Tips for finding blood slaves appreciated here

[tinkthank]

Anybody got any tips on how to get some nice blood slaves? Preferably scantily clad, and not too thin? Oh no sorry forget that.

I haven't been having much success. I send my catchers out to provinces with low income, so I can keep taxes down. Happen not to have too many of those in this game, but whatever. But even my Sun Fellow (the big 3-blood priest of Mictlan) with a dousing rod turns up 0 slaves 3 out of 4 times. My whole strategy is failing, because I could make all of these great items and summon all of these interesting-sounding critters, but I simply lack the slaves.
Do I have to go to provinces with big incomes and bring a patroller along? Seems like just such a waste of income and personell. I had hoped I could find some slaves with the lowly Mictlan Priest (it sez so in his description... he should perform blood sacrifices and blood hunts while waiting for the hotshots from the capital to arrive), but I never found even ONE slave with them, even with a dousing rod. I sort of would like to see Mictlan be fun for me, because I like the theme, and it looks like the only race I can play without using a rainbow mage (I am using a fountain of blood).
Ah by the way, the description of the fountain sez it has affinities for blood slaves (quelle surprise) -- does that mean IT gets a bonus when searching? Whcih means I must search in my capital? (How distasteful.)
Ok well thanks in advance.

[GavinWheeler]

As I understand it:

The Fountain of blood 'searches' as if it were 4 levels higher (in Blood) than it is.

You do better searching in provinces with high population.

Unrest might affect hunting - the message about searching becoming difficult and dangerous seems to bear this out.

I have had great sucess putting three or four Mictlan priests with dowsing rods in a domain with four to eight thousand population (the really high populations have high income I would prefer to keep) and zero taxes.

If you build a lab there, you can gather all blood slaves from all your bloodhunting provinces by just clicking the 'pool' button in the lab - handy but expensive, and you can't leave other priests on auto-sacrifice. Otherwise if you group your bloodhunters (by control-clicking so they are all selected) you can easily gether the blood harvest in each province by clicking any one of the searchers (thus selecting your whole bloodhunting team) then pressing Z.

[Norfleet]

Mictlan's Blood Sacrifices combined with the pool slaves command really can create somewhat of a nuisance. It would be nice if the pool command would ignore any commanders performing sacrifices that held only the proper amount of slaves, as these appear to be auto-replenished next turn, and blood hunters automatically put their slaves into the lab if one was present. Little things that ease the the pain and all.

It's quite a nuisance as it stands now: My Mictlan game got bogged in the immense tedium of blood slave management....and it really takes a rather large level of micromanagement to bug me, as an Ermor player.

[Norfleet]

Also, it should be noted that while Mictlan priests can be used to hunt for slaves, this is generally considered somewhat more expensive and only justifiable in well-patrolled provinces: The more successful a blood hunt is, the more the population seems to get annoyed. One way to rake in the blood slaves is to strew any province with > 5K people with a scout or two hunting, and take the taxes down to maybe 70-80: The fact that the individual scout doesn't hunt all that effectively will mean that the unrest level won't get overly high even without a patrol in place, but the fact that you have so MANY scouts hunting everywhere will give you a good income stream.

Also, scouts are cheap and can even be produced in provinces without fortresses and temples. $20 can net you a fast blood hunter right there. Scouts are just so useful, for anything from the baggage train of an army to cheap blood hunters to stick in podunk provinces.

[ February 11, 2004, 10:22: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Mictlan's Blood Sacrifices combined with the pool slaves command really can create somewhat of a nuisance. It would be nice if the pool command would ignore any commanders performing sacrifices that held only the proper amount of slaves, as these appear to be auto-replenished next turn, and blood hunters automatically put their slaves into the lab if one was present. Little things that ease the the pain and all.

It's quite a nuisance as it stands now: My Mictlan game got bogged in the immense tedium of blood slave management....and it really takes a rather large level of micromanagement to bug me, as an Ermor player.

Actually, the pool thing works with blood sacrifice, provided you leave enough slaves in the pool at the end of the turn to resplenish your sacrificers. It's only when you pool your slaves, then "spend" them all, that you will have a problem (you'll have to manually reorder all your sacrificers to sacrifice the next turn).

[IKerensky]

tips for finding bloodslaves:

- Avoid downtown back alley.
- Nightclub isn't great either.
- Contrary to popular thought swiss girl pensionnate is less productive then expected.

Serious tip:

- Find a 10K population province.
- Lower taxe to 0.
- Build a laboratory.
- Bring every heroes there and hunt, scout can have nice success even without blood.

You can try hunthing in your home province if you make enough buck elsewhere and/or dont need your capitol unit too much.