Paths of Blood

[Crafty]

Is it generally worthwhile to dabb and research school of blood if you don't really have national mages with a lot of blood paths?

So far i have totally ignored it, cos i play normal nations with not much blood paths and pretenders with zero blood paths

How do you play a blood nation anyway? blood hunting seems really scary.

What is a good nation to play if one wants to play with blood stuff?

[Baalz]

Check my sig

[mivayan]

Crafty said:
Is it generally worthwhile to dabb and research school of blood if you don't really have national mages with a lot of blood paths?

So far i have totally ignored it, cos i play normal nations with not much blood paths and pretenders with zero blood paths


That's a pretty good way to play.

[Evilhomer]

Blood magic is very potent, but unless you are playing a blood nation, it is not worth your effort.

[Warhammer]

What are considered good blood nations? Is EA Vanheim considered a good blood nation?

[thejeff]

The problem isn't really not having mages with a lot of blood paths, it's not having cheap blood hunters.
If you can spam blood hunters, empowering in blood is fairly easy.

I've occasionally completely changed strategy in games when I find garnet amazons.

And the obvious nations to play for blood are EA/LA Mictlan, Abyssia or LA Marignon.

Basic blood tips: Research Construction 4 early for Sanguine rods. Hunt with ~3 cheap blood 1 Mages with Rods in 7000-5000 pop provinces. Lower taxes and/or patrol to keep unrest down.
Summon lots of nasty stuff.

[Nick_K]

Haven't played as them myself, but aren't Lanka supposed to be quite good with blood?

[llamabeast]

LA Ulm as well, I think.

[FAJ]

Semi-related blood question: Are vampires worth it?

Being immortal and having regenerate seem pretty cool, but getting a vampire lord and a decent number of vampires seems so pricey.

[thejeff]

I'd say no to EA (or any age) Vanheim. They lack cheap blood hunters. 280gold Vanjarls are not to be wasted blood hunting.

I'd forgotten about Lanka. Never actually played them, but they should qualify.

MA Jotunheim has potential. 1/4 55gold Vaetti hags have blood. Skratti and Gygja(sp?) give Water/Blood and Nature/Death/Blood combinations.

[Shovah32]

Since losing ethereality i would say that no, vampires arent worth it. LA Ulms vampire counts(possibly with a few lords) can do some fun things with magic but generally there are just far better things to do with your slaves.

EA Lanka and EA Mictlan are your best bets for EA blood(with pangaea, abysia and the 3 'heims also having access to it).
MA Abysia is probably the main blood nation around but again, the 'heims also have a bit of blood.
LA Blood comes back with a vengance with the nations of Mictlan, Ulm, Abysia, Marignon, Utgard and Midgard(i would rank them in that order) all using its powers.

[Salamander8]

Lanka is a very heavy blood using nation. Between having many recruitable mages with blood out of the box and they also have many national blood summons as well.

[Shovah32]

Playing Lanka without blood is like typing without hands - possible but why the hell would you want to? Almost all their mages(a 110 gold, non-capitol, 6rp mage being the exception) have blood magic, they have great recruitable and summonable sacreds(earth and nature helps recruitables, summons and mages) and extremely powerful thug/SC national summons(and great recruitable blood hunters).

[Velusion]

Evilhomer said:
Blood magic is very potent, but unless you are playing a blood nation, it is not worth your effort.



I sort of disagree. If you game is reasonably large and you get started early enough or find blood indy mages you can certainly use blood to supplement your existing magic paths in the late game. In the early and mid games it won't pay out, but in the late game it will be handy to have.

[thejeff]

The interesting thing about LA Ulm is that it's the only blood nation that can rely on summoned blood hunters. Allowing it to bootstrap itself, once it starts getting blood.
It's recruitable blood mages aren't to expensive for hunting, but midgame, the Counts are cheap, no support blood hunters.
And with lots of freespawn chaff, you should be able to trash you're economy.

I've never actually tried this mind you.

[Evilhomer]

I sort of disagree. If you game is reasonably large and you get started early enough or find blood indy mages you can certainly use blood to supplement your existing magic paths in the late game. In the early and mid games it won't pay out, but in the late game it will be handy to have.



