Re: Blood Simple?!
I'm pretty much with Graeme on this one. I played Mictlan on Large Faerun, expanded into T'ien Ch'i, Machaka, and Atlantis' territory, and didn't need to spend more than 2:25 per turn in blood-related micromanagement. Given that turns could easily take an hour or more, this was a trivial amount extra.
One thing that helps reduce the pain a lot is to make sure that you don't use all your slaves in a given turn. If you keep a pool at least as large as the number of slaves being sacrificed, your sacrificers (the ones at labs anyway, which in my opinion should be all of them) will automatically replenish their stores. Also, I've found that three hunters in a zero-tax province can pretty much be ignored when it comes to unrest. It's a self-regulating process; when they're very successful, unrest can really jump, but this makes them less successful in successive turns and so overall you do okay. If you take growth, you also don't have to worry about the population loss, and things really become easy.
Different people have different play styles, certainly. The management involved in supporting mine is pretty minimal. If you like to play in a way that makes blood no fun, either don't play it or experiment with new tactics. At some point there is a tradeoff between being absolutely optimal despite the user interface and enjoying the game.
As a note, in maybe 3000 province-turns of blood-hunting (with three dowsing hunters per) I've *never* noticed all of them coming up empty. Since blood mages share virgins, you're pretty much assured of having enough to summon some imps if need be.
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