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  #1  
Old September 13th, 2004, 10:14 AM

Kel Kel is offline
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

Vampires are a great comparison. Same source, same type of product, same rate of production. Still have things to account for (like cursed items and research levels) but it's a lot closer than clams or bloodstones.

- Kel
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Old September 13th, 2004, 10:36 AM
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Boron Boron is offline
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

Quote:
Kel said:
Vampires are a great comparison. Same source, same type of product, same rate of production. Still have things to account for (like cursed items and research levels) but it's a lot closer than clams or bloodstones.

- Kel
Yep . Vampires + devils serve 2 different purposes imo :
Vampires are mainly defensive weapons , devils allaround weapons . So devils are a bit more useful and as others have said already the scout wastes no magetime while the Vampire lord needs to allysummon and each turn he does something else like forging / casting you lose a vampire .
So the RoI of the soul contract is really a lot better .

With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible .
You could really try to bring forge up as abysia . Your demonbreds could forge then earth bloodstones , fiever fetishes + your warlocks with only 1 +1blooditem or a lucky bloodrandom without that soul contracts .
So if you save your blood even if the forge gets dispelled after a few turns your gain is huge .
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Old September 13th, 2004, 11:15 AM

Kel Kel is offline
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

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Boron said:
With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible
I am sure. Of course, I would never assume that I would have 100+ earth gems and site bonuses to boot in any reasonable amount of time and if we start assuming ideal and unlikely things, than a lot of things become possible. We might just as well assume that someone has a 999 reinforced Arcane Nexus up, , has site bonuses and multiple S9 mages available. Maybe throw in a const bonus for clamming, who knows since it's all unlikely and hypothetical.

I don't even remember the Last MP game I played where I found a const site bonus.

- Kel
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Old September 13th, 2004, 11:49 AM
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

Soul Contracted Devils are effectively free troops.

They provide you with a mass of highly mobile ratehr strong troops: of course they can be beaten, but so what? More are on the way...

And you are not "stuck" with the strategy... clearly you can be simultaneously clamming, and fetishing, and doing whatever other ridiculously overpowered strategies you might have going for you... except you also have loads of free devils!

So there is no downside... there really isnt any other worthwhile activity for expending your blood except for making some blood thorns, blood stones, summoning up the unique devils, and given the quantity of blood a skilled blood nation can rake in this is quite trivial activity happening alongside your soul contracting operations.
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Old September 13th, 2004, 11:53 AM

Cohen Cohen is offline
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

You're forgetting Vampire Lords and Fallen Angels, both good summons.

And Blood could be used to paradrop Hordes from Hell early and cause problems to your enemy (I underline early, later there will be many castles and stronger units), especially cutting out withdraw options to enemy armies that you're going to engage.

Not to count some good battle spells ... sadly you've to bring a lot of slaves with you to cast blood battle magic, and this is a shame IMO.
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Old September 13th, 2004, 11:58 AM
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.
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Old September 13th, 2004, 08:52 PM
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Default Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?

Quote:
Kel said:
Quote:
Boron said:
With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible
I am sure. Of course, I would never assume that I would have 100+ earth gems and site bonuses to boot in any reasonable amount of time and if we start assuming ideal and unlikely things, than a lot of things become possible. We might just as well assume that someone has a 999 reinforced Arcane Nexus up, , has site bonuses and multiple S9 mages available. Maybe throw in a const bonus for clamming, who knows since it's all unlikely and hypothetical.

I don't even remember the Last MP game I played where I found a const site bonus.

- Kel
Yeah you are right most likely you will have 25% bonus from dwarfen hammer but not more since ulm or somebody else will get the 50% unique hammer and probably if anyone casts the forge it is ulm .

Quote:
Soapyfrog said:
I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.
Yeah the devils are strong . I have thought more about it today but it is not really imbalanced i think . If you bloodhunt you have to sacrifice significant amounts of goldincome and you have to use some of your mages for bloodhunting . So you have a significantly smaller number of mages than e.g. a pythiumopponent who has about the same number of provinces with comparable income .

So he has inferior troops on battlefield but he normally can field more battlemages and compensate this way .

If you go to lategame your population maybe quite damaged by perhaps taking deathscale since abysia has this as a special bonus or by raiding + random events .
On a smaller map like aran where you don't have more than 20-30 provinces for a long time a clamhoarder may find it worthy to limit your natural further bloodhunt abilities by killing your pop like by plague etc. + suicide pillage .


Astral income by clams increases exponential over time while bloodincome by bloodhunt is hard to increase .
If you aren't able to kill a clamhoarding ryleh/caelum/pythium in time you get 1-2 new soul contracts or similiar / turn while he gets 5 or more new clams each turn which he can either use for e.g. summoning tartarians , wishing or whatever else he wants .

As abysia if you want to try that too it needs a lot of effort by e.g. summoning spectres + recruiting sages/warlocks in hope to get some with W .
As mictlan you can in theory clamhoard very well but mictlan is earlygame highly vulnerable so probably you don't get that powerful than abysia early-midgame .
With blood you mainly get strong summons , strong Scs and good items but you lack battlemagic .
Abysia has good battlemages with their fireskill . Mictlan has imo not that possiblities though they are magically more flexible but their only truly useful battlemage , the F2B3 priests cost 390 gold + are capitol only .


Perhaps these reasons make abysia so loved by lots of ppl because they are with mictlan the best bloodhunter .
Additionally they have heat 3 + the deathbonus +5 firegem starting income which is like +75 income and most important with firemagic good battlemages .
They don't need to waste blood on dominionpush as mictlan has too .

This almost perfect synergy is perhaps the reason because ppl complain almost as much about abysia as about caelum .
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