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[ThtblovesDF]

When attacking indie provinces, the distance between the front lines is exactly the distance both frontline troopers can move

I don't think that is right.

Anyway, Blood Slaves. I found myself with a lot of em in a nation that has no use for them, what does everyone think of blood-slave-meat-shields? Just putting 20 of them on a commander near the frontline, they will at least stop troops for a moment before dieing - also adding them to commanders in the back, for that little extra buffer? Seems useful, never saw it done.

[Shadowlord]

I use them to empower someone in blood magic and have him craft stuff. Boots of youth are very useful if you have important commanders/mages with old age - they stop all aging, which means your peeps wearing them won't get diseases and afflictions from old age.

P.S. One or two unskilled blood hunters in a province make practically no impact on unrest due to how slow they are at finding blood slaves, which means you can put them in every province, give them retreat orders, and not worry about destroying your income.

[Kagus]

When attacking indie provinces, the distance between the front lines is exactly the distance both frontline troopers can move

I don't think that is right.

¨
I know, it just always seems to be perfectly calculated so that they get the first hit in and do some real attrition damage.

As far as blood slaves go, you could always trade them with a nation who does want them... Otherwise, yeah. A little empowering can go a long way, getting you juicy items like the boots or earth stones. Also, B1 is surprisingly handy on thugs, if you can afford researching into Blood 3. Leeching touch is remarkably useful and only needs the one level of blood.


Now, recently I've been looking a bit at testing out some odd ideas... Like a bless strat for Jomon.  The onmyo-ji are awesome mages and can band together to make some really rather terrifying communions, particularly with a monk or two using a matrix to remove everyone's fatigue. What's interesting about this is that every one of them spawns an ethereal sacred every battle, and I wanted to know how to get the most out of that throwaway battle summon.

As it stands, the poor things only have a strength 6 claw attack, so I was wondering how to beef them up enough to actually make an impact on the battle. Unless it's been changed, blood vengeance can proc even if the attack was negated by etherealness, so that's nice... Also it pushes them up to 10 strength which is at least slightly better. The tengu also get a lot out of it, as their lightning strike attacks get boosted to actually dangerous levels with the bonus strength, and all those cheap little ethereal minithugs won't complain about the BV either.

Problem is, it's fairly easy to counter. Same goes for a death bless, which would at least make the shikigami summons hang around a lot longer (only having 7 hp to begin with). They've got 12 attack, and the +2 AN damage would actually be really helpful for them, but that again is subject to MR checks.  Fire seems like a meh choice since they've only got the one weapon and decent attack value to begin with, and 7 AP damage on its own isn't that big of a deal in LA.


Whatch'all think? Death would probably be the strongest specifically for the shikis, but the tengu would really like that extra strength. Also, demilich is cheaper, and whatever you take some amount of an earth bless is pretty much mandatory... All their sacred minithugs have some amount of encumbrance, and so do the shikigamis and the cap-only sacreds. Not to mention those lovely little monks could always do with some cheap reinvig.

[Shadowlord]

A B9 bless does give str +4 but that would only get them to str 10. Adding W9 would give them quickness (and +4 def for any attacks that make it past their etherealness), which would let them attack twice per turn.

Without an attack boost (F9) they'd have trouble with more defendy guys, though. IIRC LA is high on protection, not defense, but I don't play LA.

You may be able to use spells to buff them further.

[ThtblovesDF]

Blood Stones need Blood 3 to craft, thats quite some empowering and anything that needs blood (1) is useless imo and Blood 2 only offers The Black Heart as useful item...

[Kagus]

Yeah, +4 strength on the shikis only gets them 10 strength, but 10 strength is considerably better than 6. Also it helps out the tengu, who instead of doing some 7-8 damage with their lightning strikes, will deal 11-12 and be able to one-hit most humies instead of just damaging them, and with B9 the main deal is getting vengeance on an ethereal dude. Wouldn't hurt for the tengu either, as they're rather squishy... Might as well at least pay them back a little.

W9 is nice for some things, but it still won't let the shikis actually hurt anything. The tengus would love it, but the minithugs would have a somewhat harder time of it what with how heavily encumbered both the kenzoku and ujigami are, not to mention the starting sacreds. They've all got good base weapons though, so the extra 0.5x attack would be put to good use until they knock themselves out with fatigue. Even the shikigami have 3 encumbrance.

