Blood Simple?!

[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.

[Scott Hebert]

Graeme, spirokeat may be referring how to keep the population 'stable', if you take a growth scale. While 5000+ has no difference on if you succeed at bloodhunting, certainly the population determines its growth, and if it can 'keep up' with the population loss from bloodhunting.

Is this feasible?

[Ygorl]

People complain about Mictlan micromanagement, but it's not that bad. Even as a relatively strong nation on a big map (like Faerun) you're not going to have more than 20 or so provinces being actively bloodhunted. This means that at the beginning of each turn, you spend 20 seconds or so clicking on those provinces and hitting ctrl-z. No big deal. And, for those huge long games, growth is pretty nice. It takes about 115 turns with growth-3 before your population has doubled. In Zen's mod, with twice the effect of growth, it takes less than 60. You can, of course, argue (validly) that by turn 60 money isn't that important, but you can also then send an army against 20 decent mages of the nation of your choice and watch it dissolve beneath a barrage of charm/falling frost/orb lightning/falling fires/nether darts/whatever the destructive spell du jour is...

[NTJedi]

Ygorl said:
People complain about Mictlan micromanagement, but it's not that bad. Even as a relatively strong nation on a big map (like Faerun) you're not going to have more than 20 or so provinces being actively bloodhunted. This means that at the beginning of each turn, you spend 20 seconds or so clicking on those provinces and hitting ctrl-z. No big deal.

Well that's only step one of many... let me list the other steps:
Step2: Checking for unrest because of blood hunters since patroling troops are sometimes pushed to the front or haven't arrived yet. If unrest exists then switching those blood hunters to research or maybe forge a blood axe.
Step3: Providing each blood hunter with 2 or 3 blood slaves... thus increasing survival of the province. Summon Imps is cheap and helps the patrollers and PD.
Step4: Watching Dominion drops where priest hunting for blood has to switch into sacrificing for bringing dominion back up.
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

And that's four other micromanagement steps of Mictlan which were missed.

[Endoperez]

Step2 can be easily done with F1 screen, and won't be needed every turn. Once in a few turns is enough, and I prefer to do that any way with any nation.
Step3: I thought hunt happens before movement and battles. That would mean that if the hunters catch anything, they can summon the imps. This is most often the case, so I don't worry about leaving the hunters any slaves.
Step 4: Only needed in border provinces, really. Although as it is provinces bordering enemy dominion instead of enemy territory, it can sometimes be hard to notice. This is second step that really has to take time when playing Mictlan, and only if you don't have specialized priests that Blood Sacrifice continuously.
Step5: Isn't that much harder than sitesearching without spells, or for holy/unholy magic, so I don't find it particularly infuriating.

All of these do add micromanagement, but I don't think they increase it as much as you think.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:
Step2 can be easily done with F1 screen, and won't be needed every turn. Once in a few turns is enough, and I prefer to do that any way with any nation.

TRUE, BUT.... as a result you'll be visiting/adjusting many more provinces then other nations since as a nation you're forced to blood hunt to survive.

Endoperez said:
Step3: I thought hunt happens before movement and battles. That would mean that if the hunters catch anything, they can summon the imps. This is most often the case, so I don't worry about leaving the hunters any slaves.

From what I've seen it does happen before regular battle movement, but not spell casted battles. And to leave them without blood slaves because they usually find some is way too risky in my book. I have more peace of mind sending my turn knowing each low level blood mage can cast summon imp twice during battle.

Endoperez said:
Step 4: Only needed in border provinces, really. Although as it is provinces bordering enemy dominion instead of enemy territory, it can sometimes be hard to notice. This is second step that really has to take time when playing Mictlan, and only if you don't have specialized priests that Blood Sacrifice continuously.

Unless you're dealing with enemy nations that have stealthy priests. They sneak and sometimes fly in... heavily preach for two turns and move. I've felt this pain.
And even when it's border provinces only, it's extra management not needed by other nations... especially felt for large maps.

Endoperez said:
Step5: Isn't that much harder than sitesearching without spells, or for holy/unholy magic, so I don't find it particularly infuriating.

True but it's an extra duty which needs to be done instead of having them just sit on research or mass casting some summon spell. I'd much rather have my commanders searching for sites or researching then killing slaves and moving to kill more slaves.

Endoperez said:
All of these do add micromanagement, but I don't think they increase it as much as you think.

For small maps of 120 or less... it's not noticed that much.

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
Step2: Checking for unrest because of blood hunters since patroling troops are sometimes pushed to the front or haven't arrived yet.

You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

Step3: Providing each blood hunter with 2 or 3 blood slaves... thus increasing survival of the province. Summon Imps is cheap and helps the patrollers and PD.

Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen. Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it. You will probably also have your hunters behind castles. Mictlan only needs to spend gold on priests, capital based mages, and buildings unless you took a powerful bless effect.

Step4: Watching Dominion drops where priest hunting for blood has to switch into sacrificing for bringing dominion back up.

Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

This is part of any blood nation.

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

Graeme Dice said:
Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Graeme Dice said:
Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.

Graeme Dice said:
You will probably also have your hunters behind castles.

In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.

Graeme Dice said:
Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.

]NTJedi said:
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

Graeme Dice said:
This is part of any blood nation.

It's still extra management.