Cost efficient blood hunting

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Empower costs ~35 blood slaves. 25 slave booster costs ~32 before forging bonus (if any). .

?????
Empower does not cost ~35 slaves. Blood boosters cost 25 before forge bonus.

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

The increase between B2 and B3 (effective) is about 1.4 blood slaves. 25 turns for empower. ~23 for brazen vessel.

Waiting #20 turns for a return on investment is rarely worthwhile in MP. If you're talking about equipping, say, 20 blood hunters with thorns or skulls, the 500 slaves (~375 with hammers) you just burned could probably have been used to summon a demon army and conquer another player (or to prevent an invasion).

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Now, boosting further could be done in a cost conscious way with a blood thorn, even to B4 effect or just 1 more B for any B3+ blood hunter. In those case the RoR is equal to the forge cost of the booster. Armor of souls with a 50% forge bonus takes only 25 (adding the cost of the forger's turn) turns to pay off for even your b6 souped up warlock.

See above. And if you have a B6 warlock, why isn't he doing something like making Soul Contracts rather than blood hunting? If you've boosted all your warlocks to B6, why haven't you won the game yet?

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Even a modest 25% forge bonus makes the bloodthorn and brazen vessel attractive, especially for low level blood hunters, especially earlier in the game, if you're in a good position.

They're vastly less attractive than dowsing rods, whatever you do. If for some reason you have an extremely limited supply of blood hunters, then maybe you can afford to blow your slave reserves into boosters for hunting use. Otherwise, the spend is less effective, especially in terms of return on investment, than having more hunters and only using rods.

[BigDaddy]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

?????
Empower does not cost ~35 slaves. Blood boosters cost 25 before forge bonus.

Waiting #20 turns for a return on investment is rarely worthwhile in MP. If you're talking about equipping, say, 20 blood hunters with thorns or skulls, the 500 slaves (~375 with hammers) you just burned could probably have been used to summon a demon army and conquer another player (or to prevent an invasion).

See above. And if you have a B6 warlock, why isn't he doing something like making Soul Contracts rather than blood hunting? If you've boosted all your warlocks to B6, why haven't you won the game yet?

They're vastly less attractive than dowsing rods, whatever you do. If for some reason you have an extremely limited supply of blood hunters, then maybe you can afford to blow your slave reserves into boosters for hunting use. Otherwise, the spend is less effective, especially in terms of return on investment, than having more hunters and only using rods.

Ya, whatever, I'm not going to deal with this whole thing you typed out, but just mention that empowering a guy who is a blood hunter costs the blood slaves he would have found that turn, so it costs ~35 slaves.

Yada, yada, yada...

[Gregstrom]

So you're ignoring the slaves spent in the empowerment? That seems odd. And how many blood hunters get 35 slaves/turn?

[BigDaddy]

It costs 30 slaves to empower a B1, say, Mictlan priest. He probably could have gotten 4-5 blood slaves with a dousing rod.

[Gregstrom]

That makes more sense. Why not compare the return on investment from spending the same number of slaves on dowsing rods for new blood hunters (again, assume Mictlan Priests)?

[BigDaddy]

That probably pays for itself the next 2 turns. 50% * 5 = 2.5/turn

The first turn pays for most of the SDR, and the next one pays more than it off, unless, as occasionally happens, they don't find any, in which cast it takes 3 turns. The probability of it taking 3 turns, for any specific priest is ~ (1 - ((.9)^3))

If he used a forging assist, it would likely be paid back the first turn. ~10% of the time it would not.

If you roll the numbers into an aggregate you'd endup with a ror of just over 2 turns without a hammer, and just over 1 with one.

The RoR is much longer with a B2 or B3 forger and lower if you use Forge of the Ancients and a forging item on a non-blood mage to make the item.

[thejeff]

Because it gets harder to compare. You have to figure in the costs of buying the priests, of having more provinces being hunted and thus producing less gold. The opportunity cost of using those castle slots to buy blood hunters instead of researchers or combat mages.
I agree in general, especially with nations like Mictlan who have cheap blood hunters, the other costs are generally low.
I can see two cases where you might want to empower hunters: Where you only have expensive B1 mages, like Vanjarls. Or capital only ones - Warlocks? Then the cost of getting more blood hunters is much higher.

Or when you are low on provinces to hunt. Few higher level blood mages seem to generate less unrest/slave than more low level hunters, so you might want to concentrate.

[BigDaddy]

Just keep in mind that you can "slave hoarde" by increasing the blood level of your mages, if you are in a position that makes it prudent to do so. There is a real RoR on each level you boost them. That third point of effective blood pays off fairly fast, especially with a decent forging discount.

Also, your slaves aren't doing you any good sitting in the dungeon, at some point you need to work harder to keep them working for you.

It isn't so much how many gems you have, as how fast and which ones you can spend.

[Aleph]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Also, vampires as blood hunters, I assume you mean vampire lords (or whatever their name). Aren't they more useful auto-summoning, or fighting or casting spells. Besides, they come into play mid to end game, by then you either have an established blood economy or you'll probably never have one.

Realize this is a deep resurrection of a post in a topic that was already necroed, but just getting back into Dominions after some time away and wanted to comment on this.

LA Ulm's Vampire Counts are the vampires I think of as blood hunters - 44 blood slaves for a B2 hunter, or 49 blood slaves for the equivalent of a B3 via an SDR. Granted, from a pure blood economy perspective they are notably less efficient than Mictlan's Tlahuelpuchi, however:

a. Mictlan's comes at Blood 6 while LA Ulm's comes at Blood 0, which makes them available at very different points in the game.
b. Vampire Counts are a spammable unit that can take on many roles throughout the game, while Tlahuelpuchi are likely only worth their cost as bloodhunters and in rare cases assassins (as they compete against Infernal Disease at the same blood level). In particular, on top of the advantages of immortality, regeneration, and slightly superior stats across the board, Vampire Counts make significantly better demon leaders than do Tlahuelpuchi.
c. the freespawn of the Counts plays an integral role in LA Ulm armies as chaff for Ulm's excellent Rangers. (However: does someone who knows the game better than I do know if thralls have gold upkeep? Used to have EDI's database bookmarked, can't find it now)
d. Vampire Counts are likely the best that LA Ulm can do for a bloodhunter, while the extreme efficiency of the Mictlan Priest makes him quite difficult to out-do (save for MA Mictlan, as mentioned elsewhere).

All that said, anyone better at math than I am want to throw in on efficiency of maintenance-free summons as bloodhunters? As more recent posts are looking at opportunity costs of bloodhunting, we should be able to calculate an average initial gold expenditure per bloodslave, then multiply that by number of bloodslaves spent to summon the creature. That will give us the total "lifetime" gold cost of the summons, which can then be used comparatively to see how long it takes a particular summon to surpass a non-summoned hunter, both in terms of his initial gold cost AND upkeep (earlier comparisons seemed to bypass the former, which does matter). How long, for example, would it take for a Vampire Count to out-efficient a Mictlan Priest? A decade? A century?

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Aleph

(However: does someone who knows the game better than I do know if thralls have gold upkeep? Used to have EDI's database bookmarked, can't find it now)

They have a gold cost of 1, which would, in huge numbers, lead to some upkeep.

Also, Edi's database is here: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42819.

It's also linked in his .sig, so if you find any posts by Edi, you can find the db, assuming you don't have signature display disabled.