Blood magic nerfed in dom3?

[Taqwus]

Ease of access to blood becomes a differentiating factor between nations, rather than the fairly odd case of early patchlevels of Dom 2 where any nation with some scouts and some income headroom could bloodhunt to get SDRs, and then use the SDRs to accelerate this (since they did help even non-B mages for a while), in addition to the ubiquitous sorcery or unrestricted randoms.

There's no reason that blood magic should be any easier to achieve regardless of nation than, say, fire-immune infantry or flying assassins, especially when there are nations for whom blood magic is intended to be a major strength.

Might also be noted that blood magic is associated with some very nice national summons (Mandahas, the Tlaloques, the Devatas for instance) and also received some unresistable literally-go-to-Hell combat spells. Also, unlike gems, you have a lot of freedom in deciding where you gather them instead of being reliant on protecting possibly inconvenient locations; if you need to pull back, any surviving blood hunters can fall back, and your opponent does not get your blood income like he would from a magical site.

Regarding SDR, it's only 10 blood slaves paying full retail, and IIRC it acts as an effective +1 for a blood hunter that's already at B1 or higher, so if the hunter is a dedicated hunter it's a bargain compared to the cheapest possible empowerment of B1-B2 at 30 gems. It's cheaper than the Athame, Brazen Vessels and Armor of Souls too.

Magic sites rarely contribute blood slaves; there's the Damned Merchant (+1/turn) and some national capitals (Mictlan's, for instance), but bloodhunting (with B mages...) or wishing are far, far faster. That's not to say that there aren't some extremely interesting blood sites (some giving large summoning bonuses, some 'blood mages may enter to summon some type of devil or demon' sites), but they're pretty rare.


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Edit (addition):

It also occurs to me that blood magic provides the simplest way to deal with aging -- Boots of Youth. Non-blood nations need Elixirs of Life, which are a bit more complicated to make and take a miscellaneous slot -- arguably more important than a foot slot for mages now that quickness no longer accelerates casting... or Gift of Health, which can only be used by one nation at a time and can be dispelled.

[Maltrease]

I wish blood hunting took the size of population into account in determining how much unrest it causes.

Surely snatching up 10 young homeless people from a 30k city would cause much less of a stir then snatching 10 people from a small town of 1000 people.

It would be nice if you could conservatively hunt in your capital without utterly destroying your income. I've noticed that even if you patrol and completely eliminate the unrest it still effects your income for that turn.

I don't remember the exact unrest formula but I'd like to normalize the existing amount to 10,000 people (or similar) and then scale it up or down based on the population.

[UninspiredName]

I understand what you mean, Taqwus, but 'flying assassins' seems to be a pretty long shot from an entire magic Path and School. It would be nice if some more universal summons for Blood mages would be added.

[Ironhawk]

Huzurdaddi said:

The point is that Blood is different than other gems. Blood is not a random resource it is a way to convert gold into a type of gem.*

Blood gems are not like other gems. Other gems are *resources*. Blood gems are a *choice* between gold and blood gems. That choice is made by weighing the *exchange ratio* between gold and blood. That ratio was changed in Dom3 vs. Dom2.

No, I disagree. In point of fact, blood slaves are probably EASIER to get now than before. With the additional money you can buy even more blood hunters and expand your blood hunting operations into EVEN MORE provinces.

[UninspiredName]

But the more provinces you hunt in, the faster unrest increases and the more gold you lose.

[Huzurdaddi]

Ironhawk said:
No, I disagree. In point of fact, blood slaves are probably EASIER to get now than before.

That's thrilling. Did you actually read my post? I explained *exactly* the costs associated with blood hunting. Here, I'll cut and paste them JUST FOR YOU:

the cost of producing blood slaves is equal to the sum of the following 3 costs:

(1) the cost of reducing the unrest caused by blood hunting, this is commonly, but not always done by setting the tax rate to 0.
(2) the cost of maintaining the blood hunters
(3) the amortized cost of purchasing the blood hunters.

And now *WITH MORE EXPLANATION*:
#2 and #3 are do not vary between Dom2 and Dom3.
#1 has changed.

Thanks.

[UninspiredName]

You leave one thing out of your condescending little explanation: That people will have more money in the first place to foot these bills. You lose more gold, but each single gold matters less. For that reason, it could quite easilly even out before you even factor in the effectively reduced cost of Blood Slaves.

[Ironhawk]

Huzurdaddi said:
That's thrilling. Did you actually read my post? I explained *exactly* the costs associated with blood hunting. Here, I'll cut and paste them JUST FOR YOU:

Uhhh... yes, actually I did. I read your post, and then read the entire thread. And just cause I have a different viewpoint than you doesnt give you the right to come off all lordly and condescending. As if no one could possibly disagree with you because there was simply no possibility of you being wrong? Why did you even make a post on a forum if you didnt want feedback? Get a grip!

[NTJedi]

Huzurdaddi said:
However near the end stage of Dom3 development the gold produced by provinces was doubled, yet the amount of blood slaves/gems produced was not modified.

Dominions_2 was more centralized around the summoned creatures thus different nations only meant different mages on the battlefield while the armies were mostly summoned creatures. The change you mentioned was done so national units are a larger part of the game especially for early and middle.