Blood Magic: The Truth behind those Fruiters that Practice it

[Zurai]

Not really. By far the most unrest is generated by actually taking blood slaves, and the unrest does not *appear* to be a linear scale. In other words, my blood-10 Fountain of Blood with a SDR taking 25 slaves with no one else hunting raises unrest to ~120. 2 Scouts each nabbing 5 slaves raises my unrest to ~20. 2 Scouts failing to nab any slaves barely impacts unrest at all.

Uhm. Considering you can hunt with 8 scouts in a province with 0 tax and have virtually no unrest problems. It's not that unclear. On the other hand anything over 4 1 Blood with SDR's will ramp up the unrest beyond what is feasible to use taxes to control and you'll have to use patrollers.

Scouts are both more cost effective, time effective, safer and universally usable than blood magic blood hunters because of this.

There are only a few nations with the ability to hunt 'better' with less loss while at the same time not sacrificing something.

Other than that and needing a specific amount of Blood Slaves per turn for your progress, there is no reason not to use scouts except for the micromanagment aspect which could be nulled with a simple "Pool to Commander" command.

[archaeolept]

well, I stand corrected.

I guess I just hate the micromanagement cost, which surely counts for something - your attention to detail can only go so far, esp. in a multiplayer game.

there is no reason not to use scouts except for the micromanagment aspect which could be nulled with a simple "Pool to Commander" command.

or, better I think, a simple scout nerf...

[ March 13, 2004, 23:16: Message edited by: archaeolept ]

I don't think a Nerf is especially in order. Then it would effectively hurt at least 1 nation (Vanheim) and limit the use of Blood only to nations with cheap searchers. The only reason that you use scouts is they are the cheapest most availiable form of unit to do the job. It's only a bonus that they are stealthy. If they nerfed the Scouts ability to blood hunt then you'd just use Indep Commanders (50% Increase in Gold and significant resource cost which wouldn't allow you to recruit them in many provinces). If the entirety of all non-blood units blood hunting were nerfed, that would have a significant impact.

When a nation is geared towards blood, then a player is going to use scouts + whatever blood searchers he can grub up (Sages/random cheap blooders) in order to suppliment his blood slave economy. So it only helps blood nations in that regard by allowing them to use their blood mages to research early then go to blood hunting when they need it.

A Nation type that has a bonus (or penalty) to Blood Hunting (People allow it more or less) would be much more in line of what would be appropriate in my mind. However, how hard it would be to implement is as much a factor.

It has been talked about; but I don't know if there has been any real discussion about it.

[Spacepain]

Whew... lot of information there, esp. for a newbie. Let me try to summarize this.

1. Use scouts to harvest, because they are cheapest unit and cause the least unrest.

2. Build a lab in the provinces ur harvesting from to null the microing.

3. Give scouts SDR(what is that btw?)

4. Keep taxes down to prevent unrest

5. The pool resources button is your friend.

Now my only concern is the unrest. For nations like Marignon with Diabolic theme, they have to be slanted towards turmoil, making unrest even more common. How do you supress this with out eventually wasting the entire population of a province? I doubt that a high growth for domain would compensate.

[Sindai]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
I doubt that a high growth for domain would compensate.

Actually, it does. With Growth 3 you can do quite a lot of blood hunting in a province with 0% taxes and still have the population actually grow.

If you just can't afford a positive growth scale, though, you just have to move your hunting to another province once the population of the first one gets significantly depleted.

[Yossar]

Kind of off topic but as Mictlan do you need a lab to make your blood sacrificers automatically restocking slaves? If the answer is yes (which I think it is) do you have to use scouts to ferry slaves around? Or build a lab in every province with a temple? Or put temples in your blood hunting provinces?

Also if you do "pool slaves" it removes all slaves from your blood sacrificers too. Is there any way to play Mictlan without them being a micromanagement nightmare?

Originally posted by Spacepain:
3. Give scouts SDR(what is that btw?)

Sanguine Dowsing rod, a level 4 magic item.