Blood Simple?!

[Endoperez]

I think the easyness comes from Sages. 1 in 8 sages have Blood, and with even a few of them your blood income can easily be twice that of any other path. And as you can generate more blood slaves using up population (=money), you can get absurd blood income. And the 80 slaves/contract gives you one Devil each turn. Each of those critters cost 7 slaves to summon, and would need a BBFF mage to boost. Using a Dwarven Hammer to make a Contract out of Blood Slaves may sound stupid, but it lowers the cost to 60. As you can see, Contracts cost the same price 8 Devils would.

Blood is easy to get, not with powerful mages, but with many.

In addition, after one high-level Blood mage, you can boost the level by Blood Athame, Brazen Skull and Armor of Souls, and possibly Earth Stone. I'd estimate that with 10 crimson Sages, empowering an Earth mage to Blood 3 and forging 4 boosters (or few Soul Contracts) can be done in 10 turns.

[spirokeat]

Blood income is fairly easy to get going.

Basic rules are, make sure pop is over 5000, pref about 8000. Set taxes to 0. Have a mage with blood level 1, forge a sanguine dousing rod and then blood hunt. Dont have more than 3 mages per province doing that unless your patrolling.

That being said. Blood spells can EAT through even a big income. The contract is good if you can build one fairly early as it takes about 8 or 9 turns to see a profit from them. So the first few tend to really profit you but depending on how long your game is, the returns diminish. Of course it means you dont have to keep mages summoning the buggers...but bleh.

I would probably say its harder to get the multipath blood stuff outside of the blood nations. Sages are easy to get as blood 1 to get an economy going. Getting mages capable of summoning blood stuff that have additional path requirments with your economy is slightly harder I would imagine.

Spiro

[shovah]

i took a high blood god with ulm and gave a hamer of the forge lord to my empowered smith 75% forge bonus meant that the contract made its cost back in 4 turns

[spirokeat]

Aye, there are ways of course to make it cheaper.

Of course, getting construction 8. Forging a fire 3, Earth 3 Unique, Choosing Ulm, Then a blood 5 mage or god is one of the ways.

I wouls say contracts are something you really have to want to use to make a big difference.

Spiro.

[spirokeat]

Of course, if you play Mictlan, you can spend a vast ammount of blood slaves on dominion increasing. The lack of temple based dominion spread really screws you up.

In fact I would go as far to say its a little harsh. Though I speak from the point mainly of playing Mictlan and suffering under the lack of dominion. Were I to examine the whole picture maybe I would feel different.

Either way, it can cost a helluva lot of blood slaves to feed 6 or 7 Blood Sacrifice, level 4 priests with Jade Knives.

Spiro

[quantum_mechani]

spirokeat said:
Of course, if you play Mictlan, you can spend a vast ammount of blood slaves on dominion increasing. The lack of temple based dominion spread really screws you up.

In fact I would go as far to say its a little harsh. Though I speak from the point mainly of playing Mictlan and suffering under the lack of dominion. Were I to examine the whole picture maybe I would feel different.

Either way, it can cost a helluva lot of blood slaves to feed 6 or 7 Blood Sacrifice, level 4 priests with Jade Knives.

Spiro

Actually, you can work the dominion to your advantage by taking very bad scales and have them not mess you up very much. For the most part, Mictlan only spreads as much dominion as it needs to survive.

[spirokeat]

I almost feel like thats an exploit though. I just think their should be a way, albeit different to others to have the ability to generate reasonable dominion.

I've been searching the boards for general strats on Mictlan, and there doesn't seem to be much. Its mainly what you can or can't do with blood. Mictlan are like a whole other world to that though due to some odd characteristics...the sacrifice being one of em.

Perhaps I should start a thread.

Spiro.

[NTJedi]

quantum_mechani said:
For the most part, Mictlan only spreads as much dominion as it needs to survive.

Dangerous if your enemy carries a strong dominion and makes many global spells weak or ineffective.

[Graeme Dice]

spirokeat said:
Basic rules are, make sure pop is over 5000, pref about 8000.

As long as the population remains over 5000, the population has no effect on the success of the hunt.

[Cainehill]

Yeah - which is why I really prefer to blood hunt provinces between 4000 and 6500, something like that. The more populous provinces I take the gold income from.