Blood Simple?!

[Endoperez]

Step2 can be easily done with F1 screen, and won't be needed every turn. Once in a few turns is enough, and I prefer to do that any way with any nation.
Step3: I thought hunt happens before movement and battles. That would mean that if the hunters catch anything, they can summon the imps. This is most often the case, so I don't worry about leaving the hunters any slaves.
Step 4: Only needed in border provinces, really. Although as it is provinces bordering enemy dominion instead of enemy territory, it can sometimes be hard to notice. This is second step that really has to take time when playing Mictlan, and only if you don't have specialized priests that Blood Sacrifice continuously.
Step5: Isn't that much harder than sitesearching without spells, or for holy/unholy magic, so I don't find it particularly infuriating.

All of these do add micromanagement, but I don't think they increase it as much as you think.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:
Step2 can be easily done with F1 screen, and won't be needed every turn. Once in a few turns is enough, and I prefer to do that any way with any nation.

TRUE, BUT.... as a result you'll be visiting/adjusting many more provinces then other nations since as a nation you're forced to blood hunt to survive.

Endoperez said:
Step3: I thought hunt happens before movement and battles. That would mean that if the hunters catch anything, they can summon the imps. This is most often the case, so I don't worry about leaving the hunters any slaves.

From what I've seen it does happen before regular battle movement, but not spell casted battles. And to leave them without blood slaves because they usually find some is way too risky in my book. I have more peace of mind sending my turn knowing each low level blood mage can cast summon imp twice during battle.

Endoperez said:
Step 4: Only needed in border provinces, really. Although as it is provinces bordering enemy dominion instead of enemy territory, it can sometimes be hard to notice. This is second step that really has to take time when playing Mictlan, and only if you don't have specialized priests that Blood Sacrifice continuously.

Unless you're dealing with enemy nations that have stealthy priests. They sneak and sometimes fly in... heavily preach for two turns and move. I've felt this pain.
And even when it's border provinces only, it's extra management not needed by other nations... especially felt for large maps.

Endoperez said:
Step5: Isn't that much harder than sitesearching without spells, or for holy/unholy magic, so I don't find it particularly infuriating.

True but it's an extra duty which needs to be done instead of having them just sit on research or mass casting some summon spell. I'd much rather have my commanders searching for sites or researching then killing slaves and moving to kill more slaves.

Endoperez said:
All of these do add micromanagement, but I don't think they increase it as much as you think.

For small maps of 120 or less... it's not noticed that much.

[Graeme Dice]

spirokeat said:
BUT ! thats not why I said 8000. I suggest that because it gives your hunters a reasonable stay in one province before the pop does hit 5000 and below and you move em.

There's no need for that. The population effect is that if a number chosen between 1 (maybe 0) and 5000 is less than the population, the hunt passes the check. So even 4000 people is 80% as effective as 5000.

One of the things that I do find a pain in the *** is when I pool my blood slaves and I then have to go to each Blood Sacrifice priest and give him new slaves.

Don't pool your blood slaves. Go to each bloodhunting province, make a selection group of your hunters only, and press ctrl+z.

In terms of equiping your hunters. All they get is a sanguine dousing rod. And I tend not to use anything but basic priests either. if I recall you can actually push unrest up despite tax 0, if you use higher level hunters. Three blood 1 priests with dousers seems the best.

A dousing rod raises your blood skill by 1 for the purpose of hunting if you already have 1 blood skill. The base chance that a hunter will succeed is 10%+(bloodskill*40%). So a blood 1 Mictlan priest with a dousing rod will succeed 90% of the time in a province with 0 unrest and 5000 people. Unrest is a percentage failure chance. The blood slaves you find are 1d6+bloodskill.

Plus your good priest is 390 gold a pop, giving you a basic cost to preach basic dominion of 790, plus a 5 slave, 5 nature knife. and then about 8 slaves per turn to keep him going, for every single province you want up. not too cheap.

