Blood?

[apoger]

>What am I missing about Hordes from Hell?

I was reviewing this thread and just caught this and it's worth answering.

HfH is outstanding for a varitety of reasons.

While the imps are weak, they do hit twice, they have a high defense, and since they are small they often gain bonuses from making multiple attacks versus their targets. I wouldn't stack them up one on one versus elite heavy troops, but I would consider them to be fairly good light troops.

Keep in mind that they don't eat, and as such you can stack up an unlimited number.

They have no upkeep, so having a bunch hanging out doesn't hurt you.

They fly, and as such can exploit fast movement and province jumping.

They can be summoned anywhere. The potency of being able to drop troops exactly where needed (including on enemy provinces) should never be underestimated.

The Devil leader is pretty strong. Not pretender or big blood summons strong, but not bad either. Since it's a leader it has item slots, and it can be pumped up fairly significantly.

It's not at all hard to work up enough blood magic to summon two HfH per turn. That's 2 devils and 50 imps. More than enough to blow through a lightly defended province. It's easy to say that you don't mind losing provinces, and that they can be recovered, but it's not a happy situation. When the "war" begins the HfH player can drop 50 imps into your rear. Losing gold and gems is never happy. Next turn another 50 pop up in a percieved weak spot, meanwhile the first 50 fly up to three provinces away. Third turn 50 more show up while the first two manuver. This is a very slippery slope! It's hard to maintain a war while this sort of nonsense is grabbing your provinces and only getting worse and worse. It's very hard to regain the inititive once this starts happening. In fact every time I can recall this being reversed on me it involved my enemy sending in potent Gateway counterattacks, a tactic that is no longer available in Dom2. I'm not saying that it's invincible. What I'm saying is that HfH is effective and not easily dismissed.

Beyond this I often use HfH to snag rear forts from players. Often the forts in the "rear" are almost empty. I like dropping as many HfH on the forts as possible. This often leads to a swift capture before my enemy can respond. At the very least, it gets their attention!

On a similar note, HfH are great for stacking up the "numbers" needed to break down fort walls. Plus once the walls are breached, having troops that can fly over the walls during battle can *really* make life easier during the assault.

I like Hordes from Hell.

[alexti]

Originally posted by apoger:

>Jotunheim
>>Skratti are expensive so that your blood searching is very pricey. I still use blood with Jotun but thats because I like it so much thematically - I'm not sure its worth the trouble in most games.

Again I hunt with scouts and use Skratti as summoners.

Sorry to intrude, how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags? Blood-0 vs Blood-1 (later with dousing rod). What is expected ratio of blood slaves captured? Of course, hags have a drawback that on average you only get one blood hag out of 4. But considering, that death-hags can provide some support on the battle field, nature-hags are needed to forge simple supply and morale items, and any hag is pretty cheap researcher.

[apoger]

>how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags

Scouts don't do nearly as well, however they cost only 20 gold each. How many slaves depends a lot on the unrest and size of the province. Furthermore there is a lot of variance when hunting. Scouts will often bring in zero, and other times will get a bunch. It's not uncommon to have twenty scouts working a province and get a result of 15 misses,7,5,2,1,1. Sometimes it's less and sometimes more. The trick is that it's "gem" income that is cultivated by the player. Hammering a province with some scouts in order to generate some "magic currency" is well worth it (IMHO) if you have the gold to spare and can stomach the micromanagment.

I find that 8-10K population provinces seem to get me the best results. More testing would be needed to confirm.

As for hags... I'd send in the blood-1 hags and add in scouts if/when the situation allowed. Work the blood magic on the side, don't let it kill your expansion.

[alexti]

Originally posted by apoger:
>how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags

Scouts don't do nearly as well, however they cost only 20 gold each. How many slaves depends a lot on the unrest and size of the province. Furthermore there is a lot of variance when hunting. Scouts will often bring in zero, and other times will get a bunch. It's not uncommon to have twenty scouts working a province and get a result of 15 misses,7,5,2,1,1. Sometimes it's less and sometimes more. The trick is that it's "gem" income that is cultivated by the player. Hammering a province with some scouts in order to generate some "magic currency" is well worth it (IMHO) if you have the gold to spare and can stomach the micromanagment.

I find that 8-10K population provinces seem to get me the best results. More testing would be needed to confirm.

As for hags... I'd send in the blood-1 hags and add in scouts if/when the situation allowed. Work the blood magic on the side, don't let it kill your expansion.

Thanks for the explanation, I was making blood hunting responsibility of those blood-hags, considering that it's better use for them than to research, but now I should try to add some scouts as well. And I also find that 8-10K population is about optimal (bigger provinces usually have better use and in smaller ones it's hard to catch decent amount of slaves).

