Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question

[shovah]

personally i dont find ulm black forest that hard to fight, id suggest fighting vrs ulm at start

[Zen]

Black Forest requires a different pattern of thoughts in order to be effective. Standard Ulm is very good for newbies, but in the hands of an experienced analyzed gamer it can be very difficult to handle.

[how786]

Thanks for the continued input. It's all very useful for a new player like myself.
The game is so complex. A few more questiosn come to mind:
When is it good to do things like Pillage, Preach, Blood Hunt, Blood Sacrifice and Monthly Ritual Spell.
The challenge of when/where to use these spells is daunting for the newbie.
Best
How786

[shovah]

pillage should only be used imo if you took an enemy province and you know it will be taken back soon. preach is good for raising your own dominion if its low and for reducing nemy dominion. blood hunt gets blood slaves but increases unrest (reduce taxes+patrol to counter unrest) blood sacrifice is a bit like preaching but you need blood slaves and monthly ritual cost gems and cast a spell (huge variety there)

[Endoperez]

Monthly Ritual is of most use when you want to cast a cheap spell for many turns. Awaken Vine Men and Awaken Vine Ogre are two very good examples.
Note that if the spell defines a target province, it won't change, so monthly ritual order is useless for site-searching spells.

Blood Hunt is only useful if you want to use Blood magic. Generally, there are no sites from which you get blood slaves, the blood equivalent of gems. You have to hunt for them. In common circustances only blood mages can hunt effectively, although if your only blood mages are very expensive (e.g. Skrattis of Jotunheim) it might be worth it to have dozens of Scouts hunting slaves.
The most common method of blood hunting is to have a province with big population but not too high income (i.e. not capital, big Farmlands province, but with population of maybe 7000-10000), lower the taxes, build a lab, and leave few commanders hunting. If you don't want to lower taxes, you can Patrol the raising unrest away, but that will lower the population even faster, and you might run out of good hunting provinces if the game continued really, really long.
If you have blood mages earching, forge them Blood Dousing Rods ASAP. They help as much as another level of Blood magic. They don't work on non-blood hunters.
Remember that you can press Pool from F7 menu. This takes most of the micromanagement out of blood.

I'm not sure which Blood nation is best to try it out. Iron Woods Jotunheim might work - they have Vaetti Hags to use as hunters, Skratti to summon some Fiends of Darkness and Frost Fiends, and later Ice Devils. And if you get Angerboda, Jotunheim hero, you can do lots more. Like cast Reascendance, and get B3F3 Fallen Angel, or send Horrors to attack your enemies.
Cross Breeding is also fun, although not very useful.

Preaching and Blood Sacrifice (improved Preaching which uses Blood Slaves) are useful to negate enemy dominion, and to strengthen your own. You lose if your dominions dies, and you can avoid storming a heavily-defended enemy capital if you preach him to death.
Dominion also affects your pretender's and prophet's toughness, morale of your own and enemy units, and changes the world to work under the scales you chose.

Choosing high dominion is often all you have to do, except in special cases and against enemy border.
If you chose Production and Order, you'll want positive dominion of 4-5 in your forts so that the scales stay at maximum. Strong dominion also lessens the seasonal temperature changes, which lower your income a little.
Also, against Ermor themes or Pangaean Carrion Woods you'll want to keep their dominion as far from you as possible. Those special dominions kill population VERY, very quickly.
If you play as either, you'll want as high dominion as possible. It weakens your enemies, and gives you more free units.

Mictlan is a special case. Their dominion DOES NOT spread in normal ways. Temples won't help, although they still slow the spread of your enemies' dominion. For you to stay alive, The Blood Must Flow. That is, your priests have to use Blood Sacrifice. Jade Knives help, and stronger priests can be very powerful once you have enough slaves to burn. In the early game you'll be in trouble, though. And Mictlan needs rather high base dominion, because it affects the power of Blood Sacrifice.


Pillage is useful for taking money away from the enemy. It is often easier to just raise taxes to 200, but if you e.g. have a weak army in his capital, with no way out, you could pillage it and do the most harm you can. I don't think I have ever actually used pillage for strategical reason.

[castigated]

Endoperez said:
Generally, there are no sites from which you get blood slaves, the blood equivalent of gems.

i thought this was true until i got one in the winnowing. the searcher only had 1 blood, and the site produced 1 slave/turn, but i was still really surprised. i guess that's why we use the word "Generally".

i have also never pillaged except as an experiment to see what happens

[shovah]

is that site the damned merchant?

[castigated]

ask damilano. last time i checked, he was in charge of that province.

[how786]

Thanks for all the replies. Endo, thanks for this essay!
OK...with Awaken Vine Men/Ogre, how does that work as a monthly ritual spell? I looked in the manual and the manual mentions it as a battlefield spell. I'm not sure how one would cast this monthly if the summoned creatures go back to their 'slumbered state'.
Also, there was mention of Empowerment. I must be missing it but I don't readily find it in my manual.
Thanks

[shovah]

vinemen/orgres is a ritual spell and empowerment is a (rather expensive) way to increase a mages skill