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

[Boron]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Am I the only one who thinks that, for a long term game, taking plenty of blood on the pretender to start with is a waste of good design points? You don't NEED to take construction 6 to get boosters in a world that allows empowerment, and blood is the one path in which it is easy to gain enough gems (slaves) to empower early on.

Unless I specifically take a pretender who starts with blood (hello, vampire queen), I think blood 0 (high path cost) or 1-3 (low path cost) is quite enough to start with. The points freed up thus can be used for something else entirely, such as a nicer SC chassis, somebody with good magic skills in the lacking national areas (perhaps even a minor bless effect or two for your sacred troops), or better scales (perhaps allowing more bloodhunting without hurting income) - and blood empowerment will still see you reach blood 5 reasonably early at the same cost as 1-3 contracts. It does mean that the devil factory will start a few rounds later, but in my mind it makes for a stronger nation in the long run. ...if you invested the points freed up by not going blood 5 from the start wisely, that is.

Construction 6 gives you hellsword + blood thorn anyway so why empower when construction 6 is such an important goal for a blood nation anyways ?

Or you research Blood 5/6 first , use your blood for the uniques and then rush to construction 6