Generally speaking of course, theres exception to everything. You must realise that you are giving up other stuff to research blood and getting a blood economy going. As someone previosuly mentioned the key is finding or having access to cheap blood mages.

[Baalz]

I agree with Velusion, if I find indie blood mages I pretty much *ALWAYS* get a little blood slave flow going, and even without I sometimes try and do it the hard way (blood hunting with scouts to get enough to empower). Playing with just a little blood is much different than playing a blood nation, but with 3, blood-2 hunters in a province (or blood-1 with a sanguine rod) you'll average 16 blood slaves per month. If you can manage to squeak out two of these, you'll pile up almost a hundred slaves every three turns, but even with just 3 blood hunters you'll still pull in a couple hundred blood slaves a year for a small impact to your gold income. Just do whatever you're gonna do without blood, then when you're ready you've got more than enough slaves to empower a mage a couple times and still cast/forge something useful.

Here's a couple real nice things that you can get with just a little blood on the side.

Take a nation with a forge bonus like MA Ulm or LA Caelum and crank out half priced blood stones. After whatever empowering you need you can forge 2 blood stones per turn with the income from one province of blood hunters. Not bad for a side strategy.

Forge boots of youth for your painfully old, yet indispensable mages.

How about black hearts for some really wicked assassin possibilities.

You'll have the income to summon a couple Ice/Arch Devils a year if you've got the research to spare for blood. Nothing to base a whole strategy around, but as a side bonus it's hard to beat.

[Sombre]

In Single Player, which is mostly what I play, I usually go for a little bit of blood if the nation has access to some of it, like MA Jotuns, LA Vaetti, Pangaea, Jomon broken etc.

In multiplayer I'd still be playing for fun rather than to go all out for the win, so I still might use blood as a secondary magic path. I just wish low level blood was a bit better to encourage some relatively minor use of it for nations that aren't primarily blood.

[Salamander8]

Shovah32 said:
Playing Lanka without blood is like typing without hands - possible but why the hell would you want to? Almost all their mages(a 110 gold, non-capitol, 6rp mage being the exception) have blood magic, they have great recruitable and summonable sacreds(earth and nature helps recruitables, summons and mages) and extremely powerful thug/SC national summons(and great recruitable blood hunters).


Aye. Lanka was the 2nd nation I played where I went deep into blood magic (Abysia was my first try at heavy blood use), and they are excellent at it. The national summons can get really nasty (Devatas, Mandahas, etc), and you only need small amounts of death/nature/earth on top of a strong blood magic core for these guys and the standard blood spells (I love Infernal Crusade).

[Shovah32]

Infernal Crusade is a very, very nice spell. Heavy cavalry with good stats, resistances and fear are just too good to pass up in most cases.

[Evilhomer]

Infernal tempest is a rather cute spell as well, in fact i prefer it over crusade spell.

[Salamander8]

Infernal Tempest is great as well. I'm rather partial to the crusade though. I had large contigents of the Demon Knights running all over my enemies as my last game as Lanka. In Dom2 I had Pazuzu(?) (The demon lord of the plague wind) leading a decent core of the Storm Demons as Abysia and they were very handy, but the knights have been more effective for me overall. Admittedly, that's like comparing really awesome to very awesome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Shovah32]

I dont play blood that often. I never play vanheim for blood and when i play lanka/mictlan i take a bless(earth and nature/fire, astral, water and minor blood respectively) so i tend not to have a mage on hand to summon demon lords/storm demons(or in lanka's case, my slaves are better spent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) but the few times i have used them they have been nice.

[vfb]

thejeff said:
The interesting thing about LA Ulm is that it's the only blood nation that can rely on summoned blood hunters. Allowing it to bootstrap itself, once it starts getting blood.
It's recruitable blood mages aren't to expensive for hunting, but midgame, the Counts are cheap, no support blood hunters.
And with lots of freespawn chaff, you should be able to trash you're economy.

I've never actually tried this mind you.



Mictlan can blood hunt with its 2B Tlahuelpuchis, 25B to summon. They've got most of the advantages of Vampire Counts too (flight, stealth).

