Demonic Contract thing

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So I know Lanka has no fire paths so I made a pretender with Fire 1 and blood 9 (dont recall rest) just to make contracts and all I can say is that is a good use of blood slaves. In the test I just used I felt like it was a nice addition to have flyers who can chew through enemy Priest/mages decently fast before the enemy army kills them.

I do have a question though, does anyone who uses the contract feel like its worth the 5Fire gems and 55bloodslaves?
Also it says its cursed but I don't think it applies the horror debuff or if it does I havent had it appear on any of my guys.

[Mormacil]

Isn't 'Tainted' horror marks and 'Cursed' means it can't be removed?

[Ica]

Yes. Cursed item just means that the item can't be removed.

As for Contracts, I think they're definitely good items especially if you can start spamming them early, but Lanka probably has no need for them. Lanka has excellent national blood summons already. Also if B9 is your only bless, your Dakinis (one of the best summons in the game) won't reach their full potential.

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Well I decided to go for an awake pretender with decent scales to try something new. Usually I would go for a bloodfountain that is dormant and early expansion for me was generally hard because of turmoil and sloth. So my overall play style is treating Lanka like a undead nation with demons since I don't recruit units at all only commanders. That is kinda the reason I took fire one, was so I could test these contracts since i'm relying on Animation and summonings for troops I have no real dedicated flankers so that is what i'm using the devils for and I like the results so far.

In general the way I play as Lanka is early rush to grab as much land asap then the moment I see an enemy I try turtling because I feel like early game Lanka is very weak but snowballs into a powerhouse the longer the game goes.

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So as it turns out Soul contracts do cause horror marked

[Ica]

Yup, now that I'm looking at the stats, it seems to have a 10% chance of causing horror mark each turn. I don't have access to the game at the moment, but does it say it's tainted? If it does, then Mormacil already told you in the first comment that it causes horror marking.

[DasaKamov]

The Soul Contract's description does *not* say anything about Taint, Horrors, or otherwise hint at the bearer's impending doom...but I kind of like that. It's not like a devil would tell someone they're trying to swindle, "oh, by the way, this will end badly for you".

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I feel that a slightly equipped Priest with some strong bodyguards could reliably use the contract and be able to survive most of the minor horrors that go after him. As for Lanka using a bare lvl2 priest with a small bodyguard of Kahala-mukahs (or the name of the fort sacred) and for the most part they seem to be able to survive for about 1-3years. That's not a lot of devils, but if the Contract signer can survive atleast a year he made up the price to make the contract I believe

[Ica]

Why priest? As far as I know, horrors can't be banished. Anyway, I'd preferably just put the contracts on some relatively expendable unit that's still unlikely to die from other causes, such as a Mound King that's leading your undead but stays in the back of the battle field. Horror marking rarely kills very fast since first you have to get horror marked (which may or may not take very long), then each horror mark you have gives every turn a tiny chance that you're attacked by horrors. I'd just make sure the unit carrying the tainted item isn't irreplaceable and not worry about horror marks more than that.


Edit - Oh yeah, a priest because of sacreds. Still, I think that's an unnecessary amount of effort and resources put into it.

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Well I usually recruit Priest to use for reanimation and generally give them a group of the summonable sacreds or the recruitable ones. Usually if I want to establish a fort I would send a priest who has the conract and the small group of demons and just change the demons from bodyguarding to offense.
Thats one of the things I love about Lanka is that a single priest can build everything since they all have blood paths.

I will say that the summonable Ghanas (I think thats how its spelt) from conjuration make good bodyguards against the lesser horrors over the demons/sacreds since not all of the horrors have magic weapons.
Edit- They are also cheap as dirt to summon for Lanka and are decent for what you get.

[Nobidexx]

Soul contracts are overall very bad. They cost more than a dakini to forge for example, and it'd take quite a lot of turns for the summoned devils to be worth a dakini (or your other blood summons).

In general lifelong protection is a much better item. It gives you 2 imps every round in every battle, which is much stronger than 1 devil every turn while being cheaper. It's also a very potent assassination item (you can get assassins with black hearts) and as a side bonus the horror mark chance is lower.

[Tomsdeli]

i dont even come close to agreeing that life long is a better item. its certainly easier to forge but 2 imps per battle sways little in terms compared to a devil per turn. and you dont get 2 per turn no matter what they have to die in order to get to get more. the fact is life long has a place and is not a bad item but soul contracts are quite good if a bit expensive as well.

my real gripe about soul contracts is i have to set up my pretender to do them but they come online so fast at Const 2 that you can in a vaible setting have them churning year 2.

[Ica]

It's not 2 imps per battle, it's two imps every round. The old ones don't have to die.

