Blood Magic

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by apoger:
The point would be not to create unrest/pop loss at your capital via hunting with the fountain, which it does well.

I'm not sure how much I like the Blood Fountain in Dom II. Need more tests.

Maybe there should be a slightly more expensive God, the blood spray bottle. With its smaller volume it would have a cap of maybe level 8 blood magic, but be portable, with 1 strategic move. Or maybe a blood port-o-potty or something, or even an enchanted walking Sanguine Dowsing Rod, or a talking bloodhound, "Evil Lassie". I wouldn't want a FOB hunting in my home province until the home province was less than a third of my gold income - say, turn 10.

Speaking of bloodhounds, that would be a neat blood summon or even National unit - you could put them under a commander to increase his blood hunting ability. They'd be expensive and bad in combat, though.

Oooh!!! I got another one!! The Giant Leech, for land, and the Giant Lamprey for water. Both would have life-drain attacks and be good blood hunters. "Knock-knock... hey, it's me, Lord Leechy Lewis. I'd like to talk to your daughter, please... no, nothing serious. No, I'll pass on the coffee, I'm in a hurry, but thanks..."

[ November 04, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[HJ]

IIRC, there is a demon prince who has an effect of automatically gathering blood slaves. I think that the description from the devs was something along the lines of "fathers give their daughters to him willingly, but the god's dominion suffers".

edit: I really hate my typos...

editedit:found it; quote from Johan K

One of the Demon Lords is Belphegor the Lord of Hell. He spreads gold around him and fathers sell their children and their souls to the demon. They are then used as soldiers and blood slaves in Belphegor's growing army. This practice is quite bad for your pretender's dominion however.

[ November 04, 2003, 20:54: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Psitticine]

Just on a side note, the new nation of Mictlan has a starting site that gives it 5 blood slaves a season. They have to perform blood sacrifice to spread their dominion, so it balances out somewhat in the end, but it does give them more early-game flexibility.

I haven't used blood magic enough to know if it is balanced or not, so I'm keeping my mouth shut on the rest of the issue.

[-Storm-]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
You get a lot of your gold income from the home province... and unrest reduces gold income. Blood hunting increases unrest and kills population. Thus, blood hunting in your home province cripples your gold economy.

Yes but I never wanted to use my pretender for bloodhunt at all. I am using him to research/cast rituals, and I am using mages for bloodhunt.

[Saber Cherry]

Oh. I see. Well then, you're fine! Though you might go with an archmage/sage instead, as they get more research points, can have more constructions and summons, and you can always empower them in blood later... just start the archmage with enough blood to forge all the +blood magic items.

[Sammual]

Originally posted by -Storm-:

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
You get a lot of your gold income from the home province... and unrest reduces gold income. Blood hunting increases unrest and kills population. Thus, blood hunting in your home province cripples your gold economy.

Yes but I never wanted to use my pretender for bloodhunt at all. I am using him to research/cast rituals, and I am using mages for bloodhunt.

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The reason to take the FOB is that it gets bonues when Blood Hunting.

Sammual

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:

For this 3000 gold I got 420 blood slaves.

That comes to 7.14 gold per slave.
Think of it as 214 gold for a Horde from Hell or perhaps 392 gold for an Ice Devil.

OK. Neglecting research, as others have pointed out - and also neglecting the empowerment cost.

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My thought exactly - but more than that gold earned does not give a 1 for 1 return if invested in other areas. Gold spent on armies rather than lost to blood hunting is out there making more gold and helping you win the game. I think this is a huge point Alex.

The reason I don't find the results you are talking about scary is that in my experiance a fast expanding race will have make a great deal of use of the resources the blood race is consuming. Depending on the circumstances a fast race may well overrun the blood race before its returns come through.

My worry was the blood was going to be nerfed and I am greatly relieved that there are 7 Ice Devils. Blood requires serious effort which could be used on reinforcing expansion and has a narrow range of uses.

To ascertain the value of blood you should not be comparing it to air elemental summoning - one feature of a well rounded field - but to what you can achieve by investing the resources elsewhere.

Blood requires alot of investment and yields no immediate return thus the rate of return that comes through in time is higher and so it should be. Blood is a nod to players who arn't focused on winning through extreme speed and as such its nice that it works as often such strategies don't and it could se easily be nerfed.

I tried blood up because it distracted me from overrunning my opponents before they were prepared. Sure I then did horrible things to them when they were prepared but which do you think they would have prefferred? To die to a speed monster race that doesn't let you set up or be beaten by a race whose setup proved more deadly than yours?

I think many extremely powerful strategies exist in dom II and I hope and expect blood to one of them. As it should be.

As I posted on one of the supercombatant threads, I think there should be more battlefield spells that increase the effectiveness of regular troops, which would allow players to more effectively combat summons and supercombatants with conventional armies (backed up by magic).

What? I positive solution to a problem? hmm . . ok!

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir