Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[nakomus]

Soul contracts don’t give gems; they don’t even give blood slaves. They give devils. They are only worth anything at all if devils are what you need. Its also not possible to set up a exponential growth situation with soul contracts, since you cant turn devils into soul contracts.

The soul contract can never pay for another soul contract for free (as is the case for the 20-turn clam with alchemy. This is a very important difference.

Clams give you astral gems, which through alchemy can be used to do almost anything, including get more clams.

Soul contracts get you devils, which are only good for flying around and smashing things. Granted this a pretty generally useful ability, but not nearly as flexible as a high astral income.

I like devils a lot, but I haven’t found soul contracts are a good investment in a close run game. I’d rather have my devils right now, keeping me alive, or killing off the other guy.

[Huzurdaddi]

The soul contract can never pay for another soul contract for free (as is the case for the 20-turn clam with alchemy. This is a very important difference.

I agree with that. 100% correct.

Soul contracts get you devils, which are only good for flying around and smashing things. Granted this a pretty generally useful ability, but not nearly as flexible as a high astral income.

Not as flexible true. However the soul contract produces the end product. You need not spend the caster time ( which is important ) to convert your gems into something that can smash things.

I like devils a lot, but I haven’t found soul contracts are a good investment in a close run game. I’d rather have my devils right now, keeping me alive, or killing off the other guy.

I would imagine that in close game you are spending your blood slaves on SC devils not on devils. It's very hard to actually summon devils in any quanity ( except once you reach blood 9 ).

[Tuidjy]

Once you commit to devils, you are stuck with them. Your opponent will
learn about what you are doing, and will have about ten turns to prepare
for them. As someone who was utterly destroyed the first time he faced
devils, and who has utterly destroyed any devil hoarding opponent since,
I will stick with clams and fetishes, thank you very much.

Thank you for bringing back the memory of decimating and routing more than
a hundred devils and abysyan intantries with two indy sorceresses and a
jade amazonne! And then doing it again, because the guy was stuck with the
soul contract strategy.

[Huzurdaddi]

Thank you for bringing back the memory of decimating and routing more than a hundred devils

You are special yes indeed. No one else has ever obliterated tons of devils.

The assertion is: *if* you think devils are worth 7 blood a pop then it seems that Soul Contracts return more than other investment types of strategies.

[Yossar]

Huzurdaddi said:You are special yes indeed. No one else has ever obliterated tons of devils.

Never?

[Cohen]

Devils are easily killed under storm, with massive spellfire or wrathful skies.

Devils aren't so strong ...
Stormies are, but they're limited to lightning attack, that could be avoided by Lightn Immunity.

[PDF]

Even if there are ways to deal with Demons, the fact is that they are bloodily (!) cheap when you got them through Contracts. I do think- and other experienced players too- that Contracts are somewhat overpowered. The contract takes some time to pay off for sure, but with a Blood nation you can churn a very high supply of slaves and transform them into Devil-factories without even having to research Blood. Best of all you have to use 1 mage-turn to make the contract but no time is lost summoning the devils, that come automatically after that.
It's not a rush strategy, but an income of 60 slaves/turn is possible relatively early, allowing mass-production of though devils. Tell me about one other good summon for such a low cost ...

[Boron]

Cohen said:
Devils are easily killed under storm, with massive spellfire or wrathful skies.

Devils aren't so strong ...
Stormies are, but they're limited to lightning attack, that could be avoided by Lightn Immunity.

Interesting discussion

Cohen is right that especially against Airnations devils are not that useful .

A comparison Soul contracts vs. Clams is not good imo because both need different sources .
So you can compare them with Bloodstones somewhat and mainly with Vampirelords .

After you summoned your unique blood SCs there is not so much left to spend blood on :
- Bloodstones
- Good items like Hellsword / Blood Thorn
- Vampire lords
- The lvl 9 summoning spells for Devils/Storm demons etc.

If you are a 2nd tier bloodnation like pangenea you can bloodhunt a bit and use it only for soul contracts and don't need to research blood at all .
As a 1st tier bloodnation you don't need to research higher than blood 5/6/7 then too urgently if you want e.g. only the Ice devils or the Arch devils .

In the offensive Devils are better , in the defensive Vampire lords with vampires are better .
If e.g. Ulm finds independent bloodmages and brings up the FotA this would be horrible for Soul Contract forging too .

[PvK]

Not putting your income into staying alive during a war is of course a disadvantage and a risk. Winning a war is better than camping and investing, unless the camper attacks soon after you win, when you are still weak.

In general, that seems to all work fine to me.

On huge maps and long-term, peaceful games, hoarding strategies will naturally be more effective than on small ones.

Clearly, it is possible to get huge results from some of these, eventually. In some cases, perhaps some tweaks could help.

Clams - would be good to limit to mages, and/or have a world clam income per turn that caps the total clam astral income (1/water province in the world was my old suggestion).

Soul Contracts - are supposed to be risky, but it seems like the risk is quite low. Might be good to tweak this risk up a bit, and to disallow use on units that don't have souls, or that already have a soul contract (for logical, thematic reasons, mostly).

Fever Fetishes - are supposed to have some additional cost via disease. It'd be good if they didn't work on undead (was that patched yet?), and perhaps if they occasionally diseased a random unit in the same province through contagion (this would have a natural and logical negative effect of hoarding), and perhaps of occasional health crisis for the wearer (take some open-ended damage - possibly fatal, possibly causing affliction).

PvK

[Graeme Dice]

PvK said:
It'd be good if they didn't work on undead (was that patched yet?),

This wouldn't be good. This would have no more effect than making people right-click through 50 scouts a turn to check their hitpoints. As it is now, they cost more resources when you can spend 3 death gems to put them on a mound king.