[Staythecourse]

It's not that soul contracts are bad in the abstract. It's that they are bad for almost all blood nations. The best blood nations all have national blood summons that are way better investments. Not so good blood nations, like the Heims or Pangaea, all want a different bless too much to get contract forging pretender (and don't have the necessary fire income either).

In Dom3, this left Abysia and LA Marignon (whose national blood summon comes late), who don't have better uses of slaves, have the income to forge Contracts, and whose national fire/blood mages could do the job. Except Dom4 inexplicably made contracts (and a large number of similar marginally useful items) both more expensive and harder to forge, such that a pretender is now the only way to get them.

All of this ends with LA Marignon being the last remaining nation that might legitimately want to forge soul contracts, using its national Baphomet pretender both to bless flagellants and forge contracts. Whether it's a good idea even with LA Marignon is questionable, but there is certainly no nation for which it is a better idea.

[DasaKamov]

It depends on what your goal is in mind when you forge the items. If you want instant battle-ready usefulness, Lifelong Protection can be handy (as it's basically a low-level automatic "Swarm" spell which can be useful in early game). Later on, of course, your opponents will brush aside the imps as if they were nothing more than gnats, so it's usefulness is somewhat limited. (As a hint, it can still be useful on a thug or raider even in a mid-late MP game, as the imps will still be a hinderance to the 3-6 PD points most players invest in.)

Soul Contract is more of a "bake it in the oven" type of spell. It'll take several turns to build up a sizeable force of devils, for example, but once you do the Devils can be devastating on "Attack Archer" or "Attack Rear" orders.

Originally posted by Indract:

Soul contracts are overall very bad. They cost more than a dakini...

I always question this line of thinking, *because Blood Slaves are a renewable resource*. If you want one before the other, go for it! You'll more than likely have enough Slaves for both (and then some) anyway.

It'll be a VERY rare case where a player exclaims "Oh, if only I cast Dakini instead of Forged a Soul Contract, I would have won the game! Damn you, Soul Contract!" ;)

[Tomsdeli]

Originally posted by Staythecourse:

It's not that soul contracts are bad in the abstract. It's that they are bad for almost all blood nations. The best blood nations all have national blood summons that are way better investments. Not so good blood nations, like the Heims or Pangaea, all want a different bless too much to get contract forging pretender (and don't have the necessary fire income either).

In Dom3, this left Abysia and LA Marignon (whose national blood summon comes late), who don't have better uses of slaves, have the income to forge Contracts, and whose national fire/blood mages could do the job. Except Dom4 inexplicably made contracts (and a large number of similar marginally useful items) both more expensive and harder to forge, such that a pretender is now the only way to get them.

All of this ends with LA Marignon being the last remaining nation that might legitimately want to forge soul contracts, using its national Baphomet pretender both to bless flagellants and forge contracts. Whether it's a good idea even with LA Marignon is questionable, but there is certainly no nation for which it is a better idea.

im quite cursious why you dont see them as viable for abysia still. esp EA where they have a very little that can be done with their blood econ. i know its been awhile since i played them but with the pretender patch it seems like they would quite easily be able to do them and transition onto vamp factories later in the game.

i dont play much of the other ages but with the lesser horros having been nerfed, which with my hate of managing a blood econ is something i dont play to often, that even the later ages might still have some use for them.

i mean i just built a pretender for EA Warlock (leaves up 440 points) dormant Dom 6 F1E2D4B6 O3P3H3. D4 lets me cheat death on diseasesed battle mages while FB and FD lead to soul contracts and vamp factories all in 1 build. gets you earth boots both death boosters as well as flaming skulls in terms of boosters which opens up eternal pyre if you happen to head to heat from hell which you might if you last long enough. you can use your pretender as a dormant researcher as he has 31 RP and he can also net you death gems which can go tword RP/troops/or even mages.

but i mean what other choices do they really have? major bless for a cap only sacred. scales which you get almost no benifit from growth, and to be quite honest i always floated tons of gold with the nations as the resource costs are so high, your research is so meh anyways that magic scales while nice proly wont lead to a lot. some sort of SE combo in order to work in call lesser horrors?

but i mean a quick glance at MA and LA and i dont see why they wouldnt work out about the same until you get your research rolling at least quite a bit into the game. you dont have the national summons that your rightly pointing out that most blood nations have. your already heading to const 2 for rods for your blood hunters.

Originally posted by Ica:

It's not 2 imps per battle, it's two imps every round. The old ones don't have to die.

really. it has been qhile since i messed with them but i recall trying to get a assassin build rolling in which i used them. been a hell of a long time ago but i thought it was just 2 up at once. well thanks for pointing that out as that is my bad.