It's that fun thing all the great players use to win their fancy schmancy multiplayer games. You won't be able to do that just yet, but hey, at least after reading this guide you'll be able to mercilessly bully the AI into submission.


How it works:

You take virgins from your population and turn them into delicious bloodbags for your mages to use as ammunition for their blood magic spells.
Kinda like magical gems, except that blood slaves are physically present on the battlefield if you give your mages some. And can thus be killed. So use them up quickly before they go to waste!


Now, like with gems, there are *some* sites that generate blood slaves every turn. But they are few and far between, so you'll have to trudge out there and round those virgins up yourself. Which is what this guide explains.

First of all, you need to be a blood nation. If you have blood mages, you're a blood nation.

Alternatively, keep an eye out for garnet amazons on the map. If you conquer them and slap down a temple and lab on their homes: Congratulations! You're now a blood nation.


Next, you need to actually recruit a couple blood mages and sent them out with the order to bloodhunt. Preferably Blood 2, but hey, take what you can get. Why Blood 2? Check the next step.

No. It does not.

All fish are sluts. There. I said it.
And as such, you have higher chances of finding a virgin succubus than you have of finding a virgin mermaid, ichthyd or deep one.

Well, there might also be some logistical problems involved. Like the issue of getting the blood you draw from your victims where you want, rather than it just billowing out in a crimson cloud. As a result, bloodhunting (and blood magic) doesn't work down there. So confine your bloody ambitions to dry land.

Once bloodhunting, there are three checks that determine whether or not you are successful. Sounds scary, but there are just three things to keep in mind:

First, your bloodsearcher wants blood magic. You can try it without, but the chances are pretty low to find anyone. With 1 blood magic, it's a coin flip. With 2 blood magic, you find someone most of the time.

But then there actually need to be serviceable virgins in the province in order for your mages to round them up. A 10 blood mage can scour that lifeless province all day and night, if there's no people, there's no virgins, either. As a rule of thumb, 5k+ population guarantees to find virgins if your mage doesn't ♥♥♥♥ up, but 4.5k+ is perfectly serviceable for hunting once your more populated provinces are already being farmed.

Finally, people don't like you rounding up their daughters (or sons!) and draging them off to be used as magic slurpees. Crazy, I know. So if there's too much unrest, they'll hide them away from you and your mages might fail to find anyone. Only really becomes a problem above 40 unrest, but you still need to patrol the provinces you're hunting in.

If you succeed, you get 1 to 6 (+ the blood magic level of the mage) blood slaves for every mage that succeeded. You an have more than one mage search the same province at the same time, but that can get pretty tricky.

Why? Well, again, people aren't big fans of those practices. So every failed attempt generates a little unrest, and every successful hunt generates one to four times the captured virgins in unrest. Which can quickly become A LOT of unrest if you have multiple mages successfully hunt in the same province. Spread your mages out!

And keep in mind that patrolling provinces reduces unrest, but also kills 10 population per 1 unrest it removes. So if you overfarm that one 5k province and thus generate a lot of unrest, it quickly gets downgraded into a 4k province from your overeager servants of the public peace!

The bloodhunting checklist for almost guaranteed success:
1. One mage with 2+ blood magic (3+ if you want guaranteed, 100% success)
2. Province with 5k+ population
3. No unrest

The bloodhunting checklist for economic bloodfarms:
1. 2-3 mages with 1+ blood magic
2. Province with 4.5k+ population
3. Less than 40 unrest

So everything was working nicely, you hit your expansion limit, and then you wanted more blood slaves to fuel your ambitions of conquest.

And before you knew it, your entire population started hating you, and you had runaway unrest everywhere. What now?


First of all, don't panic. Or, rather, stop panicking.

Done that?

Great. Now, there are 4 things that can reduce the rampant unrest in your provinces.


Number One: Patrols
You should already know them. Take a big army, and have them patrol the province with the most unrest. But keep in mind that their method to quell unrest is removing the unrestful population permanently. After all, public executions have histroically proven to be very chilling for the population.
Which makes patrolling the fastest way to reduce unrest, but also the one least suited for blood hunting, as you need people to be alive in order to turn them into magic jucie boxes. Still, it works, it's fast, it's reliable.

The exact numbers on how patrolling works are a bit weird, but all you need to know is that flying units or fast units (high map move) with good perception (10+) are best at reducing unrest. Also, you might wind up detecting hidden spies of false gods that are be causing the unrest!

BONUS tip: Use summons for patrolling. Because summoned creatures usually do not have a gold upkeep, and as a nation that routinely murders their taxpayers over virgins you'll be strapped for gold.
Call of the Winds (Conjuration 3, needs Air 2 mage) summons likely the best and most cost-effective patrols in the game. However, it also needs access to air magic.
Summon Wolves (Conj 2, needs Nature 1) is much easier to have access to, since independent nature 1 mages are extremely easy to get your hands on, and wolves make for passable patrols thanks to their high speed.


Number Two: Province Defence
Every ten points of PD in a province reduce unrest in it each turn by 1. Problem is, even a single Blood 1 mage can be causing up to ~20 (if you're extremely unlucky) unrest per turn. And buying 200 PD is just not feasible. Especially not since your mages are likely searching every single province you own at some point.

Still, every bit helps, and as the game drags on it's a good idea to get the PD in all your provinces to 11. Why 11 and not 10? There are a couple bad event that trigger at 10 or less PD. Taking that one step closer could save you from a barbarian invasion at the most inopportune of times.
(the same goes for five and less and zero or less, by the way. So get your PD at the very least up to 1 or 6)


Number Three: Natural Unrest Decay
People get angry. People calm down. Every turn, about one tenth (that's 10%) of your accumulated unrest decays naturally. Without you needing to do anything. Order/Turmoil scales affect this as well, by increasing/reducing the rate.

• With Order 3, one seventh (that's ~14%) decays per turn
  
• With Turmoil 3, one thirteenth (that's ~7.5%) decays per turn

That's in addition to the other means of unrest reduction above.


Number Four: Your Dominion!
That's right! People who worship you as a living (or unliving, I'm not judging) god have trouble staying mad at you! Every 2 candles of dominion present in a province also reduce your unrest by 1 per turn!
...of course, this isn't the case when you're playing MA Phlegra.


There. Now you know about all the ways to deal with that unrest your lust for virgins causes. Time to get back to bathing in their blood.