Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Zen:

quote:

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Originally posted by licker:
Scouts suck period. I find it hard to believe that it is more cost effective to use 4+ scouts than 1 decent mage with blood on them (and the dousing rod, which if I recall correctly doesn't help non blood powered commanders anymore). Beyond that your blood mage can switch to summoning demons when needed, the scouts can't do squat, well they have their value as scouts, but that's only useful outside of your provinces...

Scouts can be useful to ferry slaves from hunting commanders in provinces without labs though...

Scouts have quite a few benefits over most nations blood hunters.

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Assuming that by "most nations" you mean "nations/themes without a good blood hunter". (Unfortunately this includes Abysia at the moment. Warlock Apprentice would have been just what they needed - if he had been cheap and not capitol only instead of another big-ticket mage. Maybe in a future patch...)

1.) They are not capital only. Any province with a Scout can make a blood hunter cheap and effectively.

I think you mean not *fortress* only. Diabolists and Mictlan Priests aren't capitol only either.

2.) With the variance of the blood hunting process, 5 scouts (100 Gold) will hunt up more slaves than 1 Mictlan Priest, though it may be sporatic (meaning one or two turns you might get only a few, and another turn you could get 20+).

Mictlan Priests are sacred (half upkeep). Aside from this, I don't think 5 scouts will outperform 1 mictlan priest. Scouts fail a lot. Most of the time with 5 scouts, no more than one will find ANY blood slaves (IMX anyway). And more hunters means more unrest, even if they are unsuccessful.

3.) Scouts are stealthy, most blood priests are not.

If you could hunt while sneaking (in enemy territory), then this would be useful; otherwise not. Anyone on hunt orders isn't sneaking if an enemy army happens to show up, and they're not going to live long enough to switch to sneaking.

4.) Scouts can hunt in a province you are still taxing and not get unrest because of the variable system in which they are used. Thus if you want to have 1-2 scouts in every province 5k+ in population and set the tax to 90% you can do so, without reciving much in the way of a unrest hit. This also provides a way of hunting across your empire and not getting your blood hunting interrupted by a CotW or CotWild that hits your hunting provinces.

One mictlan priest in every province accomplishes the same thing.

A smaller number of more skilled hunters will always produce less unrest per slave found than a large number of unskilled hunters. Even if the unskilled scouts can match the blood mages' slave output through sheer numbers, slave hunting unrest is determined partly by slaves found and partly by number of searchers.

Scouts are far superior in my mind, as well as being able to blood hunt earlier. While getting and placing hunter with Blood Magic and Dousing Rods is something you do to increase your Blood Hunting Capability, more often than not, I'd rather just make a bunch of scouts in 3 or 4 provinces and make a new mage in my castle provinces.

I almost never hunt with unskilled hunters - too much unrest for too few (often no) slaves. Only if I'm playing a nation whose blood mages are RIDICULOUSLY expensive (Pangaea, Vanheim, maybe Jotunheim) will I resort to hunting by the unskilled - and even then, only until I find independents or site-based mages or something like that.

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Assuming that by "most nations" you mean "nations/themes without a good blood hunter". (Unfortunately this includes Abysia at the moment. Warlock Apprentice would have been just what they needed - if he had been cheap and not capitol only instead of another big-ticket mage. Maybe in a future patch...)

Most = All except for Mictlan, DF. Even BF ulm gets a better buy out of Scouts.

I think you mean not *fortress* only. Diabolists and Mictlan Priests aren't capitol only either.

I ment castle, not capital. I think I mentioned later castle.

Mictlan Priests are sacred (half upkeep). Aside from this, I don't think 5 scouts will outperform 1 mictlan priest. Scouts fail a lot. Most of the time with 5 scouts, no more than one will find ANY blood slaves (IMX anyway). And more hunters means more unrest, even if they are unsuccessful.

I have had different experiances. Perhaps it was because of the luck involved, but over an average of 100 turns, 3 scouts will perform equal to 1 Mictlan Priest w/o dousing rod +- 5 Slaves. I have only done the test twice. Once with Mitclan Priest and once with a Vanjarl (I wanted to see if there were any hidden bonuses for blood hunting based on nation).

This may not be very apparent, because of the variety of turns. You can go through a dry spell with scouts, but also you can go through a gold rush.

If you could hunt while sneaking (in enemy territory), then this would be useful; otherwise not. Anyone on hunt orders isn't sneaking if an enemy army happens to show up, and they're not going to live long enough to switch to sneaking.

