Blood hunting with blood 1 mages

[llamabeast]

As I understand it, the reasons for the artifactification of dousing rods were:

1) Including a choice which should *always* be taken is basically a bit broken or at least pointless. Almost without exception, blood hunters should be given rods if possible. So they weren't adding much to the strategy of the game.
2) Their inclusion added non-fun micromanagement.
3) Blood is generally considered to be overpowered, so the resulting fairly large nerf was desirable.

Now it's obviously a bit unfortunate that this affects some nations more severely than others. Vanheim stands out as a victim, and this will be addressed in CBM 1.9.

As for how to hunt without them: yes, lots of blood hunters basically. If you are, say, Mictlan or Lanka they are so cheap that this is still a good strategy. Giving blood hunters 25-slave boosters is also not unreasonable, but represents a genuine choice. If you are short of blood hunters but can be reasonably sure of their safety, giving them boosters is a sound investment (I'm not sure of the break-even time but I bet it's <10 turns). If you have lots of forts, blood hunters coming out of your ears but they are often killed (e.g. you are fighting a raiding nation), they're a bad idea. There's also the question of whether you need the blood slaves more now or later.

[rdonj]

Heck you can even empower them for not much more than that. But there's plenty of b1 hunters out there who aren't a big deal to use in fair numbers. Some nations do suffer though. Nice to see that llama will be doing something so people can stop worrying about vanheim so much

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Some nations do suffer though. Nice to see that llama will be doing something so people can stop worrying about vanheim so much

I'll never stop worrying about any of my glamour nations. Hey, have I mentioned how the lack of hammers really kills thugging?

I do actually like the removal of SDRs and I also have no problem with blood being nerfed in general. The bad thing about it is that unlike changing summoning costs, that affects everyone equally, removing SDRs hits some nations harder than others. Van is the worst hit since they already have what must be the costliest blood hunter in the game (thanks for reviewing that, llama!). Admittedly, it's hard to summon pity for Mictlan and Lanka and since their blood hunters are so cheap you can just buy more to still get a good blood economy. But what really irks me is that stupid Niefel/Jotun/OPheim wasn't particularly bothered by it. They fully deserved to be included in the nerf. Anyone up for W1B1 skrattis?

[Nightfall]

Wouldn't a more sensible nerf to SDR's be to make forging them require B2 (or even B3), which will also incidently raise the cost. I know at that price I wouldn't bother forging one for every blood hunter, just the B1's.

In fact I don't think it would hurt CBM to bring back gemgems with slightly raised path costs. The point of them should be less about massively increasing income and more about being a way to convert gem types more efficiently than alchemy over time.

Are clams overpowered at W4N1 with hammers nerfed?
Fever Fetishes at F1N2?
Blood Stones at B4E2?

In general I think CBM has made a lot of mistakes over time in making big changes, where little ones could often accomplish the same thing.

For instance, wouldn't adding the cursed flag, if possible, to dwarven hammers accomplish the reduction in micro desired, and be a small nerf that applies evenly to all nations, yet still leave them as a viable option.

[kasnavada]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

1) Including a choice which should *always* be taken is basically a bit broken or at least pointless. Almost without exception, blood hunters should be given rods if possible. So they weren't adding much to the strategy of the game.
2) Their inclusion added non-fun micromanagement.
3) Blood is generally considered to be overpowered, so the resulting fairly large nerf was desirable.

Ohoh !!! Then you'll be removing mind hunt soon ?

It does correspond, you *always* have to take some protection against it. It *does* make you have pointless micro (shuffling otherwise useless 1 astral mages around with a non astral nation and placing them in armies) and basically it's also considered overpowered by a lot of people. Well I do not know about other people's opinion, except the fact it's mentioned in nearly every guide, which gives me a clue to its power.



I do not like overland attack spell though, since I played disciple II... You always got to the point in that game where overland spells could kill anything with no counter possible. My opinion may be biased.

Coming back on subject, while I do not actually think removal of gem-gen makes the game more balanced, it *does* reduce micro by a lot. Which people usually find funnier. Putting them back at higher cost would just set back a bit the time were it's becoming more micro than playing. Of course, if there was a "assign gem gen and take gem from gem gen" button that took care of it...