That would be the equivalent of about 8 temples in that single province, so that's kind of overkill. A single H2 Mictnal priest without a jade knife sacrificing two slaves a turn should be good enough if you picked a high dominion (7-8).

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
Step2: Checking for unrest because of blood hunters since patroling troops are sometimes pushed to the front or haven't arrived yet.

You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

Step3: Providing each blood hunter with 2 or 3 blood slaves... thus increasing survival of the province. Summon Imps is cheap and helps the patrollers and PD.

Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen. Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it. You will probably also have your hunters behind castles. Mictlan only needs to spend gold on priests, capital based mages, and buildings unless you took a powerful bless effect.

Step4: Watching Dominion drops where priest hunting for blood has to switch into sacrificing for bringing dominion back up.

Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

This is part of any blood nation.

[NTJedi]

Graeme Dice said:
You don't need to check every turn since three bloodhunters will take quite a few turns to bring unrest up to the point where you have to worry about it.

The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

Graeme Dice said:
Bloodhunting happens before combat caused by. Your bloodhunters will supply their own slaves for any battles that happen.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Graeme Dice said:
Magic combat will either be weak enough that even Mictlan's province defense will work against it or will be so overwhelmingly powerful that no amount of imps will stop it.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.

Graeme Dice said:
You will probably also have your hunters behind castles.

In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.

Graeme Dice said:
Leave one priest on permanent sacrifice duty in each temple. You want your dominion pushing against your enemies.

Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.

]NTJedi said:
Step5: Moving, Adding and equipping blood priests to maintain or expand dominion in newly conquered territory.

Graeme Dice said:
This is part of any blood nation.

It's still extra management.

[spirokeat]

Well, I have to say, having a far clearer understanding of how Dominion spreads and then changing accordingly, I find that as Mictlan I am capable of outstripping the other nations in the SP game I am in easily. Whereas before I was constantly at the bottom of the pile.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Thanks Zen.

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
The more unrest the less likely your hunters will find blood slaves... and three low level blood hunters can easily raise unrest into the teens with one turn.

Theyn might be able to, but with 0 taxes it will take a few turns usually. Even at 20% unrest, that's just a 20% chance of failure. 4 out of 5 turns the province will produce normally. Avoiding micromanagement is done by not trying to optimize every possible thing.

In the perfect non-walgreens world bloodhunters will supply their own blood slaves every turn. Since they do not find blood slaves every turn I see it's important to give them 2 or 3 blood slaves.

Blood hunters in a proper hunting province will succeed 90% of the time. With three hunters, you are almost certain to have some success, and as stated, those three hunters will either be enough of a defense, as they are against small attacks, or will be hopelessly defeated.

Unlike your experiences I've had CLOSE magic casted battles from Call of the Wild and even the Madmen... and without blood slaves for each of my mages the result would have resulted in a loss for me.

If your opponent is spending gems on call of the wild, you will win the resources war fairly simply.

In some of the more recent games I've played we agree to only building a fixed amount of castles which causes players to use castle-types more efficiently and strategically instead of watching most people jump into mass-castle building. As a result the hunters are not always behind castles.

That's a problem with the house rules you chose, not the game itself.

Yes this is one strategy and to supply those priests one hunter will be needed per temple. And managing the unrest for those hunting provinces is the extra management. On large maps a player will definitely notice this.

You will be managing the unrest every five turns or so anyways.

[Cainehill]

Damn, I gotta answer this when I'm awake.

[Ironhawk]

Graeme Dice said:

A dousing rod raises your blood skill by 1 for the purpose of hunting if you already have 1 blood skill. The base chance that a hunter will succeed is 10%+(bloodskill*40%). So a blood 1 Mictlan priest with a dousing rod will succeed 90% of the time in a province with 0 unrest and 5000 people. Unrest is a percentage failure chance. The blood slaves you find are 1d6+bloodskill.

That amount of slaves captured cant be right. I've had B1 and B2 mages pull in 10-15 slaves on a really good day.
Or... is that 1d6oe? I suppose that would be reasonable.

[archaeolept]

yah, its OE