Bopping Blood Bullies

[Sambo]

Quick question about blood hunting.

Most of the time, I have 3 B1 mages "gardening" (as per the very helpful blood guide) in my slave-generating provinces. So my question is how to effectively use them to stop thugs, ghoul attacks, wolf attacks, etc. I think that blood hunting happens early in the turn order, so they usually have slaves to burn through.

I've tried spamming Leach, but the AI usually decides to summon imps instead, which get swatted like mosquitoes.

I've considered a communion + Hell Power + Reinvig followed by Hellbind Hearts and/or Life for Life... but I haven't tested it in a real-life scenario. The "unwanted attention from Horrors" part of Hell Power is worrisome.

Another option is to simply retreat, but once thugs start rampaging unchecked, it can be hard to recover. I'd much prefer to them. Also, I'm playing as Lanka, and demons don't run from nobody!

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

[Trumanator]

Leech has a pretty short range, which makes it hard to use on raiders which generally sit at the back while they buff. I don't know what priority it has with the spellcasting AI, but you could try telling your hunters to holdx5, cast spells and hope they cast it. Unfortunately this is an issue with most blood spells. Hellbind Heart and Blood Burst have slightly more range, so they might help. You could also try and use a sabbath communion to spam Life for a Life. That's a bit tough for B1s though, since you can't use extra slaves to boost your power for it.

[Gandalf Parker]

When scripted orders are ignored its worth looking for the reason.
You might set one of them up front and see if leech works.

Personally I love hellbind. Picking up an enemy commander, with his equipment, is so sweet.

[Trumanator]

My first instinct is that the script is ignored because the raider is out of range. Unfortunately you usually get the same issue w/hellbind.

[statttis]

Depending on the nation, late game it can be worth using your high level mages to blood hunt. Good luck raiding Jotunheim when every blood hunting province has a Skratti who can send your thug/sc to kokytos.

[thejeff]

Frankly, B1 casters really aren't much use in combat. Since they have to use slaves to cast, they really only get one maybe 2 spells. Of what you're likely to get Imps probably are the best. If the thug is relying on buffing, the imps might even get him.
Trying to get them close enough to cast other blood attack spells doesn't work reliably and just leaves them without time to run away when the PD breaks.

If you really want to defend them, give them more defenders. Archers help alot against he cheaper remote attacks, if your PD doesn't have any. Thugs generally require other thugs/elite troops or real mages.

[vfb]

Also, for Hell Power, under CBM you need 5 B1s to cast it. It's a B1 spell, but you must cast it with 3 slaves, so only an effective B3 can cast it.

Any B mage < effective B3 will pretend to cast it; you'll see the message about it being cast on the screen, but the debug log will show a '-5' result code and the mage will immediately cast another spell, and will not get the path boosts or horrors arriving.

Since Lanka doesn't have an easy way to Horror Mark, you'll just get eaten anyway by Hell Power, if you do manage to cast it.

[AdmiralZhao]

Attack! Attack! Then Leechx3. That's my recipe for dealing with thug raiders. You'll also want to include a few troops set to attack closest, so that Call of the Winds and such won't immediately swoop in on your casters. I'd also recommend spreading your casters out a bit on the front row, so that at least one of them will be able to reach thugs in the corners, and at least one will survive long enough to cast. Note that you will lose your casters to indie attacks with this script, so only enable it when you are expecting company.

[Benjamin]

I had a lot of heartburn over the situation you describe when I was EA mictlan fighting caelum. Zhao is right about the attack attack leech, that will get a commander sitting in the back row if your mage starts in the front. Then have the other two hunters on just leech from behind your pd in case the opponent attacks without buffing from the front row.

Life for a life is the holy grail, just have one of your hunters be a b2, it's not really that inefficient depending on what nation you are.

The other route is to have everyone retreat and retaliate next turn. Seeking arrow, mind hunt, a teleporting/trapezing thug of your own all can work.



Interestingly, I tried using swarm against the eagle king raiders, stupid AI wouldn't use the gems!

[Psycho]

B1 mages can't defend on their own, they need backup.