Blood SCs
 

I have a question for the experts of Blood magic out there :evil:

What is the best use of Heliophagi, Father Illearth, demon lords and other blood magic SCs? What are the best combinations of items/spells/scripts etc.? Should they fight alone or in command of small armies?

As a side question: how many demon lords are out there? The manual names only one, the lord of the plague wind. Are there any others?

Re: Blood SCs
 

In my opinion, Father illearth is the best (most cost effective) blood summon and he can be used either as a SC or a battlefield caster or a ritual caster. He has no limits! But also no feet.

The ice devils are the best plain SC. But only against people with cold scales and they also do not fly. Weak magic. Usually, only *I* likes these guys.

The Arch devils are excellent battlecasters and can be awesome with lots of reinvig gear + phoenix pyre + cast spells. Caster-thugs only. Rather mehh as normal thugs. Flight is also nice.

The Heliophagis are even weaker than the arch devils but they usually have great magic and can be used to summon the Demon lords without risk. They mainly exist so that nations can get F4 and D4 without already having those paths though. If you are unlucky you get the plague guy. They are also stealthy. But this rarely mater as they are not great thugs.

The four(?) Demon lords are hard to generalize about as they are all different. They are often hard to make in to SC though because of the lack of body slots. They are all supreme battle and ritual casters due to their awesome magic paths. They are the ultimate diversity vehicles and can cast all the mass demon summoning spells except the frost fiend spell, because why not. No one want to cast that spell anyhow.

Re: Blood SCs
 

To add to the above (which I mostly agree with) I like to equip the Arch Devil with S magic as an anti-SC, as he can teleport on top of your target, has great attack skill and decentish strength.

The Heliophagi can be used as SC with Soul Vortex and then Bloodletting to immediately get rid of the casting fatigue (ususally the weakness of Soul Vortex) and supercharge hit points. This does require sufficient opponents to make bloodletting worth it, and a way to replenish slaves, so I agree it's not necessarily the 'default' use.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Heliophagi? Ah, yes, the guys I usually put black heart on...
And archdevils with full kit, fire shield and phoenix pyre can be NIIIICE.

Re: Blood SCs
 

I wish blood magic were more practical.

Maybe a few spells where the caster uses his own blood? Obviously they wouldn't be as powerful as the ones that need slaves, but they could still be pretty cool.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Agree with most of what Corinthian said, although I consider the ice devils to be high end thugs rather than actual SC's.

One thing missed is that vampire lords can be kitted to provide darkness for your blood troops.

Generally though the strength of blood summons is more in diversity than raw combat power.

Re: Blood SCs
 

I assume(?) brxy is referring to same situation as I find: even trying to be careful with battle-blood-casts and slave location, it's hard to do much in blood battle without using slaves, and then it's hard not to get them all used up (e.g. on imps) throughout battle, whether you meant to or not.

Then again, I could be beyond hopeless...

Re: Blood SCs
 

Just put your blood slaves on scouts that don`t participate in battle, but sneak into the province instead. Same works for gems.

Re: Blood SCs
 

True. But I kind of meant, for the slaves you do deliberately allocate with mages in the battle, they seem to use up more "spares" (I'll add some extra slaves/gems for safety/unexpected/whatever) on, say, imp casting than I think other gem mages use up on silly things --- gem mages will come out of battles with unused gems, but blood mages like to spend all of theirs. Or so it seems to me.

Re: Blood SCs
 

nope.

If the caster doesn't deem the threat worthy of using gems, then they'll just cast sabbath master, sabbath slave without using slaves. Its sort of funny. I had it happen very recently in one game where my patrollers in my blood hunting province recently caught an enemy scout. All my blood hunting units just cast slave/master than the scout got hit with a few arrows an died. No blood slaves were harmed during filming.

Re: Blood SCs
 

JonBrave,

I've see the same difference between blood and non-blood casters and "gem" usage. I assume this is because the non-blood castors fatigue out before depleting their gem stockpile while blood mages cast Reinvigoration to allow themselves to keep casting. I haven't really watched that closely (or read the logs) to determine if this is correct.

Re: Blood SCs
 

I was mostly just referring to the idea of blood magic, and how carrying around a bunch of slaves with you to cast a single spell would be unwieldy in the setting.

