A couple of noob questions

[Velusion]

The others have been answered but I'll expand on this:

SillyRobot said:
4) Is Blood Magic a worthwhile path to follow? It seems to have a very high opportunity cost in terms of investment and upkeep.

If your nation has naitonal recruitable blood mages you should definatly get into blood magic. Keep in mind that blood slaves are usually easier to generate than gems - so the prices of the blood spells/items reflect that inflation.

It's actually open to debate if you should start a blood economy when aren't playing a nation with national blood mages.

My position that if you play long game (at least 80-100 turns) on a 15 province per player or more map it is always worth it to start blood hunting if you find indy blood mages to kick start your blood economy.

There are lots of topics on the subject though.

[OmikronWarrior]

Blood Magic is good, yes. For nations with cheap 1 or 2 blood magic mages for hunting, its possible to start generate 100+ slaves per turn. Plus, blood magic has a lot of really great summons and ritual spells. However, if your nation doesn't have recruitable blood mages, it isn't easy to set up blood slave "factories" at that level.

Click on the stickied "strategy thread" in the forum and read the Mictlan blood hunting guide for some mechanics on blood magic.

P.S. Rule of thumb about dominions, the more diversity in your magic the better off you are. Any mage with 2 in a patch can cast the site searching spell (or 1 in the case of death and astral magic).

[thejeff]

For battles, communion and the Astral booster spell both boost divine magic.

Even without researching Blood, there are some really nice blood items: Lifelong protection, Soul contract, Blood Stones, at least.