Astral has some usage in making the shikis last a little bit longer, but definitely does nothing for their offense. Tengus would also love that, let them get off another slice before dissolving... but water would probably be better overall in their case.

Nature would be a funny one. Nobody has a lot of health, but it would double the health of the shikis and let them recover from minor booboos that make it through the etherealness. Same for the minithugs. Biggest bonus would probably be for the ryujin, giving them a bit more survivability for their massive cost. The jigami would also be kinda funny with that during summertime when they get the big HP boost, but their stats are otherwise pretty bad for actually fighting anything.

Blood Stones need Blood 3 to craft, thats quite some empowering and anything that needs blood (1) is useless imo and Blood 2 only offers The Black Heart as useful item...

Blood 1 lets you craft SDRs to help out with slave hunting on your empowered fellow, and B2 provides the aforementioned boots of youth.

B1 also has imp familiars, which can be surprisingly handy if you've got a lot of cheap throwaway researchers. Or, if you want to be really silly, hand them out to assassins. Assassinations have a good chance of happening during nighttime, so the shadow imp that pops out is not only another target, but also has 10 strength, 13 attack and 15 defense... Which is at the very least rather entertaining, and for 5 blood slaves (fewer if you've got forge bonuses) you can't really beat the price.

[Shadowlord]

Doesn't blood crafting ignore forge bonuses?

[Frumple]

Nope.

Does seem like there may be a couple specific blood items that do, though, double checking things a bit. Folks seem to think soul contracts are exempt, maybe imp familiars, too. Can check real quick, I guess... mod inspector doesn't seem to mention anything that'd be causing it.

E: Yeah, tested. Discounts work on most things, but it doesn't work on some. Imp familiars and soul contracts are definitely exceptions. Can't seem to find any easy reference for exactly what doesn't take, though.

[Kagus]

They used to be exempt, but this led to some conflicts with regard to cross-path item forging. So now blood items follow the same rules as the rest of forging.

They were exempt back when forge bonuses were a percentage-based thing, and since a lot of blood items had high slave costs, the ability to shave off 25-50% of that was deemed a wee bit ridiculous, especially in the case of things like soul contracts which are so amazingly lovely when massed. Now that it's a fixed gem cost, you can use hammers to get the most out of your virgins.

EDIT: Well, huh. Guess there are still some exceptions to the rule then. That's one of those things that would be nice if it actually displayed in the mod manager.

[Frumple]

Checking a bit, now. Soul contract, imp familiar, black heart, heart of life, lifelong protection. Seems to be all the blood items that ignore forging bonuses. Oddly enough, the protection of geryon doesn't. So much for a pattern :V

[Kagus]

Odd, could've sworn I'd been making discounted familiars just recently. I guess they didn't change it back, then.

Shame Geryon's protection is as expensive as it is, and a unique artifact. I suppose it is a slightly more targetable version of Infernal Prison, but IP only takes 2 slaves rather than 30. Ah well.


I guess harpybombs didn't need to get any more powerful, heh.

[Grek]

Blood empowerment is also a fine way to spice up a communion, if you really don't have any other use. Empower someone with Blood 1, then script them to cast Sabbath Master, Reinvigoration x4.

[Shadowlord]

I had the crazy crazy idea of modding in a sci-fi alien invaders faction, which could potentially have a ton of nation-specific crafting stuff and "spells" for constructing most of their units (using gems as power crystals or something like that)... but it doesn't appear possible to disable a single nation's access to the generic spells and items.

(It'd be a ton of work anyways, though, so it'll probably just remain a crazy idea)

[Frumple]

Want to say there's actually a mod or two that plays along those lines, but I can't quite remember what they are, or if I'm just conflating D3 mods with D4 ones. There definitely was a mod or three playing the alien invasion thing for D3, and some similar stuff (I sodding loved the mushroom mostly-freespawn one for D3, though I've forgotten the name. Pretty brilliant design on that thing, given the constraints it was under.).

That said, somewhat tangential to D4 there's some WH40k ones built like that for Conquest of Elysium 4 that's pretty functional, if perhaps not the most balanced things the world has ever seen.

[AlStar]

If I have a mage that can cast both enslave mind and charm, is there any reason to cast one over the other? it seems to me that charm wins out.