And also because blood slaves are, I think, vulnerable. What happens if your caster is an Abysian warlock or has a stronger aura of another sort? Bye bye, blood slaves.

Re: Blood SCs
 

After I posted I wondered too whether that might well be a factor.

While talking about the "Summon Imps" my blood mages seem to like, what are imps for, what do they do well, and how can I help them?

Re: Blood SCs
 

True, the difficulty of employing blood magic on the battlefield without killing your own blood slaves is one of the significant challenges of playing Abysia. They also burn indy recruits and nearly all summons and have horrible magic diversity, nothing but fire mages from non-cap forts. And yet, EA Abysia is one of my 2 most favorite non-mod nations. Go figure.


As lab summons, imps' bread and butter is the removal of poorly armored units from the battlefield, such as archers or mage communes. If they go hoof to toe with infantry, they are generally toast. Non-fire area affect spells are not their friend either.

When I am concerned about keeping them alive, my preference is to mix them with something beefier to demand the attention from whatever they are fighting. Flying thugs are the best. But, devils work OK too.

They also make effective, 0 upkeep patrollers for blood hunting. Especially nice is that they don't die when patrolling for EA Abysia and an enemy scout discovery triggers a battle where they mix with that nation's heat aura radiating PD.

The main utility of the battlefield spell, Summon Imps, in my practice is to tie up an assassin so the mage has a few turns to take him down with Blood Burst or another attack spell. When used via AI, I find it generally to be a means to finish off any leftover blood slaves so you have to replenish before the next fight. Just hope you don't have two battles the same turn.

Re: Blood SCs
 

I assume the reason is that blood casters don't have much else to do.
In other paths, even if you have gems, there are likely to be a bunch of other spells you can cast that don't use any. Almost all blood spells use slaves. Since the mage will try to cast every turn, the Blood mage will probably use slaves every turn while the other mages will find something else to do.

Re: Blood SCs
 

This is hardly a large issue with proper spacing.

Re: Blood SCs
 

You can't really keep your warlock away from your slaves, though. Or your warlock's bodyguard.

Re: Blood SCs
 

One warlock's effect doesn't really matter.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Imps are great decoy for drawing enemy evocations away from your real troops. They have good def, so trampling them isn`t that easy. And, as all demons, they love Darkness.

Re: Blood SCs
 

I was only talking of this: not choice imp summons but, exactly as you say, the fact that on the battlefield my blood mages like to get to casting this. So given that I'd like to understand what to make of them, if I can.

@thejeff
[It's not so easy to quote different posts here!]
Precisely as you say, gem mages can do useful stuff without using gems, but there are very few blood spells available which don't use slaves. Which I guess means (which you already knew!) that you have to be that much more careful about scripts, slave allocation & location with blood mages.

Re: Blood SCs
 

It does force you to hand out more slaves than you would otherwise, since a wounded slave isn't a usable as a sacrifice anymore. So any that catch fire are useless.

It also means you're constrained to not give him bodyguards with heat aura, which is another annoyance.

It's true though that the main thing with blood slaves is that you should have a scout along and hand out slaves as needed, but that's the same with normal gems.

Concerning imps: they have two attacks, so they profit somewhat more than others from Blood Lust/Rush of Strength, but they won't if they're summoned after the buff was cast. Mostly I see them as a Summon Swarm that's not as good a distraction but with a small offensive potential.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Oh, man. This takes me back to the days when Swarm was an almost full-proof SC killer. Don't actually quite remember how it worked, (Something with doing 1AN damage each, so not really counterable?) but boy, was it fun. :)

Re: Blood SCs
 

You know, you would think that Abysians would have virgins of their own to sacrifice.

Re: Blood SCs
 

In CBM, master/slave doesn't cost any slaves. In vanilla, *every* blood spell costs slaves. So my guess is that in vanilla the blood mage will keep casting "summon imp" as it feels it has to cast something and sees this as the least worst choice.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Thanks, didn't realise that change (am playing my first CBM, SP). That makes a difference. On that topic, in CBM what is the deep significance of sabbath master/slave being Fatigue "99-" instead of "100-", please?

