Guide to EA Mictlan and bloodhunting - Page 2

Baalz · #1 April 27th, 2007, 12:31 PM

Well, the real factor that starts coming in for sub 3k provinces is the value of your mage's time rather than upkeep. You'll average a little over 16 blood slaves per turn for a 5k province with 3 Mictlan Priests with rods. You'll get half that for a 2.5k province, and it's costing you 3 mages that could be researching (if nothing else). Really, the cash generated by sub 3k provinces is negligible anyway, its a factor of if you have something better for your mages to do (you almost always can use more research).

You will be getting much more blood slaves from a single blood hunting province than you can conceivably hope to get from all the magic site income. There are very few magic sites which produce blood slaves, and none produce very much. They can produce quite a savings on the spending though.

Velusion · #2 April 27th, 2007, 01:16 PM

Excellent Guide! I'll be going back to this once I really have to tackle any blood nation...

Meglobob · #3 April 27th, 2007, 04:09 PM

Baalz, any tips on blood hunting when burden of time is up?

Baalz · #4 April 27th, 2007, 04:25 PM

Well, now that you mention it...

Use a priest king to forge a thistle mace and armor of twisted thorns, stick them on a lizard shaman (fairly common), use him to forge a moonvine bracelet. Now forge a second armor of twisted thorns, place it with the other two nature boosters to a priest king and cast Gift of Health. Follow that up with Astral Corruption and place in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour. Mmmmm, screws over hard pretty much everybody but you....

Saxon · #5 April 28th, 2007, 02:24 PM

Most helpful.

One more question. You wrote about 3 priests with rods per province. Have you found that that is the best rate of return for you? I was playing last night and was wondering if/how multiple searchers in the same province worked out. If you put more than 3 per province, do you get reduced success?

Ok, another question. Is there a limit to the number of slaves one commander can have? Is there a rush to consolidate slaves? It seems that I kept getting 30 per priest.

As you stated, getting over 100 per turn was not hard, even on a medium map. I have a lot to learn about how to spend them well, but look forward to trying things out.

Thanks!

Shovah32 · #6 April 28th, 2007, 03:02 PM

A single commander can only hold 30 slaves/gems at any one time. 3 basic priests with rods is the best way to get slaves without destroying your provinces.

Baalz · #7 April 28th, 2007, 03:06 PM

Well, if you have more than 3 priest bloodhunting in one province you need some way to reduce the unrest other than dropping the tax rate because you'll accrue unrest faster than a 0% tax rate will relieve it, and unrest reduces your ability to blood hunt (at 200 unrest you can't get any blood slaves). If you're desperate to concentrate your blood hunters (perhaps you're being aggressively raided) you can stack many blood hunters in a single province and have it patrolled by a large force. The downside here is that this will fairly rapidly deplete the population in that province.

Janlm · #8 October 15th, 2007, 11:18 AM

Thanks for a good guide, I was wondering something. When blood hunting, would you also keep a small force to patrol the province, or is it usually enough to put taxes to zero?

Velusion · #9 October 15th, 2007, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Janlm said:
Thanks for a good guide, I was wondering something. When blood hunting, would you also keep a small force to patrol the province, or is it usually enough to put taxes to zero?

Depends on how much you hunt. Generally you want the unrest to stay around zero. Normally I use about 3 b2/b3 mages in the same province - drop the taxes to zero and don't have to worry (usually) about patrolling. Using more than four hunters will generally mean that you will have to patrol to keep the unrest down.

Baalz · #10 October 16th, 2007, 02:49 AM

As Velusion says, its a much better idea to set yourself up so that you don't need to patrol. Patrolling will drop your population much faster so it's not a viable long term solution. It is, however, possible to do scorched earth blood hunting by doing massive blood hunting in a province while a large army patrols. This is really more of a tactic to screw up land you don't think you're gonna be able to keep, but can also be used as a last ditch effort for emergency blood slaves. For example, if you're hard pressed and absolutely desperate for blood slaves you can use the dozens of researchers in your capital to blood hunt (assuming they're at least B1 mages) while you patrol which will give you a quick boost of blood slaves but nuke your capital population. This actually might not be as bad as it sounds, once you hit late game with a heavy blood economy focus you really don't have a huge use for gold as you'll be summoning virtually all your units and mages.