To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic

[Gargoyle]

I am replying to this thread from a completely different meaning of you original question - "To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic".

My answer will also tied to the "Dom III Wishlist" so I should post it there also.

I'll like to see many more elements of the game to be tied to an "Good and Evil" scale. For example, if you were at the extreme evil end of the scale it would benefit your Death and Blood magic but would hamper your Nature and Air. There could even be specific Good and Evil units, items and spells.

So to answer your question, you would use Blood if your were tending toward evil, but not toward good.

[quantum_mechani]

Gargoyle said:
I am replying to this thread from a completely different meaning of you original question - "To Blood Magic, Or Not To Blood Magic".

My answer will also tied to the "Dom III Wishlist" so I should post it there also.

I'll like to see many more elements of the game to be tied to an "Good and Evil" scale. For example, if you were at the extreme evil end of the scale it would benefit your Death and Blood magic but would hamper your Nature and Air. There could even be specific Good and Evil units, items and spells.

Oh, no, not that again...

Venture in this thread if you dare...

[Nerfix]

Kristoffer O said:
Initially we didn't intend for good and evil, holy and unholy to be in the game. Evil is in the eye of the beholder.

Unholy was added as an ad hoc solution to the fact that holy priests were more or less useless to undead priests of Ermor (dom1). At that time bless effects etc was handled a bit differently and most of ermors troops didn't have morale. Preaching was also something we imagined the undead didn't do. Therefore unholy priests were added.

Currently you can consider unholy those priestly powers that are influenced by the underworld and the unliving. Unholy has always felt a bit ad hoc. Especially when broken empire Ermor got unholy priests. They were made to be able to preach and reanimate.

Unholy is getting a rework in DOM3. Undead priests have 'unholy' powers of reanimation, but the unholy tag is removed. All priests are priests.

[Gargoyle]

Nerfix said:

Posted also on the Dom III wishlist:

I see what you mean. Okay, skip Good\holy and Evil\unholy. But relationships between related magic which provide mutual benefits is all I was looking for.

[Goblin]

The Theological aspects although interesting where not really what I was after (this being a strategy game not a role playing one). Thank you Baron and Alneyan for keeping it on track.

I hadn't looked at wish for generating Blood - but then I have not played a game that has reached turn 60 yet (major Newbie). With the mod's following a claim strategy seems to be quite hard (2W and 2S needed) - so the 15-20 mages with SDRs may be the way to go. However with a few growth scales the population depletion should be minimal...?

200-300 slaves a turn by turn 40 should provide for a very strong industrial base to fight any nation. The thought of a military campaign assisted by up to 10 Hordes from Hell being dumped across your poor victims empire each turn should shatter their economy (Gems and Gold), plus make movement almost impossible except for flyers.

So far all the comments have been on how strong Blood is - it lacks battlefield magic is a given, but what are effective strategies against it (and it’s hellish hordes). One that jumps to mind is being able to identify the Blood Factories and shut them down (Fires from afar and the like). Any other ideas?

Goblin.

[quantum_mechani]

Goblin said:


So far all the comments have been on how strong Blood is - it lacks battlefield magic is a given, but what are effective strategies against it (and it’s hellish hordes). One that jumps to mind is being able to identify the Blood Factories and shut them down (Fires from afar and the like). Any other ideas?

Well, air battlemagic is good againt all the summons but storm demons (expect demon SCs to be prpared with lightning res., though).

[Boron]

Goblin said:
So far all the comments have been on how strong Blood is - it lacks battlefield magic is a given, but what are effective strategies against it (and it’s hellish hordes). One that jumps to mind is being able to identify the Blood Factories and shut them down (Fires from afar and the like). Any other ideas?

Goblin.

Vs. the Blood SCs herald lances can work very well. You need a bit blood forging capabilities on your own but then golems with ring of warrior, burning pearl, herald lances and some other items are surprisingly effective vs. blood scs and will also kill lots of devils and the like too.

Vs. the normal devil hordes and the like staff of storms + air magic is very effective as qm said.

Horde from hell raiding can be very effective. As soon as the enemy has a few good units in each province though horde from hell alone won't be enough. The imps have very bad morale so as soon as a few die the rest routs.
Normally 3-5 dead imps from the 25 imps you get with horde from hell are enough and they rout.

1 Sauromancer spamming undeads in every province + a few points of pd should be enough to defend vs. horde from hell 90% of the time.
Horde from hell is available quite early though and thus difficult to counter. Many nations/buildups can get crippled if you rush them with horde from hell spamming imho.

Maybe QM has some good ideas how to defend vs. early horde from hell raiding, i have no good ideas for that apart from playing ryleh/atlantis .

[quantum_mechani]

Boron said:

Maybe QM has some good ideas how to defend vs. early horde from hell raiding, i have no good ideas for that apart from playing ryleh/atlantis .

Well, Ermor and CW pan are pretty good at defending againt it too. Apart from that, just rapid response forces and good guessing, or strike the blood hunting gounds.

[Goblin]

So the answer is have undead (no maintenance and no moral checks) or wipe out their capacity to produce enough blood.
I have noticed that the AI has a fondness for suicide battle groups - ie an army will attack a new place each turn, moving deeper into your territory. This is usually quickly fixed but often blood hunting grounds come under threat. Is the AI actually trying to capture these or just taking an offensive strategy?

Goblin.

[archaeolept]

personally, i don't find hordes from hell to be too much trouble - they route very easily, and good national pd can often stop one; as well parachuting response squads (air or astral) or just some small roving intercepting bands can work.

if your opponent is using all his blood on hordes, I'd say that's often a good thing as this means he's getting fewer of the blood SC's.