Miniblood nations - rates

[Slobby]

I'm playing around with EA Van with the 1st CBM that took away hammers. Now there's been some discussion as to miniblood nations, like EA Van, and how removing SDRs hits them hard.

So in my test game I have 2 B2 vandrotts blood hunting a province and they're pulling in ~25-30 slaves every 2 turns.

My question then is what is the ideal expectation of a blood income from a miniblood nation?

To me, having never played a heavy blood nation, 15 slaves/turn is pretty good, and I only have 2 mages doing it right now. I would think that for a heavy blood nation you would want as many as possible but is 100 for a heavy blood realistic? Too small? What then of miniblood in comparison?

Thoughts?

[SirMu]

Depends on how many mages you invest in it. Without sacrificing too much of anything else, you should be able to pull about 50 blood slaves a turn.

[Corinthian]

The problem with removing SDRs is that blood slaves for nations with only B1 hunters suddenly became twice as expensive. Why? Because a B2 mage will find 120% more bloodslaves on average (guesstimate) than a B1 will and now they cant boost them cheaply. EA Vanheim has expensive capitol only mages with a chance for B2. But you can hardly hope to build a blood economy on those alone.

[P3D]

Strictly speaking, the price of blood saves is mainly determined by your scales, as you need to turn taxes to 0. The same 5000-population province can yield 40 to 80gpt. In the case of vanheim, it is usually higher (O3 scales).
If you hunt by four B1 Vans (cost again as much as 15 turns of lost income from blood hunting), the maintenance is around 37gpt.

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by P3D

Strictly speaking, the price of blood saves is mainly determined by your scales, as you need to turn taxes to 0. The same 5000-population province can yield 40 to 80gpt. In the case of vanheim, it is usually higher (O3 scales).
If you hunt by four B1 Vans (cost again as much as 15 turns of lost income from blood hunting), the maintenance is around 37gpt.

Not necessarily in EA Van's case seeing how they can easily get watchers. Combined with the right growth scales income loss would be minimal for a one time cost of air gems. Also consider with that application you can then leave the jarls in the fort they were recruited to blood hunt, thereby protecting your hunting grounds as well.

[P3D]

One extra hunter over the 'unrest neutral' case still results in a pop loss of ~100/turn from patrolling. Growth cannot even fully offset the pop loss from the average 0 unrest case (3xB2).

And patrolling cost is comparable to blood hunter maintenance, so the major cost is still the loss of taxes.

Originally Posted by Slobby

Not necessarily in EA Van's case seeing how they can easily get watchers. Combined with the right growth scales income loss would be minimal for a one time cost of air gems. Also consider with that application you can then leave the jarls in the fort they were recruited to blood hunt, thereby protecting your hunting grounds as well.

[Slobby]

The arguement for removing SDRs has been made already...this thread isn't for that purpose. I'm merely concerned with rates.

[Corinthian]

The price of a bloodslave is also affected by the magic site settings in the game. High settings = more bloodslaves. I think.

You should also remember the opportunity cost of recruiting a bloodhunter. A B2 bloodhunter will only require half as many mage recruiting turns/slots as a B1. And the freed recruit slot from a B2 can, for example, be used to buy a researcher in stead.

[Valerius]

15 slaves/turn is fine for forging and some blood sacrificing but you won't get too far with summoning. I'd say 100 blood slaves/turn for a heavy blood nation is too low. When playing MA Aby (good, but cap only, blood hunters) I'm looking for at least 150, preferably 200. With Mictlan (which I haven't played) I'd expect even higher numbers. When playing Van my goal has typically been 75-100/turn (if I can get GoNB up then Van's horribly cost-inefficient blood hunters become more tolerable and I aim for higher numbers ). Of course map size affects these numbers but this is roughly what I'd aim for in an 8-12 player game.

