Blood?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
So from that may I take it that you agree that early blood could do with a boost (perhaps more multi-summons) when Illwinter fix the glich making scouts good blood hunters?

I've always thought the low level summons needed a boost, although I actually think the blood ones are better than many of the lower level Conjurations. I'd vote for lowering the cost of things like Cave Drakes slightly, and doubling the cost/output of the low level demon summons.

However, I don't think it's a glitch that scouts are good blood hunters, as they've always been that way (worse with dousing rods). I'm not sure whether/how to rebalance them, as most of the races with blood magic rely upon them to get anything out of it. Besides, IMHO Scouts themeatically make sense for the job.

One thought is to only allow blood mages to hunt for slaves -- or anyone with a dousing rod. This makes more sense to me thematically, but is a very drastic change.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
I don't think his comment was about SC's in general but "boss" demons.

IMHO there is no way to avoid the comparison, as the big demons make the best Super Combatants, with the occasional exception of Pretenders.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Zen:
I have gotten an Ice Devil with a Wraith Sword and Boots of Flight by turn 16. Then turn 17 Alteration 2.

That's pretty scary! I'd hate to run into such a nation without access to Paralyze. Were you using Jotunheim?

No I used Arco. So I had access to Paralyze as well. Arco is probably my top pick for survivable units with the combination of high hit point Elephants, high protection and shield using Hypsists (for 2 movement with elephants) and a priestess for heal.

I used my pretender (3 Turns) and a scout population to field the slaves and my cheap researchers were mystics.

Another bonus is that Arco doesn't need to use it's mage base to expand like others (for quickness, raise skeletons, etc) to expand as they are powerful later as opposed to right away.

Another one that worked very well was C'tis I had a IDevil at turn 20, then 21 I got the sword and boots (this is my favored way to equip an ID for owning provinces) as well as my alteration. I also had Enchantment 3. So by and large, it can be done if you really force yourself. But I've found more to my liking, casting 2 Hordes from Hell, as it allows multiple armies nearly as effective as the ID as well as patrol force.

I'd have to play with it more; but it does come with certain costs and isn't for every race.

I never played the Dom1 ID rush; but this is perfectly acceptable timing for me to have or fight against an ID. Turn 10 would be hard, but nearing 20 it's more copeable.

[Bowlingballhead]

And yes, I'm saying SCs are not all that. They were the first direction I moved in - I love building magic items. Then I learned the hard way that any decently large army will mow a SC down, if by no other process than statistical probability. Wounds, the chance of running into ugly spells - a SC strategy is no better than any other. And Ice Devils? I've looked them over. Good stats. If you want to go the SC direction, they're as good as anybody else for the job, I suppose. Don't come crying to me when a bunch of knights lance your killer demon to death and you have to rebuild, though.

Now, there is ONE thing here that might change my mind. Up until today I had never heard of this 'using scouts to blood hunt' thing. If there's a trick to make blood slaves much more accessable, especially to traditionally non-blood races, the balance of power shifts towards demons considerably by sheer ease of access. After all, the *potential* for blood slave income and efficiency as a source of magic is tremendous, but in my experience it's always taken too long to get going unless you're a blood magic race - and if you are, you're generally magically restricted enough that making good uber-equipment is hard.

So by all means, convince me. Tell me this blood slave reaping trick.

Although I still might just stick to demon knights. They're tremendously efficient themselves.

[Keir Maxwell]

Jasper I read what Illwinter siad on what they were trying to do with blood and in my opinion the scout thing is a major gliche. Thats why Alex made a big deal of pointing it out - so they could correct it. With scouts blood hunting its back to anyone having access to blood.

I have been playing blood hard for the Last few days, I have summoned Ice Devils, Arch Devils, Fallen Angels and every sort of little blood summon and my honest opinion is that blood is the worst path of magic. I have done worse in the games I have used blood than using Tien Ch'i Barbarian Kingdoms. I do better with Mictlan when I largely ignore blood and go for mass protection instead.

In PBEM I aim to play in games with a high level of experiance and the pace is generally fast and cut throat. This is not a style question but a survival question. In this sort of game I think blood is crap. Playing SP, for me, blood is crap because I do so much better when I ignore it. So for me blood is crap and thats very sad.

I think people got carried away on the whole anti-blood thing in Dom1 and there was alot of miss information around about what the problem was - many seem to think the blood SC's in Dom1 are simply overpowered as opposed to overpresent. My experiance using fuly equipped ID's is that they are very expensive and somewhat vunerable - and that was before paralyse.

Jasper have you played blood much? Your comments about blood SC's are just so wrong. Sure Ice Devils and Illearth are good SC's - thats one Illearth and some of the 7 ID's. The other big demonic summonings are not great for the job. In general ID's are nowhere near as good as people think. I used them as suggested in Dom1 and lost them. I learnt and used them in packs after that. A good army (including mages generally) will crush a small number of fully equipped SC's in my experiance. And this isn't even taking paralyse into account.

SC's have fallen along way in Dom2 and I suspect that even if you could still summon theorericaly unlimited numbers of ID's it wouldn't be a problem in practice. Blood used to be the mid/late game SC path but now mid/late game SC's are vastly weaker and blood is much weaker. The combined affect is under impressive.

When is blood good then? On a big map, in a slow paced game, using the dodgy (MM intensive) scout hunting trick.

I have tried really hard to make blood work. In the process I have managed to make Mictlan work ok but I still haven't got blood to work. Blood the only thing worse than Mictlan? Nah Abysia using blood is still better than Mictlan.



Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Just had a minor break through - easy research. I'll be playing with this for the next period as in general I find mundane approaches overpowered in Dom2 - see thread on subject.

Cheers

Keir