Abysian Yes, Black Forest No

[Bowlingballhead]

I emerge now fat and thickly chuffed with victory hard-won in a game where I played Abysia. Seeing 109 devils take on my human opponent's 12 iron dragons is not a sight I will forget in a hurry. The iron dragons actually won, but 6 of them died, and in another 2 turns I'd have been back with ANOTHER 125 devils. Maybe more.

I learned much in this game. So I wish to put forward that of all the races I have tried so far, Abysia is clearly, hands-down, the greatest blood-magic nation. And they have one key advantage if you want to run a Soul Contract economy: You don't have to study blood magic at ALL. Demonbred are the perfect generals for devil armies. Each one can lead about 35, moves the same 3 provinces flying overland, and can even provide magical backup. You are free to research Construction independently of everything else until you can cast the all-important Forge of the Ancients. Then you go to town.

To my vast amusement, I was transporting contracts via lab to my frontier at the other end of the map, and slapping them on cheap human priests. With the gate stone, the archdevil that I needn't have bothered with could zap over there to pick the devils up when my nearer frontier was threatened.

Now to put this in contrast with the new blood nation - Black Forest Ulm. Ugh. Painfully weak. Your blood mages aren't that good, so they really don't blood hunt too well. Your armies are more expensive and not as strong as Abysia's, so you don't conquer provinces as well to get your blood economy going. Worst of all, you're stuck with a Death rating. Death is the BANE of blood magic. Heck, unless you're running on necro-priests, I find a Death rating to be a real killer in general. Black Forest Ulm finds itself rapidly facing dwindling resources and self-imposed attrition. Not cool at all. Yeah, the vampire count is nice, but he's not THAT nice. You have no endgame as Black Forest. If the world is rich, maybe you can afford to play those ghoul guardians, but if it's not, you're utterly dependent on vampires that will only take you so far. And research? Forget it. You don't have the money for mages, because everyone's dying and your troops are ugly upkeep.

Abysia, on the other hand, can easily afford a nice +2 growth with its +3 heat, and watch blood-farmed provinces actually *grow*.

Thus I register my feelings on the ongoing 'who makes the best blood race' debate.

Oh, and Abysians even get all-important Astral magic.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Bowlingballhead:
Now to put this in contrast with the new blood nation - Black Forest Ulm. Ugh. Painfully weak. Your blood mages aren't that good, so they really don't blood hunt too well.

Ulm's blood searchers are not that much worse than warlock apprentices when given a sanguine dousing rod.

Your armies are more expensive and not as strong as Abysia's, so you don't conquer provinces as well to get your blood economy going.

Black forest's rangers are capable of taking on independents every bit as quickly as Man's longbows. They build quicker than Abysia's troops, and also have precision 14, which makes them quite accurate.

Yeah, the vampire count is nice, but he's not THAT nice.

He's immortal, and can be produced one per turn by turn 22 using nothing other than vampire counts and a blood fountain as searchers. Add in other blood mages, and you could easily get more than that.

If the world is rich, maybe you can afford to play those ghoul guardians, but if it's not, you're utterly dependent on vampires that will only take you so far.

And research? Forget it. You don't have the money for mages, because everyone's dying and your troops are ugly upkeep.

Black forest Ulm can easily afford to build a second tier mage every single turn. Their troops are half as expensive as Abysia's, and they have free, zero-upkeep patrollers from the wolfherders.

Abysia, on the other hand, can easily afford a nice +2 growth with its +3 heat, and watch blood-farmed provinces actually *grow*.

They will grow so slowly that the effect will only be noticed in the _very_ long term.

Thus I register my feelings on the ongoing 'who makes the best blood race' debate.

That would be Mictlan. Sacred, 80 gold blood searchers, low resource costs on their troops, and their other mages give them the ability to catch massive amounts of slaves.

Oh, and Abysians even get all-important Astral magic.

So does Black Forest Ulm. They also get protection from misfortune through the fortune tellers.

[SurvivalistMerc]

The protection from misfortune from fortune tellers either is very slim or doesn't exist at all.

I started a black forest ulm game. And by turn 15, after having built a fortune teller on turn 1, I had 7 bad events in my home province.

This was with order0 and misfortune1, which is required for the theme. Misfortune1 is required for the theme, but order0 is not. This was really a test of the scales.

I had the fortune teller researching. Maybe they don't act when researching.

But by turn 15, I had lost 1/4 population, lost tax revenue on 3 separate turns in the home province, and lost dominion due to lack of faith. There were others that I don't recall.

But with this and my death dominion, I gave up on the game. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but that much bad luck where I had a fortune teller in only the base misfortune level was just "too much" for me.

[Saber Cherry]

Oops. Maybe they prevent good luck

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
But with this and my death dominion, I gave up on the game. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but that much bad luck where I had a fortune teller in only the base misfortune level was just "too much" for me.

You had extremely bad luck there. With the same scales, and only building a single fortune teller, I have had:
A handful of magic astral pearls.
Good harvest increasing gol by 50 and 20 less unrest.
A festival held in my honour.
Province defense increased by 10.

That's after turn 15.

By turn 30.
A handful of magic death gems.
An earthquake killed many people (Province pop now at 27K) and destroyed the temple.(Turn 26)
A fire destroyed the lab.(Turn 27)
A barbarian horde.(Pop now 24K)

Between turns 30 and 60.
Heavy snowfalls costing 100 gold.
Handful of magic earth gems.
Great tax collection (+100 gold)
Barbarian horde.
Earthquake.(20K population left)
A handful of magic death gems.
Barbarian horde (17K population left.)
A handful of magic nature gems.
Heavy snowfalls.
Heavy snowfalls.

Note that this is with only one province, so all the bad events are concentrated. The overall efect would be much smaller with more provinces.

All in all, it looks like misfortune might be annoying with order 0, but not that bad.

I don't know if I'd even categorize Black Forest as a "Blood Nation".

They start with a blood supercombatant and can go throughout a game without even researching blood if they don't wish while having a great use of their blood slaves.

They are by far the quickest blood nation and overall I personally feel strongest. They can get so may provinces so quickly they can create a massive blood foundation probably 5-10 turns before opponents. They don't need strong blood mages, as they can make blood items (which there are quite a few) with such a strong blood economy. Their real 'limitation' is the forced death scale, which makes you pillage provinces for blood slaves and have no way to compensate for it. However, by the time you are doing this, you have so many highly equipped Vampires, Devils, running around, with a very, very strong army in the rangers (with Wind Guide and Flaming Xbows, look for indeps or use fortune tellers) and powerful communions making them able to use many different spells. Their only real downfall is being able to search for whatever elements they need, which you can do by building the right kind of pretender with the magics you need.

Black Forest is easily in my Top 3 picks of the game in it's current state. If you are their nearest enemy, you had better hope you get paralyze before they get a count, and you better get storm or arrow fend soon after.

[Kristoffer O]

The fortune tellers each have something like 5% chance of eliminating a bad event. Nothing like the 75% of the great seer of the deeps or 15% of the norns.

[Pocus]

hard datas catched! my preciousss hoard of data nuggetsssss

[gibson]

I tried out Black Forest Last night, hoping to duplicate the results of people from the other Black Forest thread. I found them to be disappointing, but I must have been doing something wrong. While expansion was no real trouble against indy 3, it was all done the old fashioned way (pikes and shields). I stuck a blood 1 mage in each conquered province and started hunting, but didn't have enough slaves until at least turn 7. I made a vamp on turn 8, sent him off to an independent and he was promptly killed by a group of archers. Tried again against a different province, same result.

A build order or some basic strategy on how to exploit the uniqueness of Black Forest would be appreciated by this newb (especially with blood magic). While I can do well with Black Forest, the start doesn't really feel any different than it would with a normal Ulm (or plenty of other nations that I don't really know how to play).

[Raz 24]

I love Black forest

But how much does a death 1 scale kill of population in each turn?