Blood magic nerfed in dom3?

[Endoperez]

Huzurdaddi said:
However near the end stage of Dom3 development the gold produced by provinces was doubled,

It wasn't done near the end stage.

the amount of blood slaves/gems produced was not modified

I don't understand your point. Are Blood Slaves now too easy to catch? Or should blood hunt have become easier, but it hasn't? Or are you talking about the fact that there are now much fewer gems compared to gold? I'm sorry, perhaps it's just that I haven't slept well, but I just don't understand your post.

[Edi]

Endo, what he means that gem and bloodslave income was not similarly increased by a factor of two. Which is just as well because a high site frequency already results in a ridiculous accumulation of gems.

Edi

[UninspiredName]

My main 'bloody' complaint is that the one really useful Blood Mage summon (Not including Demon Lords) to me is now a Marignon national. Marignon, of all nations! They only ever dabbled in the path!

[Shovah32]

Father illearth, heliophagi, ice/arch devils, devils, demon knights, storm demons, maybe fiends of darkness, mictlan nationals and lanka nationals are all good imo.

[olaf73]

So what is the 'best' way to setup a steady supply of blood slaves? What is more important, population or magic sites? Do you rotate your blood hunters around? Or just build a lab in the spots you are hunting? How useful is the Sanguine Dousing Rod versus increased blood magic skill?

[UninspiredName]

I meant summons that know Blood magic. It's nigh-impossible to get any Blood economy unless you have nationals for it. Father Illerth and Heliophagi are sort of impractical.

And I actually very much like Mictlan's choice of national summons, but, again, that's just one nation. You can get a decent amount out of any other path with just a Pretender that knows it.

[NTJedi]

UninspiredName said:
I meant summons that know Blood magic.

Lamia Queen and Sceptre

[Huzurdaddi]

Endoperez said:
I don't understand your point.

The point is that Blood is different than other gems. Blood is not a random resource it is a way to convert gold into a type of gem.*

Blood gems are not like other gems. Other gems are *resources*. Blood gems are a *choice* between gold and blood gems. That choice is made by weighing the *exchange ratio* between gold and blood. That ratio was changed in Dom3 vs. Dom2.

I do not know if this was factored into the design of Dom3. I have a feeling it was not as blood scales with *gems* and not with *gold*.

*Note: different nations have different conversion ratios. For non-blood nations that ratio between gold:blood is large for blood nations it is much lower.

[Taqwus]

Ease of access to blood becomes a differentiating factor between nations, rather than the fairly odd case of early patchlevels of Dom 2 where any nation with some scouts and some income headroom could bloodhunt to get SDRs, and then use the SDRs to accelerate this (since they did help even non-B mages for a while), in addition to the ubiquitous sorcery or unrestricted randoms.

There's no reason that blood magic should be any easier to achieve regardless of nation than, say, fire-immune infantry or flying assassins, especially when there are nations for whom blood magic is intended to be a major strength.

Might also be noted that blood magic is associated with some very nice national summons (Mandahas, the Tlaloques, the Devatas for instance) and also received some unresistable literally-go-to-Hell combat spells. Also, unlike gems, you have a lot of freedom in deciding where you gather them instead of being reliant on protecting possibly inconvenient locations; if you need to pull back, any surviving blood hunters can fall back, and your opponent does not get your blood income like he would from a magical site.

Regarding SDR, it's only 10 blood slaves paying full retail, and IIRC it acts as an effective +1 for a blood hunter that's already at B1 or higher, so if the hunter is a dedicated hunter it's a bargain compared to the cheapest possible empowerment of B1-B2 at 30 gems. It's cheaper than the Athame, Brazen Vessels and Armor of Souls too.

Magic sites rarely contribute blood slaves; there's the Damned Merchant (+1/turn) and some national capitals (Mictlan's, for instance), but bloodhunting (with B mages...) or wishing are far, far faster. That's not to say that there aren't some extremely interesting blood sites (some giving large summoning bonuses, some 'blood mages may enter to summon some type of devil or demon' sites), but they're pretty rare.


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Edit (addition):

It also occurs to me that blood magic provides the simplest way to deal with aging -- Boots of Youth. Non-blood nations need Elixirs of Life, which are a bit more complicated to make and take a miscellaneous slot -- arguably more important than a foot slot for mages now that quickness no longer accelerates casting... or Gift of Health, which can only be used by one nation at a time and can be dispelled.

[Maltrease]

I wish blood hunting took the size of population into account in determining how much unrest it causes.

Surely snatching up 10 young homeless people from a 30k city would cause much less of a stir then snatching 10 people from a small town of 1000 people.

It would be nice if you could conservatively hunt in your capital without utterly destroying your income. I've noticed that even if you patrol and completely eliminate the unrest it still effects your income for that turn.

I don't remember the exact unrest formula but I'd like to normalize the existing amount to 10,000 people (or similar) and then scale it up or down based on the population.