assasination question / blood in the very long run question

[Boron]

first i have a question concerning assasins :
i never used them much so far .
but i want to try them now .
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right ?
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?
how are the chances to discover scouts/spies/assasins with pd ? and is it the same for a pd of 10 and one of 125 or does it increase ?
finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?


2. i like blood magic .
but a few thoughts came to my mind which now perhaps alter my liking for blood magic .
the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .
if you take a deathscale of 3 a province loses ~45% in 100 turns .
there are so many random events which reduce population and none which increases population .
so even if you play with growth 3 in 100 turns it is very possibly that you get quite a few -x% population events.
if you bloodhunt with patrolling you kill your population slowly but surely .

that's without enemy interaction .
the spells which masskill population of the enemies like volcanic eruption are normally a waste of gems. but against a bloodnation it will severly damage their blood economy.
and there is unrest :
normally only really evil in early-midgame but since it makes bloodhunting harder very evil for blood nations.
Last problem that enemy dominion further increases unrest . and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons .
while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Boron:
first i have a question concerning assasins :
i never used them much so far .
but i want to try them now .
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right ?
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?

He will try to retreat or will die if he is deep in the enemy's back and has no friendly province to retreat to.

how are the chances to discover scouts/spies/assasins with pd ? and is it the same for a pd of 10 and one of 125 or does it increase ?

It increases. I don't have the formula for it though. Generally PD 10 is not very efficient in catching scouts, and have very little chance of catching units with stealth>0. But it happened.

finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?

Read above.

2. i like blood magic .
but a few thoughts came to my mind which now perhaps alter my liking for blood magic .
the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .
if you take a deathscale of 3 a province loses ~45% in 100 turns .
there are so many random events which reduce population and none which increases population .
so even if you play with growth 3 in 100 turns it is very possibly that you get quite a few -x% population events.
if you bloodhunt with patrolling you kill your population slowly but surely .

that's without enemy interaction .
the spells which masskill population of the enemies like volcanic eruption are normally a waste of gems. but against a bloodnation it will severly damage their blood economy.
and there is unrest :
normally only really evil in early-midgame but since it makes bloodhunting harder very evil for blood nations.
Last problem that enemy dominion further increases unrest . and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

If you are bloodhunting you should at least make province capable of defensing itself against simple Call of the Winds. 5PD plus few "summon imps" on your bloodhunters shold be more than enough to do it.

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons .
while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

I still haven't seen the question in the 2nd part of your post, just number of statements. But here are my two cents - IMHO Death 3 is ok with bloodhunting nations in the game on short or medium maps, if you are hurting for points. I agree, on the large map it could become a problem in the long run. Although I would still not go for the positive growth scale, just neutral or even Death 1 would be enough most of the times. Money become much less usefull toward the end of the game, and population losses from bloodhunting on neutral or Death 1 scale are not too bad. Also usually losses from patrolling are much larger than from bloodhunting , so I am trying to avoid patrolling unless I have to. In a positive dominion you can usually have 3 lvl 1-2 bloodhunters with rods without any patrollers, while keeping unrest under control. That is often good enough for me, at least until I still have some poor mountain/forest provinces with low income but higher than 5000 population.

[ July 07, 2004, 19:55: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Kel]

Originally posted by Boron:
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?

As I recall it, he will retreat and, assumming he is successful, he will die if in the attempt, or retreat intoa province if its a PD discovery.

finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?

I don't recall the numbers but the higher your stealth rating, the harder it is to be detected.

the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .

I have seen a lot of people say this. Maybe I don't know what I am doing but I usually take death scale when I play a blood nation (when I play them for blood, that is).

This is a question of strategy and probably varies according to what nation you play and what your starting strategy is.

Personally, when I play Aby or BF Ulm, I play fairly aggressively and with a early/mid-game rush strategy (alt-3, blood-5/6, const-4/6 is my target). My plan is to expand enough that the people dying from death scale are compensated for by the population I conquer.

and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

This depends on a lot of factors, like how spread out your blood hunters are and what spells you are actually worried about. PD alone can take care of Call of the winds but stealth nations might be more of a concern. Whether or not you need to protect every blood hunter depends a lot on who you are facing and how cheap your blood hunters are.

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons.

Either your income/population will decline or your slave income will decline if you aren't expanding, you don't actually have to be winning the entire game.

while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

That's why I, personally, use blood as an early/mid game strategy. It's also why i don't bother with growth scale. When it gets into the late game, someone who has developed a late game strategy will have the advantage anyway. Better to concentrate on my strengths than try to play their game.

- Kel

[ July 07, 2004, 19:59: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right?

You can retreat, but if you do, then you will be killed. You must set your assasins to orders other than retreat or they will be killed as soon as they leave.

but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?

He will attempt to retreat to a friendly province if patrolling units catch him. If he makes an assasination attempt then he will retreat and be automatically killed.

