Blood Magic Question

[z0dd]

I just recently started playing with Blood magic, and have found the following.

- Blood hunt in provinces with high population
- Set taxes to 0 in those provinces
- Patrol the provinces you hunt in
- Building a lab in a high population province where you do all/most of your hunting is a good idea
- Blood slaves are units on the battlefield
- You can easily generate 50 slaves/turn with the right hunters/province/patrol
- Order 3 helps a lot with the upset caused by hunting
- The higher the blood skill lvl, the better the hunter
- Flying demon/devil/vampire summoned armies are brutal!!!

IMO, that Last item is the only one that makes blood magic useful.

Anyone have other suggestions?

[jaif]

I'm playing a Jotunhein game. I just recruited my first hag, and got 2 death and 2 blood. Rather than relegate her to research, I've decided to try to use the 2 blood. I get that this means blood slaves, and I'm slowly reading older Posts to tell me how to get those.

However, I've been looking at the spell lists, and blood spells seem very prohibitive. Take the first one, bleed. The fatigue cost is 100- and it requires a blood slave. The fatigue cost for many other spells at that level are like 10 or 20.

What's the catch here that I'm missing? Why bother with blood magic at all if it just fatigues your mage?

-Jeff

[tinkthank]

way too short an answer here:

1. Blood magic has great summons
2. fatigue cost 100 req. level 1 will actually only cost you *50* fatigue if you are level 2 blood, or *33* fatigue if you are level 3. Using an extra blood slave will lower the fatigue even more. But you are right, bleed is not the best spell. Research some more and you will see there are some nice spells a-coming.
3. You might want to boost your mage up to effective higher levels of blood power, then fatigue is even less.

hope this helps

[Tuna-Fish]

The catch in blood magic (imho) are not the combat spells, but the summons and global spells. For Jotunheim, Illwinter is a must (cools down entire map), and ice devils and frost fiends can really help in the game, and are not all that hard to get. Get the SCQR (summoned creature quick reference)
http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom2/SCQRv0_5.pdf

And just look at the list of blood magic. Also note that everything in blood is cheaper than it looks because it's generally easier to get blood slaves than gems.

[licker]

Originally posted by z0dd:
I just recently started playing with Blood magic, and have found the following.

- Blood hunt in provinces with high population
- Set taxes to 0 in those provinces
- Patrol the provinces you hunt in
- Building a lab in a high population province where you do all/most of your hunting is a good idea
- Blood slaves are units on the battlefield
- You can easily generate 50 slaves/turn with the right hunters/province/patrol
- Order 3 helps a lot with the upset caused by hunting
- The higher the blood skill lvl, the better the hunter
- Flying demon/devil/vampire summoned armies are brutal!!!

IMO, that Last item is the only one that makes blood magic useful.

Anyone have other suggestions?

Some coments on the above...

Blood hunt in provinces where you don't need the cash income, that could be high pop, but might be better off in a 6-10k pop prov (or two) rather than a 12k+.

If you set taxes to zero why bother patroling? Unless you need to recruit in the same province you already have zero income, so no need to patrol. I rarely bother to patrol any province I blood hunt in, unless I have extra air gems for call of the winds. If you need to get the unrest back down just move your hunters out completely to another province, after a turn or two you can go up from a zero tax to get some return, though if you plan it right you won't even need to bother with this.

Labs are good to cut down on micro, but 2 scouts per blood hunting province should work as well as long as they can get to a lab in one move.

Order3 does nothing for unrest, it has no effect on blood hunting at all (though it did effect unrest in Dom1).

Flying armies are useful to be sure, but there's more to blood than just hoards of fliers, unless you get mount chaining I suppose Lots of good items to forge as well, and good battlefield spells in the higher levels. Still blood is mostly about summoning units that don't eat and don't have upkeep. Nice that one.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by z0dd:
- Flying demon/devil/vampire summoned armies are brutal!!!

IMO, that Last item is the only one that makes blood magic useful.

Anyone have other suggestions?

Dont forget the items. Personally I use alot of bloodslaves on contracts and black hearts. That devils horde or whatever it is can be very useful also for taking a back province away from an enemy.

[PvK]

There are many evil options for blood magic. The really evil ones aren't very easy ... fortunately.

PvK

[z0dd]

Originally posted by licker:
Some coments on the above...

If you set taxes to zero why bother patroling?

In my game, I have about 10 blodd hunters in a 14k population province, harvesting 50+ slaves a turn. The unrest is out of control even with 0 taxes. Not only do I have to patrol, but I have to patrol it heavily. Yes, I could move my hunting posse to a different province for a few turns, but then I wouldn't get 50+ slaves a turn.

Originally posted by licker:
Order3 does nothing for unrest, it has no effect on blood hunting at all (though it did effect unrest in Dom1).

Hm. Order 3 won't bring down unrest at all? What is Order for then?

Originally posted by licker:

Flying armies are useful to be sure, but there's more to blood than just hoards of fliers, unless you get mount chaining I suppose Lots of good items to forge as well, and good battlefield spells in the higher levels.

Yes, I need to put more effort into my item building game. I will try this. Thanks.

[Master Shake]

Summon imp is a great cheap, early battlefield blood magic spell. Blood skill 2 to cast, blood magic research 1 or 2 (can't remember). A great way to tie up a cavalry charge or get archers to fire into their own troops (trying to kill the imps). You get fewer summons than you do with swarm, but imps have moderate attack, strength and defense and can actually inflict damage.

[Taqwus]

Order now mostly affects tax income, and also has an impact on random event frequency. It also has a minor flavoring effect for Tien Chi.