Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Soapyfrog]

I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.

[Boron]

Kel said:

I am sure. Of course, I would never assume that I would have 100+ earth gems and site bonuses to boot in any reasonable amount of time and if we start assuming ideal and unlikely things, than a lot of things become possible. We might just as well assume that someone has a 999 reinforced Arcane Nexus up, , has site bonuses and multiple S9 mages available. Maybe throw in a const bonus for clamming, who knows since it's all unlikely and hypothetical.

I don't even remember the Last MP game I played where I found a const site bonus.

- Kel

Yeah you are right most likely you will have 25% bonus from dwarfen hammer but not more since ulm or somebody else will get the 50% unique hammer and probably if anyone casts the forge it is ulm .

Soapyfrog said:
I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.

Yeah the devils are strong . I have thought more about it today but it is not really imbalanced i think . If you bloodhunt you have to sacrifice significant amounts of goldincome and you have to use some of your mages for bloodhunting . So you have a significantly smaller number of mages than e.g. a pythiumopponent who has about the same number of provinces with comparable income .

So he has inferior troops on battlefield but he normally can field more battlemages and compensate this way .

If you go to lategame your population maybe quite damaged by perhaps taking deathscale since abysia has this as a special bonus or by raiding + random events .
On a smaller map like aran where you don't have more than 20-30 provinces for a long time a clamhoarder may find it worthy to limit your natural further bloodhunt abilities by killing your pop like by plague etc. + suicide pillage .


Astral income by clams increases exponential over time while bloodincome by bloodhunt is hard to increase .
If you aren't able to kill a clamhoarding ryleh/caelum/pythium in time you get 1-2 new soul contracts or similiar / turn while he gets 5 or more new clams each turn which he can either use for e.g. summoning tartarians , wishing or whatever else he wants .

As abysia if you want to try that too it needs a lot of effort by e.g. summoning spectres + recruiting sages/warlocks in hope to get some with W .
As mictlan you can in theory clamhoard very well but mictlan is earlygame highly vulnerable so probably you don't get that powerful than abysia early-midgame .
With blood you mainly get strong summons , strong Scs and good items but you lack battlemagic .
Abysia has good battlemages with their fireskill . Mictlan has imo not that possiblities though they are magically more flexible but their only truly useful battlemage , the F2B3 priests cost 390 gold + are capitol only .


Perhaps these reasons make abysia so loved by lots of ppl because they are with mictlan the best bloodhunter .
Additionally they have heat 3 + the deathbonus +5 firegem starting income which is like +75 income and most important with firemagic good battlemages .
They don't need to waste blood on dominionpush as mictlan has too .

This almost perfect synergy is perhaps the reason because ppl complain almost as much about abysia as about caelum .

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
Yeah you are right most likely you will have 25% bonus from dwarfen hammer but not more since ulm or somebody else will get the 50% unique hammer and probably if anyone casts the forge it is ulm .

I'm not sure what you base this on. Theory? I have maybe 12 MP games going right now, in none of which do I play (ewww!) Ulm. In at least 3, I forged the unique hammer. In 4 or 5, I casted Forge of the Ancients - as Man, as Pangaea, as Vanheim, as Jotuns, at a minimum. A number of those games included Ulm - in one, my impoverished (but Forged) Man was just betrayed, backstabbed, ambushed, by a very rich powerful Ulm. Ulm often tends to use their earth gems for : forging, and for conjuring Earth Kings etc.

It all really depends on the player's research strategy, and just as much upon luck in finding magic sites. When I have a nature nation with 1/3 the income in nature as my next lowest income - I'm not casting the big nature spells. (And yes, I'm in that situation in several games. No nature for Pangeaa and Man, no air for either Vanheim or Caelum, etc.)