Miniblood nations - rates

[Valerius]

15 slaves/turn is fine for forging and some blood sacrificing but you won't get too far with summoning. I'd say 100 blood slaves/turn for a heavy blood nation is too low. When playing MA Aby (good, but cap only, blood hunters) I'm looking for at least 150, preferably 200. With Mictlan (which I haven't played) I'd expect even higher numbers. When playing Van my goal has typically been 75-100/turn (if I can get GoNB up then Van's horribly cost-inefficient blood hunters become more tolerable and I aim for higher numbers ). Of course map size affects these numbers but this is roughly what I'd aim for in an 8-12 player game.

As for Van post-SDR, I'd suggest using all of your B2 Vanadrotts for blood hunting. Additional, you'll want some blood boosters around and when they are not being used in forging/combat give them to Vanjarls to get a few extra blood hunters. I haven't played any post CBM 1.6 games but I can't see using Vanjarls without a booster/SDR - just too cost inefficent at that point. So, if by turn 50 you've split your cap recruitment 40% dwarves and 60% Vanadrott's you'll have about 7 B2 Vanadrott's hunting and maybe another 3 Vanjarls with boosters. This doesn't seem that bad but the fact that you can't offload most blood hunting duties to Vanjarls means that those B2 Vanadrott's will have to stay focused on that and also be your main options for forging, summoning and combat use (blood magic does have some useful combat spells). I'd suggest summoning Vampire Lords as soon as possible to help with all this.

The thing with Vanheim is that while they are very inefficient blood hunters, and in that sense are a "miniblood" nation, blood magic is very important to them and I recommend making it a high priority and making the best of the current situation (which will hopefully be addressed in a future CBM release).

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by Valerius

15 slaves/turn is fine for forging and some blood sacrificing but you won't get too far with summoning. I'd say 100 blood slaves/turn for a heavy blood nation is too low. When playing MA Aby (good, but cap only, blood hunters) I'm looking for at least 150, preferably 200. With Mictlan (which I haven't played) I'd expect even higher numbers. When playing Van my goal has typically been 75-100/turn (if I can get GoNB up then Van's horribly cost-inefficient blood hunters become more tolerable and I aim for higher numbers ). Of course map size affects these numbers but this is roughly what I'd aim for in an 8-12 player game.

As for Van post-SDR, I'd suggest using all of your B2 Vanadrotts for blood hunting. Additional, you'll want some blood boosters around and when they are not being used in forging/combat give them to Vanjarls to get a few extra blood hunters. I haven't played any post CBM 1.6 games but I can't see using Vanjarls without a booster/SDR - just too cost inefficent at that point. So, if by turn 50 you've split your cap recruitment 40% dwarves and 60% Vanadrott's you'll have about 7 B2 Vanadrott's hunting and maybe another 3 Vanjarls with boosters. This doesn't seem that bad but the fact that you can't offload most blood hunting duties to Vanjarls means that those B2 Vanadrott's will have to stay focused on that and also be your main options for forging, summoning and combat use (blood magic does have some useful combat spells). I'd suggest summoning Vampire Lords as soon as possible to help with all this.

The thing with Vanheim is that while they are very inefficient blood hunters, and in that sense are a "miniblood" nation, blood magic is very important to them and I recommend making it a high priority and making the best of the current situation (which will hopefully be addressed in a future CBM release).

Thanks for the reply Valerius your post was the answer I was looking for.

Agreed the 15 blood slaves/turn is low, but before I started really playing around with what could be done I figured I'd get a bench mark first.

I slightly disagree with your post sdr analysis. I'm thinking more to start it up with as many B2s & B1s as soon as possible and get it going. Then get blood boosters (con4) and pass them to B1s to make them B2s so as to free up some of the B2s for summons, etc. and continue to scale upward. Perhaps an inefficient approach but I don't see much else. Even waiting for turn 50 with ~7B2 drotts, isn't ideal. And while I agree vamp lords would be a nice add on that's really pushing mid/late game with respect to research (blood7) when there are other tasty battle spells that could be researched up the alt/evo/ench trees.

Definately not counting either out, but imo the blood econ should already be pumping at a relatively good pace by that point (even if only 25 slaves/turn that's 1 booster/turn which will lead to more slaves, etc.), and in all likelihood I won't be putting blood on the the pretender so I'll need to empower one drott to B4.

I also agree that blood is important to Van, and should be exploited to it's fullest (def cloud trap jarl sabbaths sound sneaky and fun ).

Curious though on your 75-100 blood slave eco, what exactly were you making/summoning? Item wise Vans choices are meh. Was it simply to field mass amounts of storm demons?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Slobby

I slightly disagree with your post sdr analysis. I'm thinking more to start it up with as many B2s & B1s as soon as possible and get it going. Then get blood boosters (con4) and pass them to B1s to make them B2s so as to free up some of the B2s for summons, etc. and continue to scale upward. Perhaps an inefficient approach but I don't see much else. Even waiting for turn 50 with ~7B2 drotts, isn't ideal. And while I agree vamp lords would be a nice add on that's really pushing mid/late game with respect to research (blood7) when there are other tasty battle spells that could be researched up the alt/evo/ench trees.

