Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

I have been trying to find an equivalence between Blood slaves and gold. This is what I've considered:

1.- 3 Blood hunters per province, level 1 and with dousing rod. My tests show that they get 3,645 Blood slaves each aprox per turn.
2.- Consider a mage cost of 90 gold, sacred, that will live for 15 turns (most will live more but just choose that number from now on). The SDR has to be paid too. That makes for about 33G a turn for 3 mages.
3.- Consider a province near 5k that gives around 50-60k gold a turn put to tax 0%.

Giving all this a blood slave costs from 7-9g depending on the values used. But the important lesson learned here is that biggest part of price came from taxation loss.

I now compared that cost with unit cost (let's forget about free upkeep for now), so for example at 8g cost:

Sucubus costs 528g, storm demons 56g, ice devils 704g, dark vines 48g...

So first impression is that commanders are really expensive(compared to their recruitable cousins, 704g is about 40% more than a Niefel Jarl) and units in general cheap. That is of course balanced with the free upkeep if the troops survive that is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif.

Any comments?

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

90 gold per sacred blood hunting commander is very optimistic. Only one or two nations have better than that, and most are much worse.

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

60 is mictlan 80 is Lanka.

150 for blood 1 mages make the slaves cost 8,733g.

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

What about if you have a Dousing bonus from your pretender, specifically the +15 from Fountain of Blood?

But also, most B1 mages are not old age, so capping their life expectancy isn't really necessary, is it? Many B2 mages are old age, but what is the difference in hunting efficiency with B2+rod vs B1+rod?

And also, while some nations do get extremely cheap B1 mages, what about nations like Pangaea, who only get very expensive blood mages?

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

If you use Dousing Rods, you might want to factor in their costs as well. Though it's a fixed cost, rather than a variable one.

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

Another cost to add is that of any commander + chaf army patrolling your province to keep unrest down.

Then again, another saving to consider is upkeep - the upkeep you're not paying for summoned units. In other words, to make a correct comparison against the cost of blood-summoned commanders, a Niefel giant's cost should be expressed as purchase cost of 500 gold (IIRC) + 500/15 * average nr. of turns of upkeep...

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

Most people don't patrol blood slave provinces, they lower taxes. The reason IIRC is that the blood slave check occurs before the patrolling unrest reduction kicks in, so you're blood-hunting against nonzero unrest even if patrolling always knocks it down to 0. I don't have firsthand knowledge of this so I may be misinformed.

(BTW, a Niefel Giant is sacred so it's 500 + 500/30*nr. of turns. Of course you knew that by it doesn't hurt to remind forum newbies.)

-Max

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

Just to clarify, the way you're using , is the equivalent of the american usage of . right?

"My tests show that they get 3,645 Blood slaves"
"150 for blood 1 mages make the slaves cost 8,733g. "

If it's simply a stylistic thing, I think I can understand it.
If it's actually in the thousands, then how many provinces are we talking about here?

Anyways, why did you choose "50-60k gold" as an example for province income? I think most provincial income isn't rated in thousands.

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused here.

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

Moderation, the dousing rod cost was included in the 33g/turn.

Jim, I haven't tested Fountain. The things is that I'm not sure about its cost (how can you rate the cost of a pretender?) and the existance or not of an upkeep. For Pangea 320 Pandemoniac it would be 11,8. Quite expensive.
B2+SDR is 100% bloodhunt if unrest=0 and province >5000 and 1 more slave per action than B1+SDR whcih has only 80%.
The reason to put a turn limit cap is because you have to choose a number to be able to calculate the real cost/turn. And also because if you recruit one bloodhunter per turn from turn 15on on turn 30 you will have 15 turns of first one but 1 of your 15th. Probably 20 is more realistic. But remember that good players will try to kill your bloodhunters with remote spells/attacks, stealthy armies and such so they also die http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

Parcelt, I have not analysed that, I do not like patrolling because it eats population quite fast so I tax 0% and put 3 B1+SDR mages and it usually works. The blood slave calculation I used is based on my Mictlan income in Vampirebat. Turnoil 3 Luck 3 for events. So it takes into account things like lucky streaks that increase unrest and similar.
Of course upkeep is 0, but let's think, how many turns does a unit survive normally? An ice devil in a war will not probably survive many turns without been chased by its customized nemesis thug/SC (Flambeau! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ), mind hunted or Vengance of the deaded (I invented a new word here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ). And normal demon troops die quite fast too normally. In general my armies are recruited sent to the front and have big losses sooner or later and it's usually sooner than later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Gold equivalence of blood slaves
 

Sorry Lazy, you are true, 50-60 without the k http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

,=. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif