those little blood mages, we should start a fund for research of an ethanol equivalent to blood.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
Okay, today, I am here to address a very important issue people. Blood Magic. Blood Magic, is seemingly the most daunting and confusing school of magic to even dream about using... to even the slightest success. After the fact that everything demands those pesky blood slaves, theres the wee confusing thing about GETTING blood slaves that really has me flabbergausted. The amout of micromanagement invovlved in keeping a healthy number of blood slaves around is nauesating.

Is there any thing that eases up this process of moving commanders around provinces harvest blood slaves? To be quite frank, considering the amount of time that is needed micro-ing all of those little blood mages, we should start a fund for research of an ethanol equivalent to blood.

If you have the extra cash, building a lab in the province where you are doing the harvesting will help a lot - slaves will be available on the turn you find them, and you can pool them from the "lab" screen.

I tend to hunt in a very few select provinces. A high population helps a lot, and if you want to keep unrest at a reasonable level, you should lower taxes considerably - basically, to 0 once you have several efficient hunters. Yes, high population also means high income, so you're losing a lot of gold this way; hopefully the slaves will make up for it.

If you go the Scout way for your hunting, then you can choose to have only 1-2 hunters per province, and can get by with maybe 80% taxes; but then, you'll have to micromanage your harvest, most likely. Also, scouts don't benefit from Sanguine Dousing Rods like blood mages do, so your hunting will be slower and more erratic.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by PhilD:
If you go the Scout way for your hunting, then you can choose to have only 1-2 hunters per province, and can get by with maybe 80% taxes; but then, you'll have to micromanage your harvest, most likely. Also, scouts don't benefit from Sanguine Dousing Rods like blood mages do, so your hunting will be slower and more erratic.

Well, according to Saber Cherry, a blood-1 hunter without an SDR hunts about as well as 2 scouts. With an SDR, a blood-1 mage hunts about as well as 4 scouts. A scout costs $20. If you have a blood mage that costs less than $40, or a blood mage that is sacred, has an SDR, and costs less than $80, you'll do better than scout hunting, if you neglect the cost of the SDR. If you do NOT have a blood mage that's really cheap, blood hunting with scouts is actually the most economical, goldwise. Micromanagement wise....well, building a lab anywhere you want to hunt is a fixed cost.

[archaeolept]

however, hunting with scouts causes more unrest per unit blood slave and, as such, requires either lower taxes or greater patrolling, again, per unit blood slave.

so the economic benefit of the scout strategy is unclear, IMO, for any nation that has reasonably priced blood-1 hunters. As well as being a PITA.

[Zurai]

Not really. By far the most unrest is generated by actually taking blood slaves, and the unrest does not *appear* to be a linear scale. In other words, my blood-10 Fountain of Blood with a SDR taking 25 slaves with no one else hunting raises unrest to ~120. 2 Scouts each nabbing 5 slaves raises my unrest to ~20. 2 Scouts failing to nab any slaves barely impacts unrest at all.

Uhm. Considering you can hunt with 8 scouts in a province with 0 tax and have virtually no unrest problems. It's not that unclear. On the other hand anything over 4 1 Blood with SDR's will ramp up the unrest beyond what is feasible to use taxes to control and you'll have to use patrollers.

Scouts are both more cost effective, time effective, safer and universally usable than blood magic blood hunters because of this.

There are only a few nations with the ability to hunt 'better' with less loss while at the same time not sacrificing something.

Other than that and needing a specific amount of Blood Slaves per turn for your progress, there is no reason not to use scouts except for the micromanagment aspect which could be nulled with a simple "Pool to Commander" command.

[archaeolept]

well, I stand corrected.

I guess I just hate the micromanagement cost, which surely counts for something - your attention to detail can only go so far, esp. in a multiplayer game.

there is no reason not to use scouts except for the micromanagment aspect which could be nulled with a simple "Pool to Commander" command.

or, better I think, a simple scout nerf...

[ March 13, 2004, 23:16: Message edited by: archaeolept ]

I don't think a Nerf is especially in order. Then it would effectively hurt at least 1 nation (Vanheim) and limit the use of Blood only to nations with cheap searchers. The only reason that you use scouts is they are the cheapest most availiable form of unit to do the job. It's only a bonus that they are stealthy. If they nerfed the Scouts ability to blood hunt then you'd just use Indep Commanders (50% Increase in Gold and significant resource cost which wouldn't allow you to recruit them in many provinces). If the entirety of all non-blood units blood hunting were nerfed, that would have a significant impact.

When a nation is geared towards blood, then a player is going to use scouts + whatever blood searchers he can grub up (Sages/random cheap blooders) in order to suppliment his blood slave economy. So it only helps blood nations in that regard by allowing them to use their blood mages to research early then go to blood hunting when they need it.

A Nation type that has a bonus (or penalty) to Blood Hunting (People allow it more or less) would be much more in line of what would be appropriate in my mind. However, how hard it would be to implement is as much a factor.

It has been talked about; but I don't know if there has been any real discussion about it.

[Spacepain]

Whew... lot of information there, esp. for a newbie. Let me try to summarize this.

1. Use scouts to harvest, because they are cheapest unit and cause the least unrest.

2. Build a lab in the provinces ur harvesting from to null the microing.

3. Give scouts SDR(what is that btw?)

4. Keep taxes down to prevent unrest

5. The pool resources button is your friend.

Now my only concern is the unrest. For nations like Marignon with Diabolic theme, they have to be slanted towards turmoil, making unrest even more common. How do you supress this with out eventually wasting the entire population of a province? I doubt that a high growth for domain would compensate.

[Sindai]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
I doubt that a high growth for domain would compensate.

Actually, it does. With Growth 3 you can do quite a lot of blood hunting in a province with 0% taxes and still have the population actually grow.

If you just can't afford a positive growth scale, though, you just have to move your hunting to another province once the population of the first one gets significantly depleted.