Cost efficient blood hunting

[Baalz]

And another angle to consider is the loss in income from the province, not just the upkeep of the mage. Particularly because the more blood hunting provinces you use, the less and less ideal they are - as you start wanting more bloodslaves you start bloodhunting in higher and higher population provinces. The more concentrated your bloodhunters are, the cheaper the bloodslaves (not even taking into account defensive considerations)

For instance, consider two different ways to go using LA Abyssia as an example. Lets say I'm bloodhunting with 2 B4 Abysian warlocks. Lets also say for the sake of argument, that not only do they have SDRs, but they each also have one blood booster which was forged for summonings/forgings and is not being used this turn, so they're effectively bloodhunting at B6. Extrapolating the trend shown in the graph (and that each blood level is supposed to gain you +1 slave) those two bloodhunters are going to pull in 14.6 + 6 = about 21 slaves per turn.

Alternatively you're using sanguine acolytes with SDRs because they seem on the surface to be more cost effective. Nice, cheap, holy blood hunters. Thing is, to get 22 slaves per turn you need 4 of them (plus the same boosters and an extra rod). Problem is, you can't put 4 B2 bloodhunters in one province or the unrest skyrockets. How's that upkeep difference looking as you switch extra provinces over to bloodhunting? This can be an enormous difference if you (for example) have a bunch of wastelands with a few high pop farmlands. You bloodhunting yet another 10k population province, or would you rather have your hunters spinning their wheels in a 3k mountain?

BTW, this is also the real cost in bloodhunting with scouts. Their upkeep is usually cheap compared to the lost income from the province they're bumbling around to eek out a handful of blood slaves.

Oh, also those two extra castle turns to crank out two extra bloodhunters (Warlocks vs acolytes) are not worthless resources.

[Huzurdaddi]

Originally Posted by Baalz

And another angle to consider is the loss in income from the province, not just the upkeep of the mage.

This is actually the most important point about bloodhunting in Dom3 and is one of the big changes in bloodhunting from Dom2.

The increase in gold/province is a large boost (relative) to less elite blood hunting nations as the majority of the cost of blood hunting is the lost gold from taxes (assuming you blood hunt in stable state by setting taxes to zero, if you patrol it is difficult to compare).

Just for comparison consider two blood hunters:

Mitclan Priest (upkeep 2.66) average blood ~7
Jotun Skratti (upkeep 16.66) average blood ~8

It seems like the Mitclan Priest is far superior. Indeed from the chart above you are getting 2.5 slaves / gold with the Mitclan Priest and only 0.4 slaves / gold with the Jotun Skratti.

However if you blood hunt with 2 per province, in a 5000k pop province (~70 income) the numbers turn out quite different:

Mitclan Priest ~5.3 gold / slave
Jotun Skratti ~6.5 gold / slave

Mitclan still wins, but they are much closer.

PS: the increase in gold / province is actually a rather large nerf to all blood hunting nations, which was noted when Dom3 was released (there were actually multiple nerfs to blood in Dom3 vs. Dom2, most relegated to devils). Given that blood is still considered very powerful in Dom3 this was almost certainly a good thing (along with the nerf to life drain which was excellent).

[Tmoe]

Originally Posted by Huzurdaddi

Just for comparison consider two blood hunters:

Mitclan Priest (upkeep 2.66) average blood ~7
Jotun Skratti (upkeep 16.66) average blood ~8

It seems like the Mitclan Priest is far superior. Indeed from the chart above you are getting 2.5 slaves / gold with the Mitclan Priest and only 0.4 slaves / gold with the Jotun Skratti.

However if you blood hunt with 2 per province, in a 5000k pop province (~70 income) the numbers turn out quite different:

Mitclan Priest ~5.3 gold / slave
Jotun Skratti ~6.5 gold / slave

I do agreed about the lost tax gold being a significant factor when comparing different hunters but I didn't quite understand how did you come up the above mentioned new upkeep costs. I know it has to do with the income of the province but just couldn't find the formula for it. If you wouldn't mind sharing .

Good points by Baalz also. Cheers

[JimMorrison]

I'm actually also curious why that 5k pop province is generating 70 income. Either there is an Arena there, or you have very high scales, because it should be ~50 income with even scales.

It's true that we have so far been only focusing on the cost of the hunters, but I thought that was what this thread was for, because regardless of your scales, the cost of removing taxation will always be fairly static. That is to say, within any given layout, 5k pop will represent X% of your income no matter what. Since that cannot be directly influenced in game, the only thing that can be influenced, is what type and how many Blood Hunters are used.

To put it another way, think of your tax loss as "overhead" and your Blood Hunter upkeep as "operating costs". You can directly influence your operating costs by hiring poorly trained migrant laborers (ie- scouts), but overhead is the cost of doing business - you either pay it, or you do not do business.

I think the only time that tax loss becomes a major consideration is, when (this happens to me too often) all of your provinces are either <3k or >8k in pop, forcing you to choose between the less effective, or the higher cost options. Also sometimes I get so "lucky" and most of my ~5k provinces have Arenas and Gold Mines and such on them. Gee, thanks.


Of course, it cannot be said enough - the use of Blood, where applicable, is essentially (nearly always) cost effective. That is, you can almost always do more with the slaves than with the gold, regardless of other factors. The trick is, how easily can you generate the gold that you DO need, relative to your other Blood competitors? The upkeep on your Blood Hunters is a very large factor in that equation, and is magnified by your scales, which cannot be mitigated in-game, and which it must be assumed you had adequate reasoning for.

[Huzurdaddi]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I'm actually also curious why that 5k pop province is generating 70 income. Either there is an Arena there, or you have very high scales, because it should be ~50 income with even scales.

Quite right, I was going by memory how much a 5k population province yield, and since I generally have good scales it comes out around 70 (maybe a touch less). You are totally correct that scales really change the costs.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

It's true that we have so far been only focusing on the cost of the hunters, but I thought that was what this thread was for, because regardless of your scales, the cost of removing taxation will always be fairly static. That is to say, within any given layout, 5k pop will represent X% of your income no matter what. Since that cannot be directly influenced in game, the only thing that can be influenced, is what type and how many Blood Hunters are used.

Agreed. However I just wanted to show that depending upon how one hunts blood, the difference is not nearly as pronounced as one would think based upon a comparison of blood hunter upkeep costs. Actually, the lost taxes dominate the costs blood hunting in many cases.

Originally Posted by Tmoe

I know it has to do with the income of the province but just couldn't find the formula for it. If you wouldn't mind sharing.

I could have made a booboo ...

Jotun Skratti (16.66*2 + 70)/16 ~= 6.5
Mitclan Priest (2.66*2 + 70)/14 ~= 5.4

But as was noted above some of the assumptions (like good scales) may be incorrect. Actually it looks like scales matter more than how efficient your blood hunters are, assuming you want steady state blood hunting.