Paths of Blood

[Velusion]

Evilhomer said:
Blood magic is very potent, but unless you are playing a blood nation, it is not worth your effort.

I sort of disagree. If you game is reasonably large and you get started early enough or find blood indy mages you can certainly use blood to supplement your existing magic paths in the late game. In the early and mid games it won't pay out, but in the late game it will be handy to have.

[thejeff]

The interesting thing about LA Ulm is that it's the only blood nation that can rely on summoned blood hunters. Allowing it to bootstrap itself, once it starts getting blood.
It's recruitable blood mages aren't to expensive for hunting, but midgame, the Counts are cheap, no support blood hunters.
And with lots of freespawn chaff, you should be able to trash you're economy.

I've never actually tried this mind you.

[Sombre]

In Single Player, which is mostly what I play, I usually go for a little bit of blood if the nation has access to some of it, like MA Jotuns, LA Vaetti, Pangaea, Jomon broken etc.

In multiplayer I'd still be playing for fun rather than to go all out for the win, so I still might use blood as a secondary magic path. I just wish low level blood was a bit better to encourage some relatively minor use of it for nations that aren't primarily blood.

[vfb]

thejeff said:
The interesting thing about LA Ulm is that it's the only blood nation that can rely on summoned blood hunters. Allowing it to bootstrap itself, once it starts getting blood.
It's recruitable blood mages aren't to expensive for hunting, but midgame, the Counts are cheap, no support blood hunters.
And with lots of freespawn chaff, you should be able to trash you're economy.

I've never actually tried this mind you.

Mictlan can blood hunt with its 2B Tlahuelpuchis, 25B to summon. They've got most of the advantages of Vampire Counts too (flight, stealth).

[Evilhomer]

I sort of disagree. If you game is reasonably large and you get started early enough or find blood indy mages you can certainly use blood to supplement your existing magic paths in the late game. In the early and mid games it won't pay out, but in the late game it will be handy to have.

Generally speaking of course, theres exception to everything. You must realise that you are giving up other stuff to research blood and getting a blood economy going. As someone previosuly mentioned the key is finding or having access to cheap blood mages.

[Baalz]

I agree with Velusion, if I find indie blood mages I pretty much *ALWAYS* get a little blood slave flow going, and even without I sometimes try and do it the hard way (blood hunting with scouts to get enough to empower). Playing with just a little blood is much different than playing a blood nation, but with 3, blood-2 hunters in a province (or blood-1 with a sanguine rod) you'll average 16 blood slaves per month. If you can manage to squeak out two of these, you'll pile up almost a hundred slaves every three turns, but even with just 3 blood hunters you'll still pull in a couple hundred blood slaves a year for a small impact to your gold income. Just do whatever you're gonna do without blood, then when you're ready you've got more than enough slaves to empower a mage a couple times and still cast/forge something useful.

Here's a couple real nice things that you can get with just a little blood on the side.

Take a nation with a forge bonus like MA Ulm or LA Caelum and crank out half priced blood stones. After whatever empowering you need you can forge 2 blood stones per turn with the income from one province of blood hunters. Not bad for a side strategy.

Forge boots of youth for your painfully old, yet indispensable mages.

How about black hearts for some really wicked assassin possibilities.

You'll have the income to summon a couple Ice/Arch Devils a year if you've got the research to spare for blood. Nothing to base a whole strategy around, but as a side bonus it's hard to beat.