Blood Indies

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You don't have to work all that hard. 10 indy scouts have a 65% chance of a successful hunt, and that's for just 200 gold. Garnet amazons are 180 gold for a 40% chance; or if you build the priestesses, it's around 240 gold for a 40% chance, for less maintenance and a spare H1 with 40 leadership and fire resistance. Plus you had to build the lab or temple.

[Gregstrom]

Garnet Amazons are the luck bit. The scout bit is the hard work, as you're spending quite a while getting things to the point where you have an ongoing Blood economy.

Edit: I wasn't as clear as I might have been. Hard work = spending a lot of turns in this case - there isn't that much admin, but you'll need quite a few turns of preparation and searching before you get even 1 B1 mage out of it.

[Hoplosternum]

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)

But even a small Blood economy gives access to some nice items too. A single blood point enhances most mages as there are nice joint path magic items and it opens up communions to the none astral ones. There are also the horror overland spells for joint blood/astral mages.

Even a single blood 1 mage with a SDR is going to gather a lot of slaves and the blood economy can quickly snowball. It is far easier to create a blood economy once you have blood mages than become strong in say death if you are not to begin with. But the difference between a Level 1 (especially with the SDR) and a Level 0 hunter is huge. And you need 50 slaves to empower the first one. So I am not sure it is worth trying to use zero level blood hunters by themselves (I have tried it a few times with miserable results even using dozens of indie scouts and commanders). I am not sure hoping the extremely rare Jaguar Priest with blood turns up is really worth it unless you want those Priests anyway either. But the (rare) blood indie mage sites give decent hunters and a SDR is just 5 (??) slaves away.

You won’t match a dedicated blood nation’s hunters but they are not too inefficient compared with the part time ‘heim hunters. The idea is to empower a decent multipath mage with blood, rather than the often magic limited mages of the part time blood nations. So a none blood nation who finds a source of blood mages can be especially effective. Plus many of the dedicated blood nations have their own decent blood SC summons and may not bother with all the standard blood uniques so there may be some left even if you are getting in to it quite late.

[Adept]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I'm always disappointed that you don't get to recruit Bloodhenge druids after you've beaten them.

There is a site that has them, right?

I'm even more disappointed in the fact that the bloodhenge druids don't have the magic to actually summon Dark Vines. That doesn't make sense, as they are found with them

[Endovior]

I tend to like recruiting whatever indy mages become available. A lab (and a temple, where relevant, though I do tend to temple spam just for the dominion, so that's not asking a lot) is much cheaper then a fortress... and the indy mages will usually offer some new magical paths that you'd not normally have access to... even if only by niche chance. Even if you don't get the particular niche you wanted, you can always use the extras for research/support.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Hoplosternum

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to actually do this? I've been taking some Blood on my pretender and dedicating him to bloodhunting sometime during year 2, and then empowering a national mage and moving my pretender to other duties. I used some indy scouts together with my pretender. Once I have the one B1 mage and forge a Sanguine Dousing Rod, things are easy, but any tricks towards getting there would be nice.

Also, since bloodhunting reliability is supposed to be linked to site frequency, is it noticeably harder to hunt with scouts in LA than in EA (default site freq. goes down in MA and again in LA).

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Based on anecdotal evidence from just one game, I have to say hunting is easier for scouts with higher magic site frequency.

I've only added blood to my god once, with the intention of him hunting. And I think I spent a total of 2 months hunting with it, there was just too much else for him to do. It was a waste of points for me (well, I did get a little B4 bless).

I don't start using scouts and indy commanders to hunt until the second year at the earliest. At that point I will start hunting with whatever scouts or commanders I can spare, in a ~5K pop province. I've even used scouts instead of my expensive nationals to hunt when I was MA Van. I'll put up to 10 in one province and usually one or two of the hunters gets a few slaves.

I usually empower a nature mage in blood first, so that later down the road I can make Thorns armor to get up to B4.

[Hoplosternum]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to actually do this? I've been taking some Blood on my pretender and dedicating him to bloodhunting sometime during year 2, and then empowering a national mage and moving my pretender to other duties. I used some indy scouts together with my pretender. Once I have the one B1 mage and forge a Sanguine Dousing Rod, things are easy, but any tricks towards getting there would be nice.

Also, since bloodhunting reliability is supposed to be linked to site frequency, is it noticeably harder to hunt with scouts in LA than in EA (default site freq. goes down in MA and again in LA).

This is exactly what I did in the Megagame as Jomon. I think I gave my Ghost King blood one and forged him a SDR ASAP. He also had a bit of death (2) and had been site searching after the first few expansion turns.

With my first few death gems I had managed to summon a Revenant to cast the remote Dark Knowledge on my remaining unchecked provinces. But it was clear my death income was never going to be huge. While a few turns blood hunting with my Pretender had empowered my first mage. Who with the SDR and a half dozen (practically useless) scouts was building up another another 50 fairly quickly.

I survived to about half way through the third year before being quickly snuffed out. But the difference between my death and blood eceonomies was huge. My Pretender spent more time site searching (and casting Revenent) than blood hunting. But I doubt I got 50 death gems in the whole game. Enough for a Ghost General & 2 Revenents with a bit of remote site searching. Compared to about 100 slaves from just over a years hunting with 2 different level 1 blood hunters (Plus scouts). My Pretender was already on to other things. I felt my blood economy was up and running and on the verge of decent expansion while I realised my death economy would never really meet either my Thug or forging needs.

So I think the blood on your Pretender can work well. It has for me. You only need blood one as the SDR is cheap and very effective at that low level. So if you have a rainbow its well worth getting. There is also the excellent blood spell which eliminates the casters fatigue. Very useful for scripting after the casting of that big spell and it gets you in to communions without the risk of having low levels of Astral on your Pretender. If you build a Rainbow it is almost a no brainer for a none blood nation, especially if you intend doing any manual site searching. It's cheap and opens up decent options.

[Dragar]

Well, one could consider (I do) spending a pretender's turn trying to get a few blood slaves as a bit wasteful. A rainbow, the only option that makes it worth buying level one in a sphere, should be site searching manually for a lot more gems than just death - surely he'd be searching for 4 or 5 types?

Also, you can't equate one blood slave with one death gem. And it will be along time before that blood economy is using blood slaves for anything other than empowering and SDRs. There is also the factor of income reduction due to the unrest caused.

The only time I'd bother setting up a pretender to blood hunt is if doing it seriously - have several levels to enable very effective blood hunting, and to have the paths to forge the really useful to get early blood items, namely blood stones and soul contracts. If you're able to get soul contracts in the early game it starts to justify having a pretender blood hunting. I'd at least get to level 4 so I can use items to boost him to 6 (soul contracts) and to get some kind of bless out of it. I really want to try it with abysia actually, as there is a lot of synergy with producing devils and generating earth mana.

[OmikronWarrior]

A strategy I played around with in my head (and a little in SP) is using the Blood Fountain (which combines a low cost with a significant bonus to blood hunting) to quickly get LA Man a blood economy. With Growth-3 and patroling Judges taxes can remain at 100% with out generating excessive unrest and still increase the population (though not as quickly). Problem was I just couldn't figure out how to translate an enormous early advantage in blood economy into success on the battlefield while sacrificing an SC or a rainbow.