Re: Blood SCs
 

The fatigue cost determines the gem cost of a spell. Each 100 requires an additional gem. So 99 is high enough that the casting cost difference is irrelevant, but allows you to cast without needing a slave.

Re: Blood SCs
 

That 99 fatigue cost seems like an improvement but it is really a terrible nerf.

It means that the AI can (and now - will) cast slave and master and fatigue himself out of a fight.

this can happen if
a). the blood mage has few spells researched.
b). No spells in range.

So, this makes scripting more difficult

It gets worse.

Even though the spell theoretically consumes no slaves - intermittently, it will in fact consume a slave.

This makes slave management more difficult.

Finally, it truly bolluxes up communions, reverse communions, and linebacker communions (qv).

if one of the mages that you intend to be communion slaves casts master it can prevent all slaves following it to *not* cast a spell. (remember all slaves cease casting upon the first cast by a master).

So, all in all, that 1% fatigue change is pretty huge change.

Re: Blood SCs
 

A nerf? I thought it was pretty op. Way easier to make communions. Esp for b2+ nations.

Re: Blood SCs
 

On the whole it CBM helps blood sabbaths a lot. It's true that B1 mages provided by high PD can now mess things up, but if you place your dudes so that they won't have access to slave, there's nothing they can do after having cast sabbath master. And in vanilla, the slave costs for a big sabbath would be pretty huge.

Oh, and: Sabbath + Reinvigoration = Profit.

Re: Blood SCs
 

If you think it's a nerf you just don't understand how to use it. It is, in fact, a huge boost. All the problems you've listed are either imaginary, insignificant or easy to avoid.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Ok. Splain it to me.

The advantage is you don't have to carry blood slaves around.
Usually this takes a scout. You also save 1 blood slave per participant. Blood economies can generate huge numbers of blood slaves - economy isn't usually an issue. You can get a little more creative with placement.

You are a tiny bit less susceptible to first turn earthquakes, rain of stones, etc; (since you can communion with fewer slaves).

You can sometimes form communions you wouldn't have been able to.

On the flip side of the coin you get *much* more controllable, and predictable use of blood slaves when it costs 100.

And you are less susceptible to scripting errors.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Explain how you get "*much* more controllable, and predictable use of blood slaves" at 100- fatigue instead of 99- fatigue.

Re: Blood SCs
 

At 100- fatigue your caster doesn't cast any more spells, thus ensuring that no blood slaves are consumed. It's a very harsh way to control gem consumption, but hey, why not.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Wha...? But that doesn't...

Ok. Ignoring everything about how the AI uses gems/slaves to lower fatigue, that argument would apply only to a B1 mage with 0 casting enc. So, Civatateo? B1 Danava with an air quill? GoR'd Asrapa with another air quill? and... nothing else?

Next defense please.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Hey, I wasn't defending it. And I could be wrong on the premise. I'm not big on strategy.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Blood economy isn't the issue, blood logistics are. Lets say you have a communion of 16 mages, that's 16 slaves just to start up the communion each battle, gets pretty huge after a few battles, and what a ****ing chore to uphold a supply line all the way into enemy territory and painstakingly give every damn slave one(1) blood slave each turn. AND any clever opponent can **** you up by remote attacks to burn that slave in the magic phase so your entire communion falls apart in the real battle because there'll be no slaves to start it.

Jeez, all you have to do to prevent the slaves from doing something stupid is either A: place them out of range from the blood slaves, or B: have a master with with a unit ID so he's placed over the slaves. That's absolutely trivial compared to the crazy micro before.

The options opened up however, are anything but trivial. You can now:
Make mixed communions without having a blood economy, to start with. Using blood mages as linebackers with astral masters, for non blood nations. Teleporting and cloud trapezing communions deep striking enemy territory without having to send scouts across the whole map in advance, which is pretty big if the war starts suddenly. Using hundreds of blood slaves for something else than fueling large communions. Scripting blood hunters for communioned defence without having to manually put back a slave after pooling.

And the list goes on, but the hugest one is probably: Actually USE blood communions as a major part of your strategy without having to be totally ****ing anal.

Just pick a single one of the advantages and it still beats your imaginary "nerf"

Re: Blood SCs
 

Well, first, I don't uphold an entire supply line. Usually I just fly (or walk) blood slaves in with stealthy cmdrs. I can't imagine doing what you are describing.

