Blood?

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by apoger:
>Sure you can do things with high level blood but in order to do so you have to channel resources that could be spent on expansion

And how is that different from all the rest of the magic schools?

Other schools get useful combat spells costing no gems which can be used early in the game.

Research used for other schools of magic is shared to a significant degree so that conjuration doesn't just get you fire spells.

The quantity of investment in getting other schools of magic up and running us much, much lower than blood.

The hit done to Pangaea to research eagle eyes to enhance their starting spell panic is minor but still distracts from expansion. Its probably worth it. Abysia starts with the spell Flare which used by an Anathament Dragon will give you a handy boost early - though you have to invest in the more expensive Dragon to do so. These are the sorts of querstions you face with other scholls of magic. Blood you don't even look at early due to the high cost of setup. In return it needs to be more powerful down the track not just Hordes from Hell powerful.

Maybe its the way I play the game and have seen other PBEM games played - fast. In a brutal world of pretenders striving for Asdcension I find things develop quick and late game doesn't necesserily come. The vast majority of PBEM games I have been in have ended in the mid game. As I'm not sure I'll have significant blood capability by that time I question the value of blood.

cheers

Keir

[apoger]

You need to keep in mind which nations are built to use blood magic.

Abysia
-the Demonbred can use Blood Boil at reaserch-1 for a no-slave armor negating attack.
-Demonbred have exatly the right skill to cast Bind Devil.
-the Warlocks are tailor made to cast Hordes form hell.
-Hunting is made easy by the cheap Warlock Apprentice.


Mictlan
-Has blood-1 mages for easy/cheap hunting
-Starts with bind fiend and bind spine devil pre-researched
-Can upgrade national mages for easy access to many big blood summons


Pangaea
-Cross Breeding is cool.
-Awaken Dark Vines now very cheap for what you get.


Jotunheim
-Skratti have the correct skills to cast Bind Frost Fiend, and can be empowered to cast Bind Ice Devil.
-Illwinter is custom made for some serious Jotuheim domination.


Marignon [Diabolical Faith]
-Starts with Bind Harlequin, which isn't the greatest, but it's not bad.
-Has cheap blood-1 mage for easy/cheap hunting
-Like Abysia can use Blood Boil for battle.
-Like Abysia has the right skills for Bind Devil.


Vanheim
-Is a very minor blood nation... but I guess the Van could empower to be able to cast Bind Storm Demon.


Everyone else
-Isn't a blood nation and should need to spend some effort to garner power from a list that isn't natural for them.


You also must keep in mind that blood hunting is an economy that the player can control and cultivate. This is very powerful compared to gold and gems/sites which are limited in nature.


I'm actually happy to see blood magic reduced to the level it's at. In fact I still think it's a bit too potent due to the players ability to control the investment into the blood economy. Well that's my opinion, for what it's worth.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

---

Ice Devils have no hand slots? That is is so sad.

Have you actually ever looked at the seven different Ice Devils that you can receive? .

---

Obviously not thanks for posting the details.

The reason I haven't summoned lots of big blood badies in Dom2 is simple - the game has reached the decided phase in my test games before I can get the big bad blood summons. I've played blood with Mictlan, Abysia, Jotun and Pangaea under Dom2. Only Abysia got to use its blood meaningfully before the game was resolved. When I have played Abysia, Jotun and Pangaea and ignored the blood I have done better than when I used it - much better. I used blood alot in dom1 and I miss it. Sure it will still be fun for people who play a slower paced game but for me its looking bleak.

What I would like to see is the ability to build demonic armies. Dom2 IMO is not about super combatents its about armies - much more than dom1. For blood to have its "rightful" place in such an order you need to be able to build up serious numbers of lesser devils for your demonic hordes. I have had a strong urge to use Spine Devils since I first looked at blood magic and its an itch I would love to able to scratch.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by apoger:

Abysia
-the Demonbred can use Blood Boil at reaserch-1 for a no-slave armor negating attack.
-Demonbred have exatly the right skill to cast Bind Devil.
-the Warlocks are tailor made to cast Hordes form hell.
-Hunting is made easy by the cheap Warlock Apprentice.

And I get better results by ignoring blood with Abysia. I'll still use it if the game goes on along time but otherwise not.

The blood boil point is good but bind devil is not a good spell.

Mictlan
-Has blood-1 mages for easy/cheap hunting
-Starts with bind fiend and bind spine devil pre-researched
-Can upgrade national mages for easy access to many big blood summons

And is the worst race in the game.

Pangaea
-Cross Breeding is cool.
-Awaken Dark Vines now very cheap for what you get.

Pandemonaics cost 320gps and they are your blood mage - makes searching for blood slaves a killer in an incredibly gold greedy race. Again I pass on blood when using Pangaea.

Jotunheim
-Skratti have the correct skills to cast Bind Frost Fiend, and can be empowered to cast Bind Ice Devil.
-Illwinter is custom made for some serious Jotuheim domination.