It was not intended to be while blood hunting. In my experience in most MP your are flooded with spells like HfH, CotW, CotWild, flying SC's or armies, stealth attacks, etc. Stealth on people outside of a castle is a significant advantage in my mind for a non-fighting utility unit simply because after they retreat (if you have set them to retreat) you could be cut off and die. Whereas when you retreat with a stealth unit, they go into 'hide' and can have the province taken out from under tham and be sitting on it.

Also once you're known to be using blood, or are a blood nation, you are more than likely to be scouted and attacked at your blood hunting provinces. With the exception of Jotun, most cast any province spells will knock out even 11ish PD. And most would cast 2 or 3 of the same spell in order to make sure your Blood Hunters are scattered and distracted and cut off a potential supply. And at times will cut you off of retreat to kill you (depends totally on the situation)

This may not be others experiences, which I freely admit, but it is nonetheless a very real threat in competitive MP with blood in my experience.

One mictlan priest in every province accomplishes the same thing.

A smaller number of more skilled hunters will always produce less unrest per slave found than a large number of unskilled hunters. Even if the unskilled scouts can match the blood mages' slave output through sheer numbers, slave hunting unrest is determined partly by slaves found and partly by number of searchers.

This is assuming you can field a Mictlan priest for every province and take the significant hit to research that it would require in the early game where Blood is strongest. My arguements are not based on late game, have 6 castles being able to produce whatever you'd like, massive amounts of gold, no need for research, type of situations. But the more real situations of early game where you don't have the resources to do so or spread yourself that thin. Mictlan is not the issue, as scouts are only a bonus to them in their hunting. Unrest from scouts IMO is as managable as single priest, a few extra points of unrest doesn't really matter when you have the same situation where sometimes you don't catch very many slaves and thus your unrest rights itself.

I almost never hunt with unskilled hunters - too much unrest for too few (often no) slaves. Only if I'm playing a nation whose blood mages are RIDICULOUSLY expensive (Pangaea, Vanheim, maybe Jotunheim) will I resort to hunting by the unskilled - and even then, only until I find independents or site-based mages or something like that.

Well that categorizes us by having different playstyles I have had massive success with scouts in the past and will continue to use them unless most nations are afforded a cheap blood hunter and I don't require research/forging/casting of that particular unit while at the same time having the advantages of the current system.

[ February 11, 2004, 21:10: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Anybody got any tips on how to get some nice blood slaves? Preferably scantily clad, and not too thin? Oh no sorry forget that.

I haven't been having much success. I send my catchers out to provinces with low income, so I can keep taxes down.

I haven't played Mictlan, but I tried Abysia with blood.

In fact, I tend to reserve a high population (which normally means high income) province for hunting. It makes sense that, the more people, the more slaves you will find. With this, hunting is OK - a Demonbred (Blood2) will find slaves most of the time, sometimes as many as 15, maybe 6-10 average. If you drop taxes to 0 or maybe 10-20%, a lone hunter should not be enough to drive up the unrest level (high unrest seems to make hunting less efficient). Yes, that means the province is lost for taxes, but if you've got something to do with all those slaves, it should be worth it.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by licker:
There is something to be said for spreading your hunts, but I'm not convinced you get zero unrest hits for unseccusful hunts,

You definetly do get unrest for some unsuccessful hunts.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zen:
So this is the best of both worlds, then when you need to convert to a higher blood output you convert ~5 priests with dousing rod to your 5k+ province with 0% tax and watch the blood roll in.

5 priests will only give you around 20 blood slaves a turn. If you want enough to make it truly pay off, you'll want 10 priests at least, if not double that.

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
5 priests will only give you around 20 blood slaves a turn. If you want enough to make it truly pay off, you'll want 10 priests at least, if not double that.

Yes The more the better when you get to the point where you need blood more than research. I'd say convert them all actually. But that was just an example.

But I wouldn't place more than 5, Blood 1 + Dousing Rod in a province of 5k+ and reduce the taxes, or your unrest can get out of line (unless you have massive patrollers).

But that's just my preference. If I'm not focusing on Blood as a nation (with a Pretender/nation that can use the blood) I tend to not convert everything to a blood only income but supplement my existing gem income, gold income, with the blood income that can be overlooked.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zen:
But I wouldn't place more than 5, Blood 1 + Dousing Rod in a province of 5k+ and reduce the taxes, or your unrest can get out of line (unless you have massive patrollers).

Well, I tend to put ~4 Tribal Kings in a province capturing slaves and patrolling, so it's quite posible to keep unrest fairly low. You do run the population down extremely fast that way though.