Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Uhm if you are alchemizing ( note: soul contracts give essentially blood that makes this a totally valid comparison ) and you have no hammers then it takes *20* turns for a clam to pay for itself.

Clams actually take only 5 turns to pay for themselves with no hammer if you'd rather have astral pearls, or 10 turns if you want something other than than astral or water. It's only 20 turns if you want to convert them back into water gems to make more clams.

[nakomus]

Soul contracts don’t give gems; they don’t even give blood slaves. They give devils. They are only worth anything at all if devils are what you need. Its also not possible to set up a exponential growth situation with soul contracts, since you cant turn devils into soul contracts.

The soul contract can never pay for another soul contract for free (as is the case for the 20-turn clam with alchemy. This is a very important difference.

Clams give you astral gems, which through alchemy can be used to do almost anything, including get more clams.

Soul contracts get you devils, which are only good for flying around and smashing things. Granted this a pretty generally useful ability, but not nearly as flexible as a high astral income.

I like devils a lot, but I haven’t found soul contracts are a good investment in a close run game. I’d rather have my devils right now, keeping me alive, or killing off the other guy.

[Huzurdaddi]

The soul contract can never pay for another soul contract for free (as is the case for the 20-turn clam with alchemy. This is a very important difference.

I agree with that. 100% correct.

Soul contracts get you devils, which are only good for flying around and smashing things. Granted this a pretty generally useful ability, but not nearly as flexible as a high astral income.

Not as flexible true. However the soul contract produces the end product. You need not spend the caster time ( which is important ) to convert your gems into something that can smash things.

I like devils a lot, but I haven’t found soul contracts are a good investment in a close run game. I’d rather have my devils right now, keeping me alive, or killing off the other guy.

I would imagine that in close game you are spending your blood slaves on SC devils not on devils. It's very hard to actually summon devils in any quanity ( except once you reach blood 9 ).

[Tuidjy]

Once you commit to devils, you are stuck with them. Your opponent will
learn about what you are doing, and will have about ten turns to prepare
for them. As someone who was utterly destroyed the first time he faced
devils, and who has utterly destroyed any devil hoarding opponent since,
I will stick with clams and fetishes, thank you very much.

Thank you for bringing back the memory of decimating and routing more than
a hundred devils and abysyan intantries with two indy sorceresses and a
jade amazonne! And then doing it again, because the guy was stuck with the
soul contract strategy.

[Huzurdaddi]

Thank you for bringing back the memory of decimating and routing more than a hundred devils

You are special yes indeed. No one else has ever obliterated tons of devils.

The assertion is: *if* you think devils are worth 7 blood a pop then it seems that Soul Contracts return more than other investment types of strategies.

[Yossar]

Huzurdaddi said:You are special yes indeed. No one else has ever obliterated tons of devils.

Never?

[Cohen]

Devils are easily killed under storm, with massive spellfire or wrathful skies.

Devils aren't so strong ...
Stormies are, but they're limited to lightning attack, that could be avoided by Lightn Immunity.

[PvK]

Not putting your income into staying alive during a war is of course a disadvantage and a risk. Winning a war is better than camping and investing, unless the camper attacks soon after you win, when you are still weak.

In general, that seems to all work fine to me.

On huge maps and long-term, peaceful games, hoarding strategies will naturally be more effective than on small ones.

Clearly, it is possible to get huge results from some of these, eventually. In some cases, perhaps some tweaks could help.

Clams - would be good to limit to mages, and/or have a world clam income per turn that caps the total clam astral income (1/water province in the world was my old suggestion).

Soul Contracts - are supposed to be risky, but it seems like the risk is quite low. Might be good to tweak this risk up a bit, and to disallow use on units that don't have souls, or that already have a soul contract (for logical, thematic reasons, mostly).

Fever Fetishes - are supposed to have some additional cost via disease. It'd be good if they didn't work on undead (was that patched yet?), and perhaps if they occasionally diseased a random unit in the same province through contagion (this would have a natural and logical negative effect of hoarding), and perhaps of occasional health crisis for the wearer (take some open-ended damage - possibly fatal, possibly causing affliction).

PvK

[CUnknown]

I think we should take another look at the numbers real quick.

Clam/fetish hoarding: Costs 10 gems, gives 1 a turn. This will repay itself in 10 turns.

Soul contracts: Costs 80 slaves, gives 7 slaves a turn. This will repay itself in.. what was it? 11.5 turns?

So, in reality (not including any additional bonuses), clams are actually a better investment, but the problem is they don't give you the finished product. You have to spend a character action to actually use what you get, as opposed to Soul contracts, which don't require this.

Yet, as others have pointed out, Soul contracts have the downside of inflexibility. Once the appropriate counters are in place, you might wish you had spent those blood slaves in another way.

So, Soul contracts have advantages and disadvantages when compared to clamming/fetishing. Seems balanced to me.

Whether devils are actually worth 7 slaves though, is a different question. They may be worth more...so possibly Soul contracts are unbalanced after all, even compared to clamming (a strategy many think is unbalanced). We'd have to compare stats of similar summoned units of the same research level for that.

[nakomus]

I don’t think Soul Contracts are all that great if you have easy access to the summing spell as well.

If you assume that devils are what you need, Soul Contract is only desirable if you either a) cannot easily summon devils directly or
b) Do not need your devils right away.

If you need an Army right now it matters not at all how good a return on investment a Soul Contract has. And who can really be sure what the game situation will be like in 5 or 10 turns?

If you are playing Abysia (the only nation I’ve seriously used Devils with), its quite easy to just summon them. You need level three blood and one demonbred per devil per turn. The Demonbreds can cast the spell without items or empowerment. At 260 gold and sacred the cost of the mages to support the summoning is not too severe.

Soul Contract requires 5(!) Blood. No Abysian mages can cast this without a boost. Your closest bet is a Warlock with 3 blood and a random pick. If you don’t have a warlock with a random pick in blood you need con4 and two boosters in order to forge the item at all. 11 turns after that, your first soul contract will make its return on investment. If you count the cost of the boosters (60 additional blood, I think), that first contract actually takes 20 turns to payback. Of course you could amortize that over later contracts.

Still, the cost of that first contract is 140 slaves and some time. By the time that you get your first devil out of the soul contract, someone summoning devils directly could have an army of 20 Devils out in the field. My money is on the guy with the army

As to Huzurdaddi’s point that I would be spending the Blood on SCs instead anyway, this is probably true a bit later, but Abysia can get Devils out with less research and boosting.

I’m assuming the game is played on a small enough map that you cannot reasonably expect to just be left alone. Certainly if you have 20 or 30 turns without major conflict, Soul Contract is a better deal.

This doesn’t address whether Devils are themselves balanced of course.