[vfb]

Shovah32 said:
I dont play blood that often. I never play vanheim for blood and when i play lanka/mictlan i take a bless(earth and nature/fire, astral, water and minor blood respectively) so i tend not to have a mage on hand to summon demon lords/storm demons(or in lanka's case, my slaves are better spent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) but the few times i have used them they have been nice.



An F9B4D4 bless is great for Mictlan. And B4 is all you need to make a Vessel + Armour of Souls + Blood Thorn.

Throw in a Ring of Sorcery and you're set to summon the Demon Lords. It's nice to empower a Moon Priest in Earth to make blood stones, and he can pop out a crystal coin and star cap, so you only need to empower in astral once to make the ring.

The Demon Lords are more interesting than the Ice and Arch Devils, but since they lack slots they are not great as solo SCs (unlike the Ice/Arch Devils, which make pretty good SCs).

[Shovah32]

Arent demon lords B9?

[vfb]

Blood 9 research, need a B8 caster to summon.

[Aleph]

Haven't been here in quite a while.

LA Ulm mixes decent blood magic, freespawn thralls, freespawn wolves, and incredibly potent spies to shut down enemy economies. They aren't anywhere near the blood nation that Mictlan is, insofar as they just aren't a heavy magic nation period, but the Counts are pretty decent all rounders who, as a previous poster noted, aren't so expensive that they shouldn't hunt. They also give you a credible bootstrap into death magic, since they (unlike Tlahuelpuchi) start out being able to forge skull staves.

One small magical edge that LA Ulm has over Mictlan is access to Earth magic, albeit at low levels. With some selective empowering of capital only priests (really easy with blood) you can kick off a nice Blood Stone economy.

Also, I forget who taught me this, but Vampire Counts casting Summon Lamashtas are incredible defensive troops in your own domain. You're immortal... who cares if they turn on you?

[jutetrea]

Agree with Baalz and Velusion, I'll almost always try to get a small blood income going...even if its only a few slaves/turn. Make a few rods and have 1 or 2 sites going for a 5-20 slave income every turn. If its not part of the main strategy it adds up pretty quick.

Then it allows you to forge some really great items, blood stone being the primary. If you get a head start to const 8 you can nab some of the great artifacts as well.

I usually have blood spells as low priority, but bowl, toads and occasionally crossbreeding for chaff work well. If you've got the extra research, getting up to blood 6(?) gets you infernal disease (good assassin spell) and 5 gates (28 slaves for 5 demons in one cast). None of which are huge cost and potentially useful.

For moderate loss in income (and a bit more micro) you can get some pretty nifty benefits late mid-late game.

[Shovah32]

Aleph said:
Haven't been here in quite a while.

LA Ulm mixes decent blood magic, freespawn thralls, freespawn wolves, and incredibly potent spies to shut down enemy economies. They aren't anywhere near the blood nation that Mictlan is, insofar as they just aren't a heavy magic nation period, but the Counts are pretty decent all rounders who, as a previous poster noted, aren't so expensive that they shouldn't hunt. They also give you a credible bootstrap into death magic, since they (unlike Tlahuelpuchi) start out being able to forge skull staves.

One small magical edge that LA Ulm has over Mictlan is access to Earth magic, albeit at low levels. With some selective empowering of capital only priests (really easy with blood) you can kick off a nice Blood Stone economy.

Also, I forget who taught me this, but Vampire Counts casting Summon Lamashtas are incredible defensive troops in your own domain. You're immortal... who cares if they turn on you?



I absolutely love counts. Throw lifelong protection on them and have them spam raise skeletons(swapping to summon lammashta's when you want to do damage/are near your capitol) and you can get an endless horde of chaff to wear down the enemy.

[Sombre]

I think Hell Power would work the same way too. You get a boost and if nasties turn up, who cares? You're immortal.

[Shovah32]

LA Ulm with high dominion has some funny potential strategies avaliable and is alot of fun, atleast in single player.

[SlipperyJim]

I'm another one who will always add a little Blood to any game I play. Even if it's thematically inappropriate ... Ulm Reborn, for example. A little bit of Blood can open up a lot of possibilities.

