Vanheim and blood

It's based on unsuccessful hunts and successful hunts.

You get much more unrest for successful hunts than unsuccessful.

You can usually put 5 hunters in a province with 0 tax (1 blood +SDR) and do fairly alright. Sometimes you have to wait a round if you get lucky (with alot of slaves).

[Norfleet]

Scouts also tend to allow you to diffuse your blood hunting across provinces: One advantage of this is that you don't actually have to drop taxes to absolutely zero, and therefore give up income entirely in what are otherwise good provinces: Successful blood hunts tend to produce a LOT more unrest than a failed one, particularly if the take is large: I've done a blood hunt with a blood-10 hunter, raking in some 20+ slaves at once, and immediately sending unrest into the 100+ range.

In contrast, scouts usually fail their hunts: The unrest is minimal and even a successful hunt will yield only a modest take that doesn't overly annoy the province. A province being hunted by scouts will therefore tend to average out to a smoother unrest generation, as opposed to a blood mage hunter's spikes of successes.

Plus, costwise, scouts are far, far cheaper, and can be built nearly anywhere, even many provinces which are devoid of fortresses. There are also other benefits of having scouts diffused throughout your empire: Should an enemy attack you, once his army rolls through, your scouts may be able to easily reflag the province and allow your defense force to totally annihilate the enemy force, since they will not have anywhere to rout. Only Mictlan really benefits from using actual blood mages with SDRs to hunt, since their blood hunter priest is a mere $80 and sacred, to boot. Other potential blood nations have hunters which are just too expensive to use for such a task.

[Ragnarok-X]

im playing a game as pangea lately and im using a bit of bloodmagic as well, though just for summoning, not for battle. My tactic to get JUST enough bloodslaves is to to get approx 3-4 Pandemoniacs, they have nature 3, blood 2. Send every pan in a different provine with approx 2-4k population and let them hunt for 1 or 2 turns, just so you get 15 slaves. Put the tax to 70 % (it wont make a difference income-wise anyway, since the provine only gives 20 or so at 100%) Now let each forge one rod and continue to hunt. Now You should get approx 15+ slaves per turn.
Of course this wont be enough income if you rely on blood magic, but its enough for some fiends of darkness or dark vines.

hope i helped you.

[tinkthank]

Thanks a lot.
Finally understand: slaves/turn PER GOLD. Get it now. Such long-term thinking had escaped me (me want slaves now!). Obliged.

[Wendigo]

A lot of these cost per slave analysis start from the premise that the mage searcher has no other uses, which is not true in the case of the Vanir.

When I play Van I usually have at least half a dozen Vanjarls set as a quick response force (for either rituals or to Cloud trapeze wherever they might be needed). Until the need arrives the Vanir can use their time much more eficiently as blood searchers than, say researchers with their puny 5RP.

[Norfleet]

Wendigo makes a good point: If you're holding Vanjarls for military purposes, the cost effectiveness of using them for a secondary task like researching or bloodhunting is far less important: They're going to sit there anyway, why not put them to use?

The relative virtues of blood hunting as opposed to researching vary depending on one's situation, but bloodhunting is definitely a valid solution for an idling Vanjarl who's on a stakeout for military reasons, rather than economic ones.

However, for a dedicated bloodhunter, scouts are unmatched by anything other than a Mictlan priest, and neither scouts nor Mictlan priests are really strong choices for other uses that would necessitate keeping them around doing otherwise nothing.

While you may have a half dozen to a dozen Vanjarls sitting around waiting for a fire to extinguish, it'll surely take more than that to fuel a strong blood economy, however. They may do a fair job earning their keep as blood hunters in the meantime, but never forget that this is simply busywork, not their primary purpose.

[alexti]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
However, for a dedicated bloodhunter, scouts are unmatched by anything other than a Mictlan priest

Vaetti Hag (Blood-1) is also pretty good at 55 gold.