The Power of Blood...and it's weakness

[Twogun]

ok, i'm a lousy player because i simply never really make an effort. which is important to this post.

i recently tried a blood nation (EA Xibby-yes, i know they are a tad fragile...now).

Blood of course gets pretty strong in the late game, with some nasty globals possible, as well as the ability to generate slaves bigly. and probably other things i don't know about.

but now the question.

early in the mid game, i got triple ganked. i was only up to blood 4 (i had gone to const4 to build the never ending horde item, which might have been good fun if i'd had time to properly mass them).

so in terms of battle magic, what do you do with blood if you haven't made it to leech?

i used sabaths, and tried some spamming of agony and hell fire where possible, and tried to support it with some earth melds(which didn't work-went off script, out of range i guess).

but honestly, it was extraordinarily underwhelming. even with mage supremacy i lost a big battle, just couldn't do enough damage(in fairness my enemy had cast fire resistance on most of his dudes though)

i guess ive heard horrors are good. but i don't really know how to make a go of that, and i don't have S as xibby anyway.

ok, this question is too long. but i'd love an answer!

[TheMeInTeam]

Players know blood nations are strong late, and that your particular blood nation isn't good in most matchups early game. That said, there are not many nations where you can hold a 3v1 if the attacks are of similar skill to you. You need to diplo out of that or catch a few of them in significant blunders.

EA Xibalba's most famous unit is probably the jaguar fiend at blood 4, which has 3 attacks and is a murder machine depending on your bless (though even with a minimal bless, simply casting blood lust on them will tear through all but the highest prot stuff). This is a useful tool and EA/LA Xibalba should make use of it regardless of build.

However, blood nations are not ONLY blood nations. You get significant access to death, and can also sabbath into earth, air, and fire with non-cap mages (cap mage adds nature). So you can do highly mobile skelly spam communions backed by fog warriors and wailing winds, or fluff iron warriors onto an Onaqui with gear and have that tear up unsupported armies with soul vortex, >30 prot, and regeneration (easy to get with gift of the first soul). Other than water and astral, you have national access to every path for battlefield magic (you might want to make some spectral mages to get those paths later).

The problem is living long enough. You are always going to make a tradeoff with pretender choice. You can go big bless, and try to kill stuff with sun guides/beast bats/early ozzies. You can pick an awake like earth serpent, and fluff it with gift of first soul as a deterrent to some nation setups. You can take an awake or dormant titan, which will be a bit harder to kill than fluffed monster at expense of some expansion turns. These each have plusses and minuses, but again if you're in a 1v3 you will need opponents to misplay to avoid dying. Better to avoid said 1v3. Your recruitable troops are pretty bad and everyone knows that, so bear that in mind when designing a pretender.

Also note that not all blood nations are generalizable. Xibalba is particularly good at blood hunting and particularly bad in terms of recruitable troops...that limitation does not extend to nations like Niefelheim, Pangaea, or Vanheim for example. They aren't as efficient at blood hunting, and their strengths/weaknesses are very different to Xibalba's.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Yeah, the other schools are very important- blood magic is a mid-game tool for summons.

[TheMeInTeam]

Not JUST summons, though summons are some of its biggest draws. Sabbaths boost other paths, and in blood itself combinations like blood rain + any source of fear (especially wailing winds) can really screw low-mid morale troops. Even for nations w/o wailing winds, blood rain + agony is going to completely hose low morale things. Also remote disease demon attacks are relatively cheap in terms of blood slaves, harder to punish than normal assassins or things like mind hunt, and Xibalba can put boosters on onaqui to cast it natively. Rush of strength is a great buff to put on everything, and leech/life for life are great anti-elite tools.

But yeah, blood is about the summons first and foremost. National summons, fiends of darkness, bone fiends, imp spam...make lots of demon things, slap them with the 100% of battlefield (for demons) blood lust, and let them tear things up. Ozzies are better for Xibalba, but don't sleep on fiery imps generally. Blood lust gives then 12 strength, which means their fire ranged attack is 9AP fire and their melee attacks go all the way up to 18 damage due to pitchforks being 2h (12 x 1.25 + 3). 6 18pierce damage attacks per square on 11 attack is a lot of potential damage output, and it can even get some repels.

[meglobob1]

Blood magic like others have said is powerful in the endgame, okay in the mid game but up to turn 30-40'ish its pretty weak, essentially this is the build up phase, which pays off later on.

To get to that stage in MP, you need another tool or tools to get you through the endgame. Like a strong bless, other magic paths, powerful pretender.

Having said that if you get triple ganked, it doesn't really much matter what nation your playing in MP your likely doomed anyway.

[Twogun]

man, a lot of great responses because

A) plenty of options if i ever try this again
and
B) i don't feel like an idiot because i guess blood isn't great midgame, but nobody was condescending pointing that out.

thank you!

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Yeah! Like- with EA Xib, you have strong earth and death. Throw some maws of the earth and hordes of skeletons out there to supplement your flying flankers, and never underestimate your scorpions. Determined raiding should weaken the opposing coalition enough that someone starts taking advantage of them, and that should hopefully buy you enough time to get your Ozelotls online.

[Twogun]

what about vs UW nations? in my game, one of the three gankers is the only UW nation, and owns like 30% of the globe. he stations huge armies on the coast and strikes when he feels like it, then drops back.

doesn't seem like blood is the best vs this. many blood spells are NUW

[Eldritch Gentleman]

You suffer.

[TheMeInTeam]

Very few things can go underwater and survive water elementals. That's not the only thing UW can to do to hold UW provinces, but it's usually they only thing they need to do.

The list of land starts that can threaten UW nations is really small. Technically, LA Atlantis starts on land and they can beat LA R'lyeh in water. After that? Usually not, unless a UW player throws away a bunch of resources and then EA Agartha decides to clap them while they're weak or something.

Blood, bats, ozzies, even demon lords...not a lot there will do anything an UW nation cares about. You can summon all the undead you want but they'll still lose to a few water elementals when underwater. Best you can do is kick them off land or mostly off land and make a reasonable peace deal.

How is someone with 30% of the world's land not himself a target though?

[Twogun]

Originally posted by Eldritch Gentleman:

You suffer.

...

[Twogun]

i actually almost turned the corner in this game. and then a fourth nation ganked me! oh goodness, no accounting for folks...

[Big Dog]

For EA xil I think the best is to just sabbath hoard of skeles.

[Twogun]

Originally posted by Epstein killed himself:

For EA xil I think the best is to just sabbath hoard of skeles.

probably good advice. simple is often best.

do you really think epstein killed himself?

[TheMeInTeam]

The #1 problem with using blood sabbath skeleton hordes to survive is getting to enchantment 5 before someone decides to get rid of the blood nation. Though it's also a problem if someone makes thugs that can kill infinite skeletons, since you'll then need additional tech to get rid of those too.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by TheMeInTeam:

The #1 problem with using blood sabbath skeleton hordes to survive is getting to enchantment 5 before someone decides to get rid of the blood nation. Though it's also a problem if someone makes thugs that can kill infinite skeletons, since you'll then need additional tech to get rid of those too.

Well that's simple just take +4 attack +8 strength bless and only a crazy person would attack your 19 attack 29 damage magic weapon flying sacreds, not to mention the bats, jags, and flying jags.