Skratti are expensive so that your blood searching is very pricey. I still use blood with Jotun but thats because I like it so much thematically - I'm not sure its worth the trouble in most games.

Marignon [Diabolical Faith]
-Starts with Bind Harlequin, which isn't the greatest, but it's not bad.
-Has cheap blood-1 mage for easy/cheap hunting
-Like Abysia can use Blood Boil for battle.
-Like Abysia has the right skills for Bind Devil.

I haven't tried this race and till now have taken your word on it - you described it as weak didn't you?

Vanheim
-Is a very minor blood nation... but I guess the Van could empower to be able to cast Bind Storm Demon.

Alex you are doing your utmost not to get the point it would seem - Vanheim has to pay for a blood pick on its Van Jarls and in general gets nothing for it. Blood is the biggest problem with the Van.

I'm actually happy to see blood magic reduced to the level it's at.

As the greatest critic of blood I'm not suprised you are happy you got what you campaigned long and hard for. Your response to the dom2 demo was that blood was still overpowered!? For me its a case of goodbye to alot of cool features.

Sort of ironic that they finally made blood searching not a micro-management nightmare and instead of this making blood all the joy I had hoped for I find myself wondering wether its worth bothering at all now.

Cheers

Keir

[apoger]

>And I get better results by ignoring blood with Abysia. I'll still use it if the game goes on along time but otherwise not.

I find Abysia weak without blood magic. It's the only thing that keeps Abysia competitive, in my opinion.


>The blood boil point is good but bind devil is not a good spell.

I've had a lot of success with it, don't dismiss it so fast. Although much of the reason why it works is combined with the efficiency of the Demonbred mage. If I get up the gumption I'll write up a description of the technique I use.


>Mictlan
>>And is the worst race in the game.

Due to it's lack of good troops, not due to impotent blood magic.



>Pangaea
>Pandemonaics cost 320gps and they are your blood mage - makes searching for blood slaves a killer in an incredibly gold greedy race. Again I pass on blood when using Pangaea.

When I use Pangaea I blood hunt with scouts on the side and only make Pandemoniacs as needed for summoning.


>Jotunheim
>>Skratti are expensive so that your blood searching is very pricey. I still use blood with Jotun but thats because I like it so much thematically - I'm not sure its worth the trouble in most games.

Again I hunt with scouts and use Skratti as summoners.


>Marignon [Diabolical Faith]
>>you described it as weak didn't you?

Due to the turmoil scale not due to blood magic.


>Vanheim
>>Alex you are doing your utmost not to get the point it would seem - Vanheim has to pay for a blood pick on its Van Jarls and in general gets nothing for it. Blood is the biggest problem with the Van.

I'd love to see the Van lose the blood skill and be made cheaper. I agree that it's one skill too many for the character.


>I'm not suprised you are happy you got what you campaigned long and hard for. Your response to the dom2 demo was that blood was still overpowered!? For me its a case of goodbye to alot of cool features.

What features are you concerned about? The major change to the potency of the big blood summons was the spell paralyze (which affects more than just the blood summons). The summons are still there, just a bit different.

[apoger]

>What am I missing about Hordes from Hell?

I was reviewing this thread and just caught this and it's worth answering.

HfH is outstanding for a varitety of reasons.

While the imps are weak, they do hit twice, they have a high defense, and since they are small they often gain bonuses from making multiple attacks versus their targets. I wouldn't stack them up one on one versus elite heavy troops, but I would consider them to be fairly good light troops.

Keep in mind that they don't eat, and as such you can stack up an unlimited number.

They have no upkeep, so having a bunch hanging out doesn't hurt you.

They fly, and as such can exploit fast movement and province jumping.

They can be summoned anywhere. The potency of being able to drop troops exactly where needed (including on enemy provinces) should never be underestimated.

The Devil leader is pretty strong. Not pretender or big blood summons strong, but not bad either. Since it's a leader it has item slots, and it can be pumped up fairly significantly.

It's not at all hard to work up enough blood magic to summon two HfH per turn. That's 2 devils and 50 imps. More than enough to blow through a lightly defended province. It's easy to say that you don't mind losing provinces, and that they can be recovered, but it's not a happy situation. When the "war" begins the HfH player can drop 50 imps into your rear. Losing gold and gems is never happy. Next turn another 50 pop up in a percieved weak spot, meanwhile the first 50 fly up to three provinces away. Third turn 50 more show up while the first two manuver. This is a very slippery slope! It's hard to maintain a war while this sort of nonsense is grabbing your provinces and only getting worse and worse. It's very hard to regain the inititive once this starts happening. In fact every time I can recall this being reversed on me it involved my enemy sending in potent Gateway counterattacks, a tactic that is no longer available in Dom2. I'm not saying that it's invincible. What I'm saying is that HfH is effective and not easily dismissed.

