Vanheim and blood

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by alexti:
Vaetti Hag (Blood-1) is also pretty good at 55 gold.

The Vaetti Hag isn't sacred, IIRC, so therefore has the upkeep of a $55 unit. A base hag will hunt only twice as well as a scout, for more than twice the cost, so a Vaetti Hag would only pay off if you hunted with an SDR. Not quite as economical as the Mictlan Priest, but definitely an option for base Jotun.

Originally posted by Truper:
With Vanheim, I think you need to make the decision on whether to play them as a blood nation at the pretender design stage.

Even if you opt not to play as a hardcore blood nation, it won't hurt to have a few scout hunt for blood, to be put to use for tasks like blood sacrificing at times when you really need to push out Dominion faster, or forging an occasional blood item like a Black Heart to turn a Vanjarl into a mean assassin.

[ February 15, 2004, 18:17: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Bowlingballhead]

While we're on the subject of blood (and what a wonderful subject it is) I've really been trying to learn to like Mictlan, but their dependence on sacrifice leads me to one inevitable question:

Can priests sacrifice out of the laboratory pool, or do they have to have their victims in their personal inventory?

If the latter, can we BEG Illwinter to fix that in the next patch? I was under the impression priests had to carry their sacrifice supply, and keeping them 'topped up' and tracking their usage is a massive and annoying drain on time and attention. I'd sacrifice much more if I could just turn the command on and forget it. Indeed, my temples would run red with blood!

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Bowlingballhead:
Can priests sacrifice out of the laboratory pool, or do they have to have their victims in their personal inventory?

Sacrificing priests automatically replenish their blood slaves from a laboratory if there is one present. They will take as many slaves as you gave them the previous turn.

[Bowlingballhead]

Oh! THAT might explain my funky, inconsistent results. So I have to 'prime the pump' with a few slaves, and after that they'll keep themselves supplied?

Hmmm. Means I won't be able to use 'pool blood slaves', but it's still a major timesaver. Enough to make sacrificing useful and convenient.

[Teraswaerto]

I think they restock automatically even if you take the slaves away with the "pool" command, since dominion seems to spread even when I use the "pool" command and don't give them their slaves back. Not sure though.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Bowlingballhead:
Hmmm. Means I won't be able to use 'pool blood slaves', but it's still a major timesaver. Enough to make sacrificing useful and convenient.

You just need to put your blood hunters in a control group and press 'Z' to have only them dump their slaves into a lab.

[Norfleet]

Actually, I've found out that pool blood slaves DOESN'T disrupt priests attempting to perform a blood sacrifice. Somebody mentioned that a priest will actually auto-draw blood slaves from the lab if possible, and as Mictlan, where dominion doesn't spread unless sacrifices are performed properly, I've found this is, indeed, the case: A priest with sacrifice orders active will automatically draw slaves from the lab up to his maximum sacrifice limit as long as sufficient slaves exist to be sacrificed and both lab and temple remain operational.

This means you CAN blood hunt with labs and use "pool slaves". However, a priest can't initiate sacrifice orders unless he has slaves in his inventory: Taking away his slaves after the sacrifice orders are given has no effect, however, and next turn he will already have drawn slaves into his inventory again up to his maximum, if a lab remained operational (i.e., didn't randomly explode).