As for:

Suppose you are in this situation:

S
S
S
S
S
M

Your slaves are spamming battle spells. Suppose however that slave 2 now casts a spell that kills all opponents in range. Slave #3 now will cast any spell on his list - including Sabbath Master. So on any subsequent turn, slave 3 casting will ***k up the scripts of slaves 4,5 and possibly M.

And, it will cast random spells, at random fatigue, causing your fatigue calculations to go to hell. Multiply this by every slave in your communion.


Or here's a real life example. 3 mictlan priests with 11 PD facing - call it 20 undead. No challenge right?

Not necessarily. Since the undead are out of range each priests casts Slave, then Master - and thus is fatigued out of the rest of the combat. The PD takes one casualty - routes - and the fatigued mages are slaughtered.

Third example: I haven't nailed down why this happens. Perhaps its in a drain economy, perhaps its spell casting encumbrance. But sometimes casting blood slave will consume a slave.

Sure, its easy to say move the communion slave away from the blood slaves. But there are times you want and need your mages in proximity (unit buffs, enemy placement).

Sure, I said there were a few new instances that the new bloodless communions opened up: sudden war, fast reacting communions.

But generally, if you're a blood nation and you're going to send a sabbath, you're going to want to carry blood slaves with you anyway, to cast things like reinvig, leech etc.

Generally speaking this change benefits cross path mages, and penalizes pure blood nations. The cross path mages can establish a bloodless communion. They get the mage path boosts, get to spread the fatigue across cheap mages, and are spared the tedium of ever having to establish a blood economy.

I think this is way more than was intended when llama made the change from 100 to 99 fatigue.

So to sum up:

Reverse communions are much less reliable.
Linebacker communions the same.
Restricted spell paths mages can fatigue out battles easily.
Many minor blood nations got a huge increase by getting half of the benefit (communions) without any of the cost (blood gatherers, hits to the economy).
Minor blood nations got a big power boost vs non blood/ non astral mages. (can do communions without setting up infrastructure or paying a gem cost).

We agree that communions now take a great deal less thought, and planning. We agree - in the end game, you will consume a great deal fewer slaves, as you can now have communions in every fight, without paying for them.

But I don't think this makes the game more balanced. I think this is a sterling example of an unintended consequence.

Re: Blood SCs
 

So it's a "huge nerf", that is also somehow overpowered?

Re: Blood SCs
 

Apparently the risk of Mictlan b1 priests casting both sabbatah slave and master is one of the worst things to ever to happen to the game?

I don't really understand what's being argued because the idea that some mages being able of entering communions at a much higher fatigue cost than equivalent mages with astral somehow has a negative impact on the game is pretty daft.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Look, call it what you will. I don't think you've disputed any one of the effects that I pointed out.. I think its a nerf to pure blood nations, due to the increase in unreliability. What you think it is will depend on the kind of nations you like to play.



A large boost to cross-path blood mages is a nerf to everyone else.
Making communions essentially free is a nerf to non blood nations.
Decreasing the reliability of understood game mechanics is just a general nerf.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Look, call it what you will. I don't think you've disputed any one of the effects that I pointed out.. I think its a nerf to pure blood nations, due to the increase in unreliability. What you think it is will depend on the kind of nations you like to play.



A large boost to cross-path blood mages is a nerf to everyone else.
Making communions essentially free is a nerf to non blood nations.
Decreasing the reliability of understood game mechanics is just a general nerf.

Re: Blood SCs
 

In many cases, your fatigue level will not matter. for example:

B3: Slave: Whatever
B3: slave: Whatever
B3 slave: Whatever
b3 Master; Reinvig


Another Case:

bx master: tiny spell, tiny spell tiny spell
Bx: Slave: Whatever......
Bx: Slave: Whatever
.
.
.
.
B3: Master : tiny spell, Reinvigorate; Reinvigorate; Reinvigorate
b3 Master: Big spell, big spell, big spell..

This kind of communion depends a lot on timing.

First round: All slaves cases Slave or master
Second Round: First master casts an inconsequential spell, to prevent slaves from casting. Last master casts big fatigue spell
Third round slaves regen to under 200. Second master casts reinvig - pegging the slaves to 200. But then the reinvig drops them down to some reasonably exhausted state. Third master casts a big fatigue spell again - begging them back to 200.

