Blood Magic

[Wendigo]

This thread has moved quite a lot, let's see if I can pick up:

Originally posted by apoger:
As to the gold cost of the scout strategy...
Gold costs of taxes lost, scout costs, and upkeep = 3005 gold (approximate, I had to estimate the times of acquiring some provinces, but I'm pretty close)

For this 3000 gold I got 420 blood slaves.

That comes to 7.14 gold per slave.
Think of it as 214 gold for a Horde from Hell or perhaps 392 gold for an Ice Devil.

You forgot adding the cost of researching those spells in a exclusive magic field good for little else.

As per Pocus's "20 turn challenge", it seems that competitive play yields a turn 20ish income of about 1500.

This is also incomplete. Obviously you will be missing the income (and the snowball effect) from the provinces harvested for slaves & the resources invested in such harvesting.

I think this might help put things into perspective. [/QB]

I am afraid I am still unconvinced, & you are still overstating your case, IMO of course.

I still mantain that setting up a blood economy will be more expensive (as in trade-off for the investment) than in Dom I when all it required was to get a cheapo Blood Fountain pretender. You have rightfully pointed out that gold economy has taken a severe hit, yet you have ignored gem economy & the dependences between gold economy & blood economy. That harvesting does come at a cost.

I also mantain that the product from such blood economy will be 'less', in the sense that the requirements have been upped in both research & cost, and the availability limitted.

The point of whether there will be enough counters available will need much more info than what we have right now, tho indeed new counters are showing to make up (or not) for the lost ones.
It's easy to spot the lost ones, not so easy to spot the new ones with our limited info (for example, Dom I undead demons benefitted from undead invulnerabilities in addition to the weaknesses, we will have to check if those invulnerabilities are still there in their new demonic-non undead form...).

By all means keep testing and writting essays, regardless of whether I agree or not with your points you are always a good read.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by apoger:
I am still doing the Abysian tests. (results soon)

As to the gold cost of the scout strategy...

I need to do some more tests to try to optimize the situation. In the test from the first post I did no patrols, nor did I farm the best provinces (I farmed some big expensive ones).

However I can tally up the approximate costs and results from that slightly sub-optimal test:

Gold costs of taxes lost, scout costs, and upkeep = 3005 gold (approximate, I had to estimate the times of acquiring some provinces, but I'm pretty close)

For this 3000 gold I got 420 blood slaves.

That comes to 7.14 gold per slave.
Think of it as 214 gold for a Horde from Hell or perhaps 392 gold for an Ice Devil.

OK. Neglecting research, as others have pointed out - and also neglecting the empowerment cost. Those built-from-scratch Blood 4s you mentioned earlier are costing you (50+30+45+60)*7.14 = 1320 gold each, neglecting the cost of the chassis. (Of course their upkeep is low, because empowering doesn't raise upkeep.) You could save a bit by only empowering to Blood 3 and then forging blood thorns and brazen vessels - you can save even more if you have Ring of Sorcery.

In any case, I don't think 400 for an unequipped Ice Devil is necessarily unreasonable. How do they compare stats-wise to the 500 gold Niefels?

As per Pocus's "20 turn challenge", it seems that competitive play yields a turn 20ish income of about 1500.


420 blood slaves could be;
almost 8 Ice Devils (3 more than exist)
14 Hordes from Hell (14 Devils and 350 Imps)
21 Lifelong Protection Contracts
The ability for Jotunhiem to cast the global spell Illwinter 3 times (and have 60 slaves to spare)

Again, you are neglecting research and empowerment (if you are truly intending to simulate slave hunting by a nation with no blood capability). 14 Devils and 350 Imps doesn't sound that impressive for 3000 gold - I would estimate Imps as weaker than most HI, and 14 Devils, while they will do some damage, will still go down against a sizable force of quality troops. 3000 gold is over 20 Black Hunters, for example (plus the Voice of the Lord prophet to bless them).

21 Lifelong Protections could be really annoying if they were all on assassins. Otherwise they're not that much of a threat.

3 Illwinters is pretty nasty, since Dispel takes research now. But I think that someone is likely to have it - and in any case, Jotunheim is not a non-blood-using nation (AFAIK - I haven't played Niefelheim yet).

I think this might help put things into perspective.

It is, of course, difficult to come up with similar numbers for the cost of obtaining gems, because gem availability depends on the placement of magic sites - sometimes you can hunt 20 provinces with level 3 in a path and still find only 3 gems/turn because there just aren't enough sites of that path. (This is really annoying if you are Desert Tombs C'tis and can't get enough gems to keep summoning your mummified priests and kings.) There is effectively a limit on how much you can invest in getting more gems - once you've searched every province you have with every type of mage you can get, you can't further increase your gem income without expanding - while there is less limit on how much of your gold economy you can convert to blood.


As I posted on one of the supercombatant threads, I think there should be more battlefield spells that increase the effectiveness of regular troops, which would allow players to more effectively combat summons and supercombatants with conventional armies (backed up by magic). Of course Hordes from Hell could use those spells too, but if the effect is to make their attacks more deadly, it will tend to favor superior numbers.

[Aristoteles]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I think there should be more battlefield spells that increase the effectiveness of regular troops, which would allow players to more effectively combat summons and supercombatants with conventional armies (backed up by magic).

How true.

[Serpico]

Hi, I have some questions.

If I am blood hunting, the unrest will grow. How can I decrease the unrest?
Blood magic is the best?
Is it worth to make a pretender with 10 in blood magic?
My scouts won't find any blood slaves. I must enpower them in blood magic?

What is a good startup for a blood magic nation?

[ November 04, 2003, 10:53: Message edited by: Serpico ]

[Jasper]

Originally posted by apoger:
As per Pocus's "20 turn challenge", it seems that competitive play yields a turn 20ish income of about 1500.

This seems completely broken to me, especially considering that this is a strongly handicaped testbed, without even access to blood magic. 7 gold per slave is an extremely good deal IMHO, even without considering that the ratio continues to drop over time.

An average income of 75 slaves per month is freaking ridiculous; am I right in guessing the actual income at turn 20 is around 150?

[HJ]

Originally posted by Serpico:
Hi, I have some questions.

If I am blood hunting, the unrest will grow. How can I decrease the unrest?
Blood magic is the best?
Is it worth to make a pretender with 10 in blood magic?
My scouts won't find any blood slaves. I must enpower them in blood magic?

What is a good startup for a blood magic nation?

1) Decrease taxes, or patrol the province (the latter will kill off the population, as will the blood hunt, so you'll lose money as well)
2) Depends on what you're aiming for. For summoning, yes. For direct damage spells, e.g., no.
3) Depends on what you want to do, how you want to play, and who you are playing. Same as 2).
4) The higher the skill in blood magic, the more likely the commander is to find blood slaves. It also depends on the population size of a province, and unrest (more pop & less unrest = higher chance). You might consider empowering mages instead so as to get nbenefits from other things as well, such as combining the magic paths and magic & undead leadership that come with blood skill (scouts cannot command).
5) I'm not sure what you mean, but if you're looking for an advice in pretender design etc., I guess there are people here who can give a far better advice on that than me.
Hope this helps.

[MStavros]

All right I am not a big blood magic fan, but I try to help.
Abysia is a very good choice for a blood pretender. I guess the Fountain of Blood is a perfect choice with Abysia. That pretender and that nation seems like a very good combo.