Getting a blood economy going

[Huzurdaddi]

So getting a blood economy going seems to be pretty important in a multiplayer game. So I have to ask the pros: how do you do it? What turn do you start working on it?

Of course for a blood nation the answers are "I use blood mages and blood hunt" and "turn 1." But how do you do it with a non-blood nation?

Do you use scouts to blood hunt? Do you wait until you can get randoms which haev blood magic ( even if your nation does not have randoms and thus wait for indeps?)?

And by which turn do you realize that you *have* to get a blood economy working? By turn 10? By turn 20? By turn 30? And do you go into it whole hog or slowly?

Gimmie details!

[Norfleet]

A "blood" nation, obviously, can hunt with its blood mages. A non-blood mage is limited to either trying to inefficiently hunt with scouts, which is still doable, but no longer more efficient than doing so with all but the most expensive B1 mages, as it takes 9 scouts to achieve the hunting odds of 1 B1 mage with a rod.

Otherwise, sages are a popular choice: You're usually hiring a sage a turn anyway for research purposes, and at least a few of them will turn out to be B sages.

How much blood, and how fast you need it, greatly varies depending on your competition: At a basic level, blood is useful for forging the very nice blood items to equip your SCs with, or if you feel like Soul Contracting. There are also some very nice unique blood summons: However, if you're facing a real blood nation, it's likely that they'll get them first.

It's not absolutely *VITAL* to get a blood economy going at ANY point in the game, but it *DOES* seem necessary to get either Blood, or Death, working for you: Otherwise you have no access to lifedrain, which in turn, severely limits your options for equipping things. As a non-blood nation, I generally start thinking about a blood economy around turn 15ish, and set to work implementing it as soon as my more pressing and immediate concerns are filled. If I'm pitted against a blood nation that's actively playing his blood, this is probably too late to make a meaningful grab for the commander summons, but the forging is still nice.

[Cainehill]

I've never had a proper "blood economy" going in a MP game - I don't think I've summoned a single blood based critter, in fact.

I do find that blood is worth while to search for; even if it feels like "wasting" an expensive B1 mage (Vanheim and Pangaea's 280+ options come to mind) to blood search, it can be worthwhile just for the items that can be forged; single handed life stealing weapons and magic skill level raising items come to mind.

As Norfleet says - it can be difficult to get into the semi-finals in a game with experienced players without either blood or death. I confess I have much more experience with death, so my opinions on blood should be taken with a little ... salt and blood.

They both have huge advantages in some ways. Blood isn't reliant on finding magic sites - only population, thus isn't affected by site settings on a game, nor luck. On the other paw, death isn't reliant on micromanagement, and imo is more generally useful - that opinion may be tainted by my preferences in the game though, a lot of CW especially, and some other themes with death scales added (Helheim Vanheim, etc) and not so many games with the proper blood nations.

But - if you're not going all out blood (as in, heavy blood research and relying on blood summons) then it seems you don't need to get the blood going all that soon. My reasoning being that the blood does you no good unless you're going either heavily for blood or construction research.

If you're going for construction to use blood, and don't have any reasonably priced blood hunters, it's better to wait until you're near the construction level you need to capitalize. Scrounge up 5 or 10 or 20 slaves just as you get near to constructing sanguine searching sticks and use the SSS. A single blood 1 mage with a stick can garner far more than you would get from most magic sites - I've seen B1 or B2's (not sure which) with SSS get over 10 in a turn.

That makes it fairly easy to bring in forging incomes, if not summoning incomes.

[Huzurdaddi]

It's not absolutely *VITAL* to get a blood economy going at ANY point in the game, but it *DOES* seem necessary to get either Blood, or Death, working for you: Otherwise you have no access to lifedrain, which in turn, severely limits your options for equipping things. As a non-blood nation, I generally start thinking about a blood economy around turn 15ish, and set to work implementing it as soon as my more pressing and immediate concerns are filled. If I'm pitted against a blood nation that's actively playing his blood, this is probably too late to make a meaningful grab for the commander summons, but the forging is still nice.

Thanks for the tips.

I can tell from your tone about soul contracts that you don't think much of them. I suppose this is due to the value many players place on SC's. I guess they are the way to go and that troops are kind of useless.

Too bad I really like soul contracts!

[Tuna-Fish]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
I suppose this is due to the value many players place on SC's. I guess they are the way to go and that troops are kind of useless.

Depends totally on what you are facing. While troops alone almost never (mandragoras spring to mind...) beat sc's, but troops and mages together can easily be as effective, or more, as the best sc's. The main difference is that the sc's are a lot more mobile, as it's lot easier to give out-of-battle flying to one unit than 100. But having a mage/troops spearhead taking out the nastiest sc's can be very worthwhile. The problem there ofc is that mages/troops are a lot more vulnerable to stuff like murdering winter etc.