Succubus.
Infernal Disease.
And my favorite global, The Looming Hell.

Blood forging (as others have said) is probably the best way to get some mileage out of a little bit of Blood, because it doesn't require you to spend any research effort on Blood magic. All you have to research is Construction -- which you're going to research anyway -- and you can get some very nice possibilities:
Lifelong Protection
Soul Contract
Armour of Souls
Blood Thorn
Blood Stone
Boots of Youth
assorted artifacts!
A little bit of Blood can go a long way. I think it's well worth the marginal effort required.

[Aleph]

And I forgot to mention Rangers for LA Ulm, arguably the deadliest ranged troops in the game, and decent melee troops to boot.

I think MA Abyssia is a nice introductory blood nation. Their magical pyrotechnics and heavy infantry are quite brutal through their affinity for fire (awesome to be able to toss fireballs into tightly packed melees without a care), while their Demonbred make excellent blood hunters (and everything else as well, but that's another story). You have a lot of solid non-blood options to play with, as well as the best blood skills of their era, but without tons of blood uniques like Lanka or Mictlan - while their national spells are amazing, if you rely on the nationals you'll learn less about Blood overall.

[Crafty]

My first attempt at blood use. I followed the strategy guide in the second post in this thread -Micitans.

Got dominion killed.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Back to the drawing board.

Slippy, yes I do blood forging for nations that already have some blood mages, mainly to get boots of youth (just blood hunt a little). But I don't really count that as real blood magic use.

I thought real blood use is to use their real powerful summons..

[Methel]

Dominion killed as Mictlan?
You did sacrifice at you're temples right?

Just checked the post, and its Baalz excellent guide. Now Im even more surprised.

What dominion strength did you go for?

[Baalz]

I added a section on blood sacrificing, hope it helps.

[JaghataiKhan]

By the way, why can't I transfer blood slavs immediately to the laboratory? My hands ache from sheer amount of clicking.

This sucks. I also need Blood Sacrifices directly from labs when available. I hate microing Mictlan.

[Meglobob]

JaghataiKhan said:
By the way, why can't I transfer blood slavs immediately to the laboratory? My hands ache from sheer amount of clicking.



You can just click pool in your lab.

[Shovah32]

Select your blood hunters and press shift+Z, that should transfer all of their slaves directly to the lab.

[JaghataiKhan]

"You can just click pool in your lab."

Oh [censored]...

I am a geek for 12 years of mad gaming and...

I think I lost something.

[Micah]

The only drawback of pooling slaves is that it nabs the slaves that your priests were planning on sacrificing as well, so you can't really use it if you're sacrificing heavily (shift-Z on your hunters becomes easier than manually restocking the priests pretty quickly)

[Baalz]

Yep, and if you ctrl select your blood hunters, it keeps the grouping so each turn the steps to milk each province are only:
right click province
left click any blood hunter
shift-z

Still a minor PITA, but MUCH less so.

[Shovah32]

I do it the same way as Baalz, the micro is small enough that you probably wont notice it until you have 30+ hunters.

[Jazzepi]

I'm using Mictlan priests with divining rods in two 5k+ territories, and not really seeing the return I expected in blood slaves.

Should I just stack more priests + rods in there? It seems like the return is proportional to the blood magic. I'm trying to figure out the best return for my investment. If the return is linear growth instead of exponential growth, then I should be better off just stacking a bunch of B1 priests in the province, otherwise it seems like I should be putting the B2 priests in there.

Any advice would be great.

Jazzepi

[Methel]

If I remember right now, the act of hunting raises unrest in itself. So you would have more unrest if you had a total of 8 bloodlevels on 8 priests instead of say 4 priests with rods for a effective 8 levels.

[Baalz]

Methel is correct, which is why blood hunting with scouts raises unrest...even though ten of them blood hunting often find nothing.

There are several checks which happen (unrest, pop level), but IIRC the one with regards to blood magic level is 40% X blood level chance of success, it also effects the amount of blood slaves you get (only +1 per level though). Generally 3 level one mages with dousing rods is the best way to go for cost/benefit, though that's not an option for everybody.

