Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:
Most important though you have to remember the high costs of soul contracts .
80 slaves , 60 with dwarfen hammer .
A dwarfen hammer costs though 20 earthgems and the blood nations are not the best sitesearchers . Abysia and Mictlan both lack earthmagic , Mictlan lacks it total and Abysia can only get E on warlocks , then you can forge a bloodstone and earth boots for earth 3 but that takes some time .
If you don't take blood 5 on your pretender then you will need construction 6 in order to get 2 boosters to blood 5 to forge the soul contracts .

Am I the only one who thinks that, for a long term game, taking plenty of blood on the pretender to start with is a waste of good design points? You don't NEED to take construction 6 to get boosters in a world that allows empowerment, and blood is the one path in which it is easy to gain enough gems (slaves) to empower early on.

Unless I specifically take a pretender who starts with blood (hello, vampire queen), I think blood 0 (high path cost) or 1-3 (low path cost) is quite enough to start with. The points freed up thus can be used for something else entirely, such as a nicer SC chassis, somebody with good magic skills in the lacking national areas (perhaps even a minor bless effect or two for your sacred troops), or better scales (perhaps allowing more bloodhunting without hurting income) - and blood empowerment will still see you reach blood 5 reasonably early at the same cost as 1-3 contracts. It does mean that the devil factory will start a few rounds later, but in my mind it makes for a stronger nation in the long run. ...if you invested the points freed up by not going blood 5 from the start wisely, that is.

If you have a good national blood commander, you can even consider empowering one of those early on for medim-high blood skill leaving your pretender free for other tasks.