When designing anti-sc mage group, you need 2 things.
1st, something to stop the sc from killing your expensive mages. This can be staff of storms, that slows down fliers long enough so the mage can do his thing, Enlivend statues or pale riders in large enough quantity that the sc can't beat them all too quick, or just wads of militia or crossbreed fodder with Will of the fates and mistform cast, assuming your killing squad isn't using anything hp-dependent.

2nd, something to kill the sc. This is usually a single mage casting some particularly nasty spell. This spell should not be resistable by the target's mr or any of the resistances the target has. Good examples range from drain life (because of the fatigue this causes to the target this is very good), banefire, solar rays (as a plus nothing upsets your oppenent more than getting his best and finest killed by massed castings of lowly solar rays...), stellar cascades, and my personal favourite, Petrify, whose paralysation cannot be resisted.

(edit)some spelling fixes(/edit)

[ July 11, 2004, 17:51: Message edited by: Tuna-Fish ]

[Huzurdaddi]

Tuna-Fish,

I guess you are right. In the current game I am playing I should keep my 3 largism mage backed armies around. They do have a use ( even though they cost an arm and a leg in maintance ).

But as the game goes on ( it's like turn 40 I think ). I *really* have to start relying upon summons, and by summons I mean super combatants.

Still I would have thought that adding 25 or so devils to a SC would be a good thing! Wish I could do it, but man my blood hunting is going cruddy! I would have loved to turn my entire economy into blood but it is proving very hard to accomplish.

[Boron]

i haven't seen a real sc yet since i am only at ~turn 10 in all my mp games which are my first ones

but as Huzurdaddi i always liked "normal" summons like devils , ghosts ....

so are there any summons which can defeat even very well equipped sc's ?

like a horde of devils , ghosts , wights ?
or a horde of vampires ?

[SelfishGene]

The most nearly broken site in the game is the Circle of Blood - well, or something like that. It gives a free lab and access to 2 blood/2 death mages for a mere 100 gold. Is there any better mage per cost in the game? Although ive only found it once, id go so far as to say whomever found that in multi would would be the favorite to win.

[Sheap]

Here are my thoughts:

I think there are three ways you can approach blood. This is because blood magic is all segregated out into its own path. Using blood incurs a large research overhead! Therefore if you are not a strong blood nation you probably do not want to bother with blood research unless you really haven't anything else to do. Therefore, either you are a real blood nation, you are using blood only to forge, or you are not using blood at all. Which pretenders/nations/themes are best used in each role is left as an exercise for the reader

I like the Soul Contract, although its value is greatly reduced if you haven't got a Dwarven Hammer. A handful of devils are just strong flying units, but a horde of them can be devastating. If you are a real blood nation, you can conjure up a Horde from Hell and use the devil commander to lead the devils that the Soul Contract produces. Otherwise just use any undead leader. Personally I prefer to put the Soul Contract on a stealthy unit and send it along with the group. That way you don't have to worry about losing your income of devils if you happen to lose a battle somewhere along the way.

A horde of vampires MIGHT have a chance of killing a non-undead SC because of their undead/life drain combo. On the other hand, ethereal units have difficulty engaging SCs because they all have magic weapons. The SC will kill one vampire per attack unless by some miracle he misses. So you are looking at losing 4-6 vampires every round. You'd need a whole bunch and you are going to win by fatigue, not by outfighting the SC. If you are fighting in friendly dominion, of course, you don't have much risk with this approach.

Ghosts - mostly useful because of ethereal and fear - neither works against SCs.

Devils - maybe. Devils are expensive to throw away in this fashion, even if you have soul contracts. Devils are part of this complete breakfast.

Wights I prefer to use as "shock troops" since they have excellent (though not mindless) morale, good protection, and bane blades. Unless you can cast Legion of Wights, they are too expensive to produce in "horde" quantities. The trouble is they don't fly and are exceptionally slow so the SC will get to pick and choose who to attack. He will probably attack the commander. Although you might look at a bunch of normal wights as a way of increasing the effectiveness of a Bane Lord SC, by giving him extra distraction and firepower.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Sheap:
So you are looking at losing 4-6 vampires every round. You'd need a whole bunch and you are going to win by fatigue, not by outfighting the SC. If you are fighting in friendly dominion, of course, you don't have much risk with this approach.

Meh. If you're a blood nation, you can easily drive enemy dominion before you with the power of Blood Sacrifice, insuring that your vampires will always be able to fight in friendly dominion, and thus are immortal. Very few SCs hold up well against a Mile Wide Mass Of Vampires. In addition, the Vampire Lords themselves are formidable SCs and can very well attempt going toe-to-toe against the opponent.

Devils - maybe. Devils are expensive to throw away in this fashion, even if you have soul contracts. Devils are part of this complete breakfast.

Devils can be very effective at mauling many types of SCs, due to their innate high attack Ratings and ability to fly. They're also easy to replace, especially if you have soul contracts, which means you can easily be generating dozens, or even as many as a hundred, devils per turn.

Their heat auras have also been known to induce combustion, and fatigue....even on things which seems to be fireimmune, although this part is unconfirmed.