[Boron]

ah thnx
even if you set him orders ? like attack closest or something like this ?
doesn't he than fight instead against the patrollers who found him ?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
ah thnx
even if you set him orders ? like attack closest or something like this ?
doesn't he than fight instead against the patrollers who found him ?

If you give him an order other than retreat then he won't retreat. If you give him a retreat order, then he will retreat. If he retreats from an assasination attempt, then he will be killed. If he retreats from patrollers then he will try to move to a friendly province, otherwise he will be killed.

[Boron]

@ kel
okay with bf ulm you are forced to take death 1 but that's the only blood nation i remember who is forced to take deathscale .

and i should have written this
i of course meant for large maps
especially the faerun one .

if you can expand all the time than it's fine but if you grow to fast i think other ppl will cut you back in less fearful size

worst scenario would be : one of my neighbors is ermor and the other one pangenea carrion woods .
but i think it's in general a problem.

and if i don't conquer many totally sitesearched provinces from my enemies my gemincome will be quite bad. and if i have a nice gemincome as bf ulm / abysia / Df Marignon my summoning possibilities will be quite limited because of my national mages and i mainly focus on blood with my pretender too when i play blood.

you were right it were basically my impressions stormbinder

so here a new statement

on maps <10 players / <200 provinces blood is awesome .
you get very strong units and nice unique sc's like arch devils / ice devils and so on.

the lvl 9 masssummon blood spells like infernal forces are nice ihmo .
but on large maps it will become harder and harder to keep the blood flowing .
if someone casts something like utterdark and can it keep up it will be evil for you .

on the other hand for good accashic record / clamhording nations like especially ryhleh which normally should easily survive long enough since atlantis is unpopular and so it can easily conquer the seas quite unchallenged should be the winnners.

the problem is that the flow of blood can be quite easily disturbed or even almost completely stopped while your sitegemincome can only be stopped by conquering your provinces and your clamincome which will be huge on large maps can be stopped even harder .

since at least one of the magic powerhouses like ryhleh / ermor / tien chi / pythium / arco won't be your neighbor and survive for the fight for supremacy in the end you will be in trouble
with the blood you can crush some of your neighbors but then if you rely heavily on blood your empire is fragile and if you try to go magic powerhouse you come most likely too late .

if your opponents go deathheavy in the long run they will beat you surely i think.

was there ever a nation the winner of a faerun mp game which was no supermagic race like the above mentioned ?
perhaps i should add caelum and machaka .

edit :
in brief : ihmo on the faerunmap you aren't rewarded with lategamevictory when you go blood despite you have the most micromanagement to do this way . you will have some nice early/midgame victories but you won't be the overall winner of the game

[ July 07, 2004, 20:40: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Norfleet]

Blood is awesome. I don't think I play nations without invoking blood in some form or another, except Ermor, for which this is nearly impossible....not that this has stopped me from occasionally trying.

I don't even have to be really a blood nation to make a try for the Blood, although if I'm up against real blood nations played by competent players, I'll probably forgo an attempt at the special summons, and just use it for forging. That alone is worth dabbling in blood.

As for going hardcore blood, never underestimate the power of a force of 800 vampires. Not only can you chainsummon them at the rate of about 100/turn, but as long as the blood supply holds out, you can increase this rate by having vampire lords summon each other, and even if the blood stalls, you can fall back on Summon Allies instead of bloodriting with boosters. Once you have a few hundred vampires defending your dominion, it is a scary force to be reckoned with, since even if they kill you, you just regroup in your capitol and do it again with more. The Vampire Lords are also formidable fighters in their own right, when properly equipped, possessing many of the attributes that made the VQ obnoxious, and better stats.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
but on large maps it will become harder and harder to keep the blood flowing .

On a map with twice as many provinces, you will likely have twice as many provinces yourself to bloodhunt in. Your opponent has to be able to cover most, or all of them to be able to disrupt your blood income significantly. Add to this the soul contracts you will likely have built which provide a nearly permanent blood slave income. It's very difficuly to disrupt a person's blood income to any significant extent when they happen to have 20 or more provinces that they are hunting in.

if someone casts something like utterdark and can it keep up it will be evil for you

This is true no matter which nation you are, unless you happen to be Ermor, and in that case, you were probably the one who cast it.

[Boron]

yeah the vampires are my favourite blood summon .
the only other immortal unit ( not leader ) i remember are vanheims swines but they are expensive . but if you summon demiliches instead they should do this almost as well only drawback they don't fly . but in exchange the demiliches are natural life drain casters
and the normal vampires are much worse if stopped through storm .
but you are right the items + the chance on some vampires is really worth trying to bloodhunt .

@graeme i myself find utterdark quite useful in lategame for any nation that is not blood dependent.
ryhleh , pythium , caelum are nice candidates for utterdark too . you can manage the defizit by alchemizing yourself easy and since you are one of the best summoners you have an advantage
hopefully your enemies ( especially e.g. ulm ) rely more heavily on conventional armies .
+ it almost stops bloodhunting in the whole world if you can keep it up with a bit luck