As for Van post-SDR, I'd suggest using all of your B2 Vanadrotts for blood hunting. Additional, you'll want some blood boosters around and when they are not being used in forging/combat give them to Vanjarls to get a few extra blood hunters. I haven't played any post CBM 1.6 games but I can't see using Vanjarls without a booster/SDR - just too cost inefficent at that point. So, if by turn 50 you've split your cap recruitment 40% dwarves and 60% Vanadrott's you'll have about 7 B2 Vanadrott's hunting and maybe another 3 Vanjarls with boosters. This doesn't seem that bad but the fact that you can't offload most blood hunting duties to Vanjarls means that those B2 Vanadrott's will have to stay focused on that and also be your main options for forging, summoning and combat use (blood magic does have some useful combat spells). I'd suggest summoning Vampire Lords as soon as possible to help with all this.

The thing with Vanheim is that while they are very inefficient blood hunters, and in that sense are a "miniblood" nation, blood magic is very important to them and I recommend making it a high priority and making the best of the current situation (which will hopefully be addressed in a future CBM release).

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by Valerius

15 slaves/turn is fine for forging and some blood sacrificing but you won't get too far with summoning. I'd say 100 blood slaves/turn for a heavy blood nation is too low. When playing MA Aby (good, but cap only, blood hunters) I'm looking for at least 150, preferably 200. With Mictlan (which I haven't played) I'd expect even higher numbers. When playing Van my goal has typically been 75-100/turn (if I can get GoNB up then Van's horribly cost-inefficient blood hunters become more tolerable and I aim for higher numbers ). Of course map size affects these numbers but this is roughly what I'd aim for in an 8-12 player game.

As for Van post-SDR, I'd suggest using all of your B2 Vanadrotts for blood hunting. Additional, you'll want some blood boosters around and when they are not being used in forging/combat give them to Vanjarls to get a few extra blood hunters. I haven't played any post CBM 1.6 games but I can't see using Vanjarls without a booster/SDR - just too cost inefficent at that point. So, if by turn 50 you've split your cap recruitment 40% dwarves and 60% Vanadrott's you'll have about 7 B2 Vanadrott's hunting and maybe another 3 Vanjarls with boosters. This doesn't seem that bad but the fact that you can't offload most blood hunting duties to Vanjarls means that those B2 Vanadrott's will have to stay focused on that and also be your main options for forging, summoning and combat use (blood magic does have some useful combat spells). I'd suggest summoning Vampire Lords as soon as possible to help with all this.

The thing with Vanheim is that while they are very inefficient blood hunters, and in that sense are a "miniblood" nation, blood magic is very important to them and I recommend making it a high priority and making the best of the current situation (which will hopefully be addressed in a future CBM release).

Thanks for the reply Valerius your post was the answer I was looking for.

Agreed the 15 blood slaves/turn is low, but before I started really playing around with what could be done I figured I'd get a bench mark first.

I slightly disagree with your post sdr analysis. I'm thinking more to start it up with as many B2s & B1s as soon as possible and get it going. Then get blood boosters (con4) and pass them to B1s to make them B2s so as to free up some of the B2s for summons, etc. and continue to scale upward. Perhaps an inefficient approach but I don't see much else. Even waiting for turn 50 with ~7B2 drotts, isn't ideal. And while I agree vamp lords would be a nice add on that's really pushing mid/late game with respect to research (blood7) when there are other tasty battle spells that could be researched up the alt/evo/ench trees.

Definately not counting either out, but imo the blood econ should already be pumping at a relatively good pace by that point (even if only 25 slaves/turn that's 1 booster/turn which will lead to more slaves, etc.), and in all likelihood I won't be putting blood on the the pretender so I'll need to empower one drott to B4.

I also agree that blood is important to Van, and should be exploited to it's fullest (def cloud trap jarl sabbaths sound sneaky and fun ).

Curious though on your 75-100 blood slave eco, what exactly were you making/summoning? Item wise Vans choices are meh. Was it simply to field mass amounts of storm demons?