[Keir Maxwell]

I'll have to give scout hunting a try. It seems very odd/not right but if its the way to go then I guess. I certainly can't make sense out of blood hunting with Pandemoniacs in a competitive environment and with the heightened research cost of Sanguine Dousing Rods an approach that
doesn't use them, has to be worth a go.

If Blood is balenced because you can get a decent economy with scouts then thats not the way its was intended and it doesn't seem at all right to me.

I do get your point about Alex the HfH is good but considering the scale of investment and how long it takes to get a return I would like some return early in the process. I want some stepping stones along the way to help build a demonic army as HfH doth not a cake make. Would two spine devils for twice the price or so really be a problem? Spells like this could give the impatient yet bloodthirsty, such as myself , something to enjoy and make it worth the while building up to higher blood magic in short games.

Re Abysia.

Abysia's main strength IMO is its infantry - especially true for the alternate theme. Its fire magic is mediocre with the exception of the high level whammies. I found that when using blood mages for blood hunting I had to delay the hunt a significant while or risk strangling early speed. I find the early speed of development with Abysia to be reasonably good but only if I focus everything on developing - ie cash in fire gems, buy a Anathement Dragon for your main army, get another castle in a resource rich spot (this is really important if you don't get a nice starting spot) and churn out HI which fry the enemy and are virtually immune ot bows. Great stuff as the games go on.

I didn't think the old Abysia with the Moloch and Devils from early was overpowered early and if they had just restricted who gets the Molochs and kept the devil producing it would have been so much more fun. The early Devils were fun - heaps of fun. It was the old high level blood summons and army of scouts with SDRS searching that were obscene.

Paralyse certainly hurts SC based approaches but blood isn't really SC based for Abysia IMO. So far HfH seems to be the main canidate for what blood is about for Abysia and once I have finished slaughtering my way to acension with Pangaea (who rock!) I'll crank up an Abysia race using scouts for blood hunting and focusing on HfH.

Cheers

Keir

[Endoperez]

I had this strange idea few days ago, that doesn't leave me alone. If Maenads gather around Panii, why Pandemoniacs don't get free troops? I know there is a lot of differences, but they could do something with their corrupted magics...

And then the thought caught me: instead of getting maenads, they get blood slaves! Of course, one per turn would be maximum, or maybe too much. Maybe they just should have increased change of finding slaves when hunting, or when hunting in a province with Panii/maenads, but something would be better than nothing. You get blood slaves by money even without this, but with this you are not forced to use scouts (this might be too god if you used them nonetheless)... I have no idea what this would do for balance. And the battle spells should be looked at too, as Pandemoniacs could cast them more often.

Please tell me, is this any good? And what do you think about the work needed to implement it? Ice Devils got free gems in Dom1, so that shouldn't be too hard... But what about the other things?

[apoger]

>I'll have to give scout hunting a try. It seems very odd/not right

It's entirely possible that it's more effective than IW would really want. That's one of the reasons I have brought it up.


>Would two spine devils for twice the price or so really be a problem?

I'm totally on board for making Versions of the spells that summon more than one demon at a time. Frankly I'd like to see this for Vine Men/Ogres and Trolls(no kings) as well.


>I found that when using blood mages for blood hunting I had to delay the hunt a significant while or risk strangling early speed.

Absolutely. Early expansion must be done in order to fuel the blood ramp-up later. Same goes for other magics as well. Now that the elemental summons are weakened (compared to Dom1) there is no very early game magic to rush for. This changes the magic dynamic a lot. Better to expand first, then power down on magic work once things are a bit more secure.


>I find the early speed of development with Abysia to be reasonably good but only if I focus everything on developing - ie cash in fire gems, buy a Anathement Dragon for your main army, get another castle in a resource rich spot (this is really important if you don't get a nice starting spot) and churn out HI which fry the enemy and are virtually immune ot bows.

For Abyisa, I agree that cashing in gems and making at least one more fort is an early priority. At least for my play style.


>I didn't think the old Abysia with the Moloch and Devils from early was overpowered early and if they had just restricted who gets the Molochs and kept the devil producing it would have been so much more fun. The early Devils were fun - heaps of fun.

Agreed. The Moloch got slammed. Loss of devils and a higher cost. It's much weaker than the Dom1 Version. Players asked for *more* gods that had such abilities, instead IW chose to kill the effects. IHMO, a bad choice.


>Paralyse certainly hurts SC based approaches but blood isn't really SC based for Abysia IMO. So far HfH seems to be the main canidate for what blood is about for Abysia and once I have finished slaughtering my way to acension with Pangaea (who rock!) I'll crank up an Abysia race using scouts for blood hunting and focusing on HfH.

When I play Abysia I push for the following magics:

Fire: Incinerate (needs Phoenix Power), Flaming Arrows

Astral: Paralyze, Soul Slay (needs Banner/Light of the northern Star)

Blood: Hordes for Hell