Beyond this I often use HfH to snag rear forts from players. Often the forts in the "rear" are almost empty. I like dropping as many HfH on the forts as possible. This often leads to a swift capture before my enemy can respond. At the very least, it gets their attention!

On a similar note, HfH are great for stacking up the "numbers" needed to break down fort walls. Plus once the walls are breached, having troops that can fly over the walls during battle can *really* make life easier during the assault.

I like Hordes from Hell.

[alexti]

Originally posted by apoger:

>Jotunheim
>>Skratti are expensive so that your blood searching is very pricey. I still use blood with Jotun but thats because I like it so much thematically - I'm not sure its worth the trouble in most games.

Again I hunt with scouts and use Skratti as summoners.

Sorry to intrude, how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags? Blood-0 vs Blood-1 (later with dousing rod). What is expected ratio of blood slaves captured? Of course, hags have a drawback that on average you only get one blood hag out of 4. But considering, that death-hags can provide some support on the battle field, nature-hags are needed to forge simple supply and morale items, and any hag is pretty cheap researcher.

[apoger]

>how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags

Scouts don't do nearly as well, however they cost only 20 gold each. How many slaves depends a lot on the unrest and size of the province. Furthermore there is a lot of variance when hunting. Scouts will often bring in zero, and other times will get a bunch. It's not uncommon to have twenty scouts working a province and get a result of 15 misses,7,5,2,1,1. Sometimes it's less and sometimes more. The trick is that it's "gem" income that is cultivated by the player. Hammering a province with some scouts in order to generate some "magic currency" is well worth it (IMHO) if you have the gold to spare and can stomach the micromanagment.

I find that 8-10K population provinces seem to get me the best results. More testing would be needed to confirm.

As for hags... I'd send in the blood-1 hags and add in scouts if/when the situation allowed. Work the blood magic on the side, don't let it kill your expansion.

[alexti]

Originally posted by apoger:
>how hunting using scout comapres to hunting using vaetti hags

Scouts don't do nearly as well, however they cost only 20 gold each. How many slaves depends a lot on the unrest and size of the province. Furthermore there is a lot of variance when hunting. Scouts will often bring in zero, and other times will get a bunch. It's not uncommon to have twenty scouts working a province and get a result of 15 misses,7,5,2,1,1. Sometimes it's less and sometimes more. The trick is that it's "gem" income that is cultivated by the player. Hammering a province with some scouts in order to generate some "magic currency" is well worth it (IMHO) if you have the gold to spare and can stomach the micromanagment.

I find that 8-10K population provinces seem to get me the best results. More testing would be needed to confirm.

As for hags... I'd send in the blood-1 hags and add in scouts if/when the situation allowed. Work the blood magic on the side, don't let it kill your expansion.

Thanks for the explanation, I was making blood hunting responsibility of those blood-hags, considering that it's better use for them than to research, but now I should try to add some scouts as well. And I also find that 8-10K population is about optimal (bigger provinces usually have better use and in smaller ones it's hard to catch decent amount of slaves).

[Keir Maxwell]

I'll have to give scout hunting a try. It seems very odd/not right but if its the way to go then I guess. I certainly can't make sense out of blood hunting with Pandemoniacs in a competitive environment and with the heightened research cost of Sanguine Dousing Rods an approach that
doesn't use them, has to be worth a go.

If Blood is balenced because you can get a decent economy with scouts then thats not the way its was intended and it doesn't seem at all right to me.

I do get your point about Alex the HfH is good but considering the scale of investment and how long it takes to get a return I would like some return early in the process. I want some stepping stones along the way to help build a demonic army as HfH doth not a cake make. Would two spine devils for twice the price or so really be a problem? Spells like this could give the impatient yet bloodthirsty, such as myself , something to enjoy and make it worth the while building up to higher blood magic in short games.

Re Abysia.

Abysia's main strength IMO is its infantry - especially true for the alternate theme. Its fire magic is mediocre with the exception of the high level whammies. I found that when using blood mages for blood hunting I had to delay the hunt a significant while or risk strangling early speed. I find the early speed of development with Abysia to be reasonably good but only if I focus everything on developing - ie cash in fire gems, buy a Anathement Dragon for your main army, get another castle in a resource rich spot (this is really important if you don't get a nice starting spot) and churn out HI which fry the enemy and are virtually immune ot bows. Great stuff as the games go on.

I didn't think the old Abysia with the Moloch and Devils from early was overpowered early and if they had just restricted who gets the Molochs and kept the devil producing it would have been so much more fun. The early Devils were fun - heaps of fun. It was the old high level blood summons and army of scouts with SDRS searching that were obscene.

Paralyse certainly hurts SC based approaches but blood isn't really SC based for Abysia IMO. So far HfH seems to be the main canidate for what blood is about for Abysia and once I have finished slaughtering my way to acension with Pangaea (who rock!) I'll crank up an Abysia race using scouts for blood hunting and focusing on HfH.

Cheers

Keir