Are devils worth 7 blood each?

Pickles said:
The difference is that after 5 or 10 provinces or whatever you can expand no more - it is bounded.

It's only bounded by the size of the map. I can apply my Elephant Investment Strategy to other players' provinces as well as independents (in fact, my ROI might increase because the defenses in such province will - on average - be weaker than, say, size 6 Indeps).

Or are we taking enemy action into account now? We certainly weren't in the previous calculations.

Mark