[Jazzepi]

Uh. Do dwarven hammers, and other forging style items, reduce the cost in blood slaves? I just realized this might not be the case.

Jazzepi

[Methel]

Yes it does, not for contracts though. Or perhaps just not for the soul contract?

[Jazzepi]

So the lifelong protection and the devil summoning one both don't have their costs reduced by dwarven hammers?

Jazzepi

[Methel]

Im not sure about the lifelong protection one, but the devil summoner is full cost no matter what.

On a slightly ot note, how many imps do you get each turn with lifelong protection? Is is a automatic casting of summon imps? (ie. 5 pr. turn)

[Shovah32]

I think its around 5 per turn. Using them with skele-spamming vampire counts is fun fun fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
The optimal blood hunting set-up(that ive found) is 3 B1 mages each with a dousing rod in a 5k+ province. With 0 taxes you can often get away with no patrollers and should never need more than a few.

[FAJ]

Question: For battle magic, must the mage be equipped with slaves, or can they just be near him for usage?

How can you keep slaves safe from heat auras? Can I equip a middleman with slaves and have him stand just apart from the hot caster?

[JaghataiKhan]

I think so FAJ. The Goat Sun Demon who didn't own the slaves,(The Greed Demon of man enslaving thing had them) itself cast the virgin costing spells anyway.

Btw, whomever came up with Goat Sun Demon image must be really high on LSD.

[FAJ]

When does the goat sun show up?

[JaghataiKhan]

I think it is the last sacrifice rite for Infernal lord spell.

So you'l need well 600 slaves to get it.

The sequence is:

150 = Bargaroth (Demon of Greed)
150 = Belial (Demon of crime and hate)
150 = Pazuzu (Demon of disease)
150 = Goat Sun (heat, just heat so he can't carry virgins withut roasting them next turn)

[Endoperez]

JaghataiKhan said:
I think it is the last sacrifice rite for Infernal lord spell.

So you'l need well 600 slaves to get it.

The sequence is:

150 = Bargaroth (Demon of Greed)
150 = Belial (Demon of crime and hate)
150 = Pazuzu (Demon of disease)
150 = Goat Sun (heat, just heat so he can't carry virgins withut roasting them next turn)



AFAIK, there's no order. You get one of the unsummoned ones at random, so Goat Sun could be first as well as last.

[Amhazair]

Yep, I can confirm that. The goat sun is the only one of the 4 I've ever seen. (and there were no other blood nations in play, no chance of them having summoned the others)

[JaghataiKhan]

Not to mention it is [censored] weird.

[Aleph]

Jazzepi - I don't know how new you are to blood, so don't take this the wrong way, but you are turning your taxes to 0 in provinces where you're hunting, right?

I find that roughly 6 points of blood magic (SDRs are effectively +1 for his purpose) is about as much as I ever want hunting a province unless I'm actively patrolling vs. unrest, and I almost never do that unless I'm growth 3. I like long games, though, and play single player, so I'm sure that many people crank more blood out of their provinces for more short term gains.

[Jazzepi]

Yup.

Jazzepi

[Valandil]

I've tried 50-60 levels hunting before, with maybe a thouasand patrolling slaves, to kill population in provinces the enemy is about to take, and to get some benefit from them.

[JaghataiKhan]

I hunt blood without fiddling with taxes. Any problem with that?

[Shovah32]

Well either you build up huge amounts of unrest(bad) or you patrol to get rid of unrest which kills your population(bad).

[Meglobob]

If your only a minor blood nation or dabbling in it in order to extend your magic, I often blood hunt at 100% taxes, only adjusting the tax rate next turn to get rid of unrest, then bloodhunting again.

You maximise revenue this way, well still getting a steady supply of bloodslaves. The population remains very stable as well. Often I will have a lab in the province so I can research the turn I am not bloodhunting.

[MaxWilson]

thejeff said:
I'd say no to EA (or any age) Vanheim. They lack cheap blood hunters. 280gold Vanjarls are not to be wasted blood hunting.




Although it might be a good idea to blood-hunt enough to get an E2B3 caster to make Blood Stones.

-Max