Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Cohen]

Crumble is damn good!!!
It damages even the troops inside the castle, and I saw a Tartarian get killed by crumble! (well it disappeared, and there was in only a crumble in that province).

[Cheezeninja]

It seems to me that almost every time im using crumble, im doing so because there's a large number of defenders inside the castle keeping me from beating down the walls. When this is the case all that seems to happen is that crumble beats down the walls but then the defender vs besieger check happens afterwards and I get the message saying the defenders are repairing the wall faster than I can beat it down and I dont actually get a chance to storm the castle. While some damage is implied in the spell description I have never seen any statistics on it, or any noticable damage when I cast it.

[Graeme Dice]

Cheezeninja said:
While some damage is implied in the spell description I have never seen any statistics on it, or any noticable damage when I cast it.

The spell description tells you right out that it does 150 damage to the defense of the castle, with an additional 25 for each level of skill above 5.

[Cheezeninja]

I should have been more specific, I meant the spell description implies damage is done to the units inside the castle, but I have never seen evidence of it. I am aware of the damage the spell does to the castle, but if the units inside the castle can repair better than your troops outside it becomes moot how much damage you do as the game first applies the crumble damage and then does the besieger/defender check. While it does have uses now, obviously, it would become alot more useful if it either 1) fully destroyed the castle, requiring a new one to be built, or 2) applied the damage AFTER the defender/besieger check so that if the walls were completely crumbled you would then be able to storm the castle. This is only personal preference on my part.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:
Most important though you have to remember the high costs of soul contracts .
80 slaves , 60 with dwarfen hammer .
A dwarfen hammer costs though 20 earthgems and the blood nations are not the best sitesearchers . Abysia and Mictlan both lack earthmagic , Mictlan lacks it total and Abysia can only get E on warlocks , then you can forge a bloodstone and earth boots for earth 3 but that takes some time .
If you don't take blood 5 on your pretender then you will need construction 6 in order to get 2 boosters to blood 5 to forge the soul contracts .

Am I the only one who thinks that, for a long term game, taking plenty of blood on the pretender to start with is a waste of good design points? You don't NEED to take construction 6 to get boosters in a world that allows empowerment, and blood is the one path in which it is easy to gain enough gems (slaves) to empower early on.

Unless I specifically take a pretender who starts with blood (hello, vampire queen), I think blood 0 (high path cost) or 1-3 (low path cost) is quite enough to start with. The points freed up thus can be used for something else entirely, such as a nicer SC chassis, somebody with good magic skills in the lacking national areas (perhaps even a minor bless effect or two for your sacred troops), or better scales (perhaps allowing more bloodhunting without hurting income) - and blood empowerment will still see you reach blood 5 reasonably early at the same cost as 1-3 contracts. It does mean that the devil factory will start a few rounds later, but in my mind it makes for a stronger nation in the long run. ...if you invested the points freed up by not going blood 5 from the start wisely, that is.

If you have a good national blood commander, you can even consider empowering one of those early on for medim-high blood skill leaving your pretender free for other tasks.

[Boron]

Peter Ebbesen said:

Am I the only one who thinks that, for a long term game, taking plenty of blood on the pretender to start with is a waste of good design points? You don't NEED to take construction 6 to get boosters in a world that allows empowerment, and blood is the one path in which it is easy to gain enough gems (slaves) to empower early on.

Unless I specifically take a pretender who starts with blood (hello, vampire queen), I think blood 0 (high path cost) or 1-3 (low path cost) is quite enough to start with. The points freed up thus can be used for something else entirely, such as a nicer SC chassis, somebody with good magic skills in the lacking national areas (perhaps even a minor bless effect or two for your sacred troops), or better scales (perhaps allowing more bloodhunting without hurting income) - and blood empowerment will still see you reach blood 5 reasonably early at the same cost as 1-3 contracts. It does mean that the devil factory will start a few rounds later, but in my mind it makes for a stronger nation in the long run. ...if you invested the points freed up by not going blood 5 from the start wisely, that is.

Construction 6 gives you hellsword + blood thorn anyway so why empower when construction 6 is such an important goal for a blood nation anyways ?

Or you research Blood 5/6 first , use your blood for the uniques and then rush to construction 6

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:
Construction 6 gives you hellsword + blood thorn anyway so why empower when construction 6 is such an important goal for a blood nation anyways ?

For the design points saved that you can use to boost your scales, pretender chassis, or other magic skills as I suggested? Perhaps you happened to miss that rather vital part of the empowering strategy?

Nothing in the empowering process prevents you from researching construction 6 first if that is what you want to for the items, though it might delay it if you set more people on bloodhunting duties.


The major worry would be a unique rush, if you were too late to summon the uniques because you had to spend turns and slaves on empowering your pretender. On the other hand, if you were counting on researching construction 6 before being able to summon the uniques, you should be able to get enough empowerment in the same time while focusing on blood primarily (and construction secondarily)

[Boron]

Peter Ebbesen said:

For the design points saved that you can use to boost your scales, pretender chassis, or other magic skills as I suggested? Perhaps you happened to miss that rather vital part of the empowering strategy?

I didn't say take blood on your pretender .
Abysia just needs 2 +1 blood items on a demonbred and he can summon the Arch devils then .

Mictlan needs construction 4 anyways for SDR so you can continue to Con 6 then they can summon both Arch devils and Ice devils .


You are right though i missed your point that if you empower e.g. a demonbred to blood 4 you save time .
You have to invest iirc 45+60 blood instead of 20+20 for 2 +1 items but you save several turns .
If you want to rush to the Ice devils you are forced to take at least water 3 on your pretender though cause the only +1 items are water bracelet and robe of the sea but the latter requires W3 to forge .

So good ideas : if you take W3 on your pretender but no blood you have to pay 50+30+45 blood to empower him to get the ice devils .
So in both strats "only" about 80-100 slaves higher costs but you will be 5-15 turns earlier there as your enemy .
Thnx for sharing your strat , i learned a new lesson

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron said:
You are right though i missed your point that if you empower e.g. a demonbred to blood 4 you save time .

I have added it to the original post now. Sorry that I did not make it clear. I love using empowered demonbreds to hammer flat the slaves for the soul contracts and I love to blood-empower my pretender later on to use the multipath blood spells (not only for the ice devils in a rush strategy but also for the very highlevel mass summons in an end-game strategy). No matter what, it is my firm belieft that the pretender should not have to waste his time on such mundane business as staying in a fortress hammering slaves. It is so undignified.

He should be making dwarven hammers and kicking ***. E3/W3 are, as you note, great to take on the pretender for hammer and ice devil goodness.

[Boron]

Which pretender do you normally take ?
If you take a VQ you already have B2 so B3 only costs you 8 points and B4 16 , so 24 in total .

Similiar if you use one of the mictlan national pretenders or a warlock .

Do you take such pretenders or do you always play with a ghostking ?