Blood Indies

[Aezeal]

Hmmm personally I don't think it's worth the effort of going into blood and do the research there if you aren't a blood nation.. working with indies for your blood income.. seems unviable.. first get some slaves with your lousy indies and then forge SDR, then you can still only get one weak bloodmage a turn etc etc.. why even bother and why not focus on the strenghts of what you do have?

[konming]

Depends, Ulm has plenty of uses for blood without researching blood, which is also true for pretty much all nations with lots of earth mages. Then every nation with expensive old capital mages loves blood.

True if your only blood mage is lore master/spectre/etc. then it is not worthwhile to research blood until all other useful field are researched. But if you do get lucky and stumble upon garnet or blood henge, there are several good blood spells early on, esp. if you are using CBM, which greatly reduced the level and cost for many blood spells.

Lastly blood has some of the best bonus sites.

[JimMorrison]

Forging.

Even if all you do with it is Lifelong Protections and Bloodstones, you will be better off than before.

But if you find a good site in the first year, that is more than plenty enough time to ramp up a good economy, but it still doesn't force you to go to Blood9 in order to get useful things done.

[thejeff]

There are also several nations who have national spells that summon blood mages once you've got one blood mage empowered enough to use get them.

The Monkeys and MA Mictlan come to mind.

And for some nations, Blood Stones and other blood items are enough to justify spending some time with scouts.

[Crust]

You can also recruit Conjurers and Circle Masters from The Lodge (blood) and Black Tower (death).

*edit* Thread had more than one page...

[Gregstrom]

I think if you can get bloodhenge druids or circle masters it's worth running a small blood economy - either unit is about as efficient as many of the national blood hunters. If you can only get garnet amazons or similar, then it might be best to just hunt for item construction.

[vfb]

And don't forget Marverni, they can blood sacrifice even though they have no natural blood paths on national mages. So it's worth it for them to get into some hunting too, even if it's just with scouts.

[Gregstrom]

Oh yes - now there's a nation begging to diversify. They may not be begging quite as hard as BL or MA Mict, but they're up there.

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, I'm playing Marverni right now so that's why I asked.
So you'd say getting blood for them is a good idea?
Appart from blood stones and maybe a reinvigorating communion it seems not to offer very much. Blood sacrifice isn't really needed I think, as you can build temples for 200 gold allready.

[Gregstrom]

Mass blood sacrifice is AFAIK quite a good way to suddenly get a dominion kill on somebody. And when your best researcher and main battle mage can do the sacrificing, it's a tool waiting to be used.

And of course the benefit of a host of blood stones can't be understated either.