Miniblood nations - rates

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Slobby

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 agree with your approach - the turn 50 example was just a point of reference of what you might have ramped up to as you enter the late game. I would definitely start early, as you have planned. As each B2 Vanadrott is recruited put them right to work blood hunting. And even if you don't have an immediate need for the blood slaves there's something to be said for stockpiling them since you can't sharply ramp up your yield the way the major blood powers can. The only thing I'm not sure about is using B1 Vanjarls without a booster to blood hunt. Of course you'll want some around anyway for thugging and when not otherwise occupied there's no reason not to have them blood hunting (since they're almost equally bad researchers ) but I don't think I'd recruit them expressly for blood hunting (unless of course I had a booster ready for them).

I also agree with your research priority. When playing Van I wouldn't focus that much on blood until I had key spells like rain of stones and fog warriors researched. Vampire lords and high level blood magic are long term goals. For me, blood is key for Van's late game but early/mid game I'm not relying on it the way I would when playing Aby.

Originally Posted by Slobby

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?

Well, I really like the synergy between being able to push your dominion with blood sacrifice and using immortal units. At 66 slaves each, vampire lords can use of a lot of that income. Then blood sacrificing from multiple forts using jade knives could easily use up another 15-20 slaves. If I've researched blood 9 I'll also make use of the various spells that summon a batch of demons. If I think there's some still available I'll also go for the unique blood summons. And of course if you're regularly using spells like life for a life that adds up as well.

Actually, earlier in the game a lot of my blood income went into preparing for a late game blood economy. Invariably I'd empower an N mage so I could forge jade knives. I'd probably continue empowering that mage so he could forge armor of twisting thorns and that would open up the other blood boosters (as well as B/N spells if you want to use some of those).

I didn't make much use of the low level blood summons since Van has a good troop lineup (more so MA than EA). If I do use low level summons I aim for something that summons several units at once. While the idea of an upkeep free lightning bolt caster for 4 slaves is appealing, I never made much use of storm demons when they had to be summoned one at a time. I think because blood hunting is already costly and then I have to have a B2 Vanadrott or a Vanjarl with a booster do the summoning. Especially given the demands on those units in CBM 1.8, summoning demons one at a time doesn't seem worth it.