Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Graeme Dice]

Soapyfrog said:
20-50 is a LOT... it really adds up. Typically you can have 20 soul contracts by turn 40 or so PLUS Ice and Arch devils, and you can be building 2-3 per turn after that.

Doubtful. That's an expenditure of 1200 to 3000 blood slaves, not counting what you spent on the devil commanders. To get 3000 slaves requires about 500-600 mage turns, which means that you had to have 15 mages hunting for the entire game to that point. That's not particularly likely when facing Abysia, but could be possible with Mictlan if they haven't worked on their dominion at all. That's also a minimum of 5 provinces used for blood hunting, with the associated loss of income. You must be playing on absolutely massive maps if you can afford to have that many provinces devoted to blod hunting. After all, 5 provinces would be a quarter of your empire on normally populated maps.

Certainly, that is how you kill devils!! They'll be back though...

That doesn't matter if you kill them without taking losses.

This cost does not seem high to me... A blood nation with 10-12 provinces being hunted can easily generate upwards of 150 blood per turn.

If you have 10-12 provinces being hunted, then your empire must be massive, or else you won't have the gold income to keep up in your research.

You surely wont have level 9 blood before I already have a pretty nice devil factory going.

Level 9 magic in one path with level 5-6 in others by turn 40 is easily doable for any nation with decent researchers.

Perhaps on a small map. I agree you definitely have to make it to turn 30 or so, although having Ice Devils by turn 13 should be a nice boost to your survivability.

Ice devils in turn 13 won't do you much good because they won't be equipped with anything.