So essentially the cyle becomes: Big spell; recover,.; reinvig. Big spell, recover, reinvig. Continue through five rounds of script.

And you don't have to use reinvig either. The it can be any spell that reduces fatigue.

It relies on the mechanism that it doesn't matter how much fatigue you have 0 or 199. Any spell then cast is just going to react exactly the same. Peg you to 200.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Fatigue applied to slaves from spells cast by the master don't "cap" at 200, any spill over fatigue does damage to the slaves. Reinvigoration works because it removes enough fatigue that the slaves usually don't reach 200 and start taking damage. But if they are at 199 they're gonna take quite some damage from a big spell.

What "other fatigue reducing spells" are you talking about? There is only earthpower and relief, none of which are viable for this.

But anyhow, in your example, if your "first master" casts a tiny spell each turn to stop slaves from casting. Then how is the slaves going to accidentally cast sabbath master? Because, you know, they wont cast **** either way. So in that example the change to sabbath spells makes 0 difference, except the very good difference that you don't have to micro slaves for the slaves/can place them where you want.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Bat/man: I don't see how, in any of your examples, you've described something that's different with bloodless communions from what you'd be doing with slaves.

Re: Blood SCs
 

The last two examples were not meant to address that point Kungfoo. They were addressing:

ie., phrase it how you will, but the ability to enter a communion at higher fatigue is useful, when you can remove a *lot* of fatigue with just one blood slave.

Fantomen: I did a lot of testing on slave capping - but maybe I forget. I'll retest later tonight.

Re: Blood SCs
 

FYI I did test it, both with blood and astral and mixed communions, same result.

But to take the most obvious of all tests as an example: A S7 caster with 2 communicants casting master enslave kills both slaves with that single casting.

Of course I knew this beforehand, but anticipated you would pull that as your next strawman.

Someone might wonder why I bother?
It's because this kind of thing can give new players a hard time, when someone seemingly knowledgeable gives advice, but that advice turns out to be complete misinformation. Non slave sabbaths is not a nerf, not a big scripting issue. It works like an astral communion. Spill over fatigue in communions damages the slaves, you can not do any tricks by putting them at just under 200 fatigue, you need to recover them enough to withstand what your master are casting. There are no "other fatigue reducing spells" that can be compared to reinvigoration for zeroing slave fatigue, that's why you want to add a blood master. There are other clever ways to recover your slaves, like having them cast drain life, or buff them with soul vortex and giving them bodyguard batteries, pythiums communicants can be quickened and given a standard of the damned, and so on, but the principle is the same, to keep them alive you need to keep them under 200 fatigue.

While reverse communions with pure blood mages as slaves might sometimes cast sabbath master if poorly scripted, the solution is to learn proper scripting, not to blame the game or this mod.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Its hardly a strawman to say you might be right.
But thanks for the test.

Re: Blood SCs
 

iirc this doesnt work. Masters don't cast reinvig if they have no fatigue.

You need this:
B3 Master: spell, spell, Big spell, spells
B3 Master: spell, Big Spell, Reinvigorate, spells
B3 Master: Big spell, Reinvigorate, other spells
B3: Master : Reinvigorate, other spells

Re: Blood SCs
 

Also, all your edge cases are not match for the huge boost blood nations get by just doing this:

B1H2 mage 1: sabbath master, divine blessing.
B1H2 mage 2: sabbath slave
B1H2 mage 3: sabbath slave

Not having to put all the sacred beside the fragile mages adds tons of tactical flexibility. Add that to the ability the be able to always commune even without slaves (reducing the slave costs, and the micro cost, etc). Meaning a well set up sabbath communion works every turn, and not just one turn because they ran out of slaves.

As there are no pure blood mages, having easier access to sabbaths it is a huge boost.

Re: Blood SCs
 

Yes it is. It's a strawman to question whether I'm right or not, rather than test it first and confirm that I'm right. A way to stale the discussion by insinuating your opponent might not know what she's talking about, in lack of proper arguments of your own. In other words, a strawman.

You can assume I test things before answering, because otherwise I'll write out clearly that I'm not sure.