Definately not counting either out, but imo the blood econ should already be pumping at a relatively good pace by that point (even if only 25 slaves/turn that's 1 booster/turn which will lead to more slaves, etc.), and in all likelihood I won't be putting blood on the the pretender so I'll need to empower one drott to B4.

I agree with your approach - the turn 50 example was just a point of reference of what you might have ramped up to as you enter the late game. I would definitely start early, as you have planned. As each B2 Vanadrott is recruited put them right to work blood hunting. And even if you don't have an immediate need for the blood slaves there's something to be said for stockpiling them since you can't sharply ramp up your yield the way the major blood powers can. The only thing I'm not sure about is using B1 Vanjarls without a booster to blood hunt. Of course you'll want some around anyway for thugging and when not otherwise occupied there's no reason not to have them blood hunting (since they're almost equally bad researchers ) but I don't think I'd recruit them expressly for blood hunting (unless of course I had a booster ready for them).

I also agree with your research priority. When playing Van I wouldn't focus that much on blood until I had key spells like rain of stones and fog warriors researched. Vampire lords and high level blood magic are long term goals. For me, blood is key for Van's late game but early/mid game I'm not relying on it the way I would when playing Aby.

Originally Posted by Slobby

Curious though on your 75-100 blood slave eco, what exactly were you making/summoning? Item wise Vans choices are meh. Was it simply to field mass amounts of storm demons?

Well, I really like the synergy between being able to push your dominion with blood sacrifice and using immortal units. At 66 slaves each, vampire lords can use of a lot of that income. Then blood sacrificing from multiple forts using jade knives could easily use up another 15-20 slaves. If I've researched blood 9 I'll also make use of the various spells that summon a batch of demons. If I think there's some still available I'll also go for the unique blood summons. And of course if you're regularly using spells like life for a life that adds up as well.

Actually, earlier in the game a lot of my blood income went into preparing for a late game blood economy. Invariably I'd empower an N mage so I could forge jade knives. I'd probably continue empowering that mage so he could forge armor of twisting thorns and that would open up the other blood boosters (as well as B/N spells if you want to use some of those).

I didn't make much use of the low level blood summons since Van has a good troop lineup (more so MA than EA). If I do use low level summons I aim for something that summons several units at once. While the idea of an upkeep free lightning bolt caster for 4 slaves is appealing, I never made much use of storm demons when they had to be summoned one at a time. I think because blood hunting is already costly and then I have to have a B2 Vanadrott or a Vanjarl with a booster do the summoning. Especially given the demands on those units in CBM 1.8, summoning demons one at a time doesn't seem worth it.

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Well, I really like the synergy between being able to push your dominion with blood sacrifice and using immortal units. At 66 slaves each, vampire lords can use of a lot of that income. Then blood sacrificing from multiple forts using jade knives could easily use up another 15-20 slaves. If I've researched blood 9 I'll also make use of the various spells that summon a batch of demons. If I think there's some still available I'll also go for the unique blood summons. And of course if you're regularly using spells like life for a life that adds up as well.

Actually, earlier in the game a lot of my blood income went into preparing for a late game blood economy. Invariably I'd empower an N mage so I could forge jade knives. I'd probably continue empowering that mage so he could forge armor of twisting thorns and that would open up the other blood boosters (as well as B/N spells if you want to use some of those).

I didn't make much use of the low level blood summons since Van has a good troop lineup (more so MA than EA). If I do use low level summons I aim for something that summons several units at once. While the idea of an upkeep free lightning bolt caster for 4 slaves is appealing, I never made much use of storm demons when they had to be summoned one at a time. I think because blood hunting is already costly and then I have to have a B2 Vanadrott or a Vanjarl with a booster do the summoning. Especially given the demands on those units in CBM 1.8, summoning demons one at a time doesn't seem worth it.

Agreed, but with jade knives now unique I don't know how worthwhile blood saccing is.

Actually I find the hearts of life to be quite useful and am now planning on spamming the hell outta them for thugging/casting purposes. Without them thugging options for Van, eh not so much.

And speaking of empowering. A fun trick might be to put W and E on the pretender to summon Grendelkin. Empower the Grendelkin in blood, give maybe a blood thorn and definately hydra armor and ring of regen then script blood vengence/reinvigorate/attack. Will still need to test that one but on paper looks good...

All in all in terms of summons, there really is nothing there for Van until Blood 7 & 9, however with the scaling upward blood eco through forging boosters, forging hearts, empowering, and combat casting, I'm now of the opinion that there are definate uses of slaves in the early and especially the mid game of Van and can't really foresee too much stock piling going on.

All the more reason for the blood eco, inefficient as it is, to start sooner than later .