Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[PDF]

Even if there are ways to deal with Demons, the fact is that they are bloodily (!) cheap when you got them through Contracts. I do think- and other experienced players too- that Contracts are somewhat overpowered. The contract takes some time to pay off for sure, but with a Blood nation you can churn a very high supply of slaves and transform them into Devil-factories without even having to research Blood. Best of all you have to use 1 mage-turn to make the contract but no time is lost summoning the devils, that come automatically after that.
It's not a rush strategy, but an income of 60 slaves/turn is possible relatively early, allowing mass-production of though devils. Tell me about one other good summon for such a low cost ...

[Boron]

Cohen said:
Devils are easily killed under storm, with massive spellfire or wrathful skies.

Devils aren't so strong ...
Stormies are, but they're limited to lightning attack, that could be avoided by Lightn Immunity.

Interesting discussion

Cohen is right that especially against Airnations devils are not that useful .

A comparison Soul contracts vs. Clams is not good imo because both need different sources .
So you can compare them with Bloodstones somewhat and mainly with Vampirelords .

After you summoned your unique blood SCs there is not so much left to spend blood on :
- Bloodstones
- Good items like Hellsword / Blood Thorn
- Vampire lords
- The lvl 9 summoning spells for Devils/Storm demons etc.

If you are a 2nd tier bloodnation like pangenea you can bloodhunt a bit and use it only for soul contracts and don't need to research blood at all .
As a 1st tier bloodnation you don't need to research higher than blood 5/6/7 then too urgently if you want e.g. only the Ice devils or the Arch devils .

In the offensive Devils are better , in the defensive Vampire lords with vampires are better .
If e.g. Ulm finds independent bloodmages and brings up the FotA this would be horrible for Soul Contract forging too .

[Boron]

PDF said:
Tell me about one other good summon for such a low cost ...

I agree fully with you
3 other "good" summons of relative low cost come to my mind :
- Vampires from vampire lords
- Ghosts from wraithlords
- Demon knights / storm demons via the infernal xxx spell .

Soul contract is the easiest to get . Mictlan needs anyways construction 4 for SDR . Normally to get the second cheap +1 blood item , the bloodthorn you need to go construction 6 though to get 5B mages to forge the soul contracts .
Only vampires + storm demons are almost as useful as demons but given that you need blood 9 to get storm demons in half reasonable quantities and that you need B3D4 on your pretender to summon the first Vampire lord devils are a bit too cheap aquireable via soul contract .

Most important is also the time . In theory you could take e.g. a FoB pretender and start forging soul contracts with it once you reach 80 blood already . As you said you have your SoulContract devil economy probably running 10-30 turns before your enemies get something which is almost as strong summonwise .

You force your enemies almost to get staff(s) of storms .
Later by summoning some storm demons you can use them against the staff of storms battlemage anti-devil armies and the devils for the rest .
Basically the only thing you have to worry are enemy UBERSCs then , especially Airqueens .

[Cohen]

In fact IMO Staff of Storms should be reviewed.
Const-6 and A4 needed, because a mage that cast Storm should be A4, so to channel the storm power into a staff he need to be A4.

[Kel]

Vampires are a great comparison. Same source, same type of product, same rate of production. Still have things to account for (like cursed items and research levels) but it's a lot closer than clams or bloodstones.

- Kel

[Boron]

Kel said:
Vampires are a great comparison. Same source, same type of product, same rate of production. Still have things to account for (like cursed items and research levels) but it's a lot closer than clams or bloodstones.

- Kel

Yep . Vampires + devils serve 2 different purposes imo :
Vampires are mainly defensive weapons , devils allaround weapons . So devils are a bit more useful and as others have said already the scout wastes no magetime while the Vampire lord needs to allysummon and each turn he does something else like forging / casting you lose a vampire .
So the RoI of the soul contract is really a lot better .

With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible .
You could really try to bring forge up as abysia . Your demonbreds could forge then earth bloodstones , fiever fetishes + your warlocks with only 1 +1blooditem or a lucky bloodrandom without that soul contracts .
So if you save your blood even if the forge gets dispelled after a few turns your gain is huge .

[Kel]

Boron said:
With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible

I am sure. Of course, I would never assume that I would have 100+ earth gems and site bonuses to boot in any reasonable amount of time and if we start assuming ideal and unlikely things, than a lot of things become possible. We might just as well assume that someone has a 999 reinforced Arcane Nexus up, , has site bonuses and multiple S9 mages available. Maybe throw in a const bonus for clamming, who knows since it's all unlikely and hypothetical.

I don't even remember the Last MP game I played where I found a const site bonus.

- Kel

[Soapyfrog]

Soul Contracted Devils are effectively free troops.

They provide you with a mass of highly mobile ratehr strong troops: of course they can be beaten, but so what? More are on the way...

And you are not "stuck" with the strategy... clearly you can be simultaneously clamming, and fetishing, and doing whatever other ridiculously overpowered strategies you might have going for you... except you also have loads of free devils!

So there is no downside... there really isnt any other worthwhile activity for expending your blood except for making some blood thorns, blood stones, summoning up the unique devils, and given the quantity of blood a skilled blood nation can rake in this is quite trivial activity happening alongside your soul contracting operations.

[Cohen]

You're forgetting Vampire Lords and Fallen Angels, both good summons.

And Blood could be used to paradrop Hordes from Hell early and cause problems to your enemy (I underline early, later there will be many castles and stronger units), especially cutting out withdraw options to enemy armies that you're going to engage.

Not to count some good battle spells ... sadly you've to bring a lot of slaves with you to cast blood battle magic, and this is a shame IMO.

[Soapyfrog]

I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.