How to boost research for poor ill equipped nations? Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

So I am currently learning Pangaea and going for what seems like that best strategy of a double blessed White Centaur.

However, something I am struggling with is research, the only thing i have available in the form of a dedicated researcher is a Dryad, and these cost 185 gold with a hefty upkeep for only 9 research points each. Is there some way I can supplement research with this nation and any other that also struggles with research?

Thanks

Using Centaurides and magic scales might be slightly more efficient. Research boosters I think are usually the best solution, but not sure the best way to implement them.

Some independent casters make good researchers, especially the rarer ones. Hoburgs give 7 research for 45 gold IIRC, which is pretty good for nations that lack obvious researchers of their own. Some of the Sacred independent researchers are also very useful if you lack a good cheap or sacred researcher of your own. As an added advantage, buying large numbers of independent casters gives you a good chance of getting path combinations your national casters don't have. (Although since most of them are nature/something, this is less useful to Pangaea.)

You can also try research-boosters or summonings. Research-boosters are a more efficient use of gems, but summonings grant you a unit that can be used for other stuff, too. Either way, Death is the way to go -- if you can get to D2 somehow, whether through general boosters on an indie or whatever, you can make a Skull Staff, summon a Revenant, give the revenant the staff and have them search for more death sites for more death gems, summon more revenants, eventually make Skull Mentors, etc. Getting Death access as Pangaea is a good plan anyway. It might seem like a pain at first, but once it gets going it can fuel itself on Death gems alone (eventually you will want to summon Specters, who can search for several kinds of sites at once in addition to Death sites.)

The indep lizardmens work too. 9 rp for 115 gold, sacred.

Skull mentor are amazingly bad for research due to requirements ; owl quills and lightless lantern are way better. Thoses still are path you don't have natively sadly. So summoning D mage or hoping for indy could help too.

Skull mentors are higher on the research tree than they used to be. A single point of air (fairly common on indies) will get you air quills.

Ok so to get those summons I am going to have to maek a pretender with those stats in air, death or fire to make the research boosters.
The problem is, bless seems the only viable strategy that I can see and I am already scraping together points on a pretender for the blessings and i was thinking a W9N9 bless, and this requires a imprisoned pretender to get, so i won't get those boosters when I need.
Is there a different strategy that I could use that would not hamper me as much if I do not go a bless strategy that I am not seeing?

Centaur hierophiant and hierophantide can be build (and should eventually be built) out of every single forest, every turn. By the end of year 2-3 you've build enough harpies so you have mapped the world anyway. With this you have no problem with research. Next step is giving them spells so then can be useful in battle too, even if early game you should tell them to cast a few spells, then order "fire". Hierophantide is therefore better than hierophant IMO because you can potentially cast frozen heart, and vine arrow, while E1 gives you nothing really powerful without boosters (which, as you have no feet, you cannot use), and your pans should be the one getting the boosters anyway. Hierophant(ide)s are also decent leaders which can easily move around any troops you can build, and they are stealthy. And, you can stealth preach.

With your forts, you should concentrate on building a few Pans, and dryads depending on the quantity of gold at hand (Pans have a crasy upkeep). Pangaea should have only enough forts to build whetever troop you can't build in forests. Both version of warriors are good, and the MA armored minotaur can be devastating, not counting the hoplite (MA again). EA, there is little incentive to build forts.

Also, the W9 part is not that useful since you have in total 1 sacred troop. The added damage transforms into fatigue which can kill you. The bonus to defense is really, really good, however. IMO, you want your white centaurs to kill stuff early, but later they are more useful to hold the line. For me, N9 with white centaur is enough because the only sacred unit you have. A minor E4 bless might be far more useful because you'll want to build loads of hierophiants and it helps their spellcasting. This way you can have a dormant or awake pretender.

Making research booster with Pangaea is suboptimal at best as you have no native A, F, D casters, and unless you find good indies and sites, you will most probably struggle to find enough gems to gear up your mages / thugs / SC anyway.

What I say works only for MA / EA pangaea. LA pan is a completely diffferent nation.

NB: for me, Pangaea is on the "high" side of research. Sure, you don't have units which cost 45 gold to research, but most of your mages are sacred and can be built mostly anywhere for 700 gold (500 lab + 200 temple) in a single turn, so basically you get 7 research for 4 gold / turn, while others must build a fort during 4-5 turns (usually 800-1000 gold) + 500 lab to get their 45 gold researcher that gives 7 research for 3 gold / turn. You'll want to do some blood searching after a while (therefore the lab), and you NEED to try to build a load of temples for potential domkill / scare, as you can recycle your researcher into dom-killing your opponents, leading raiding and regular armies, and spelling doom on your opponents.

Edited by: kasnavada

Kasnavada, so would you suggest relying on blessed units as i don't see much milage in the magic available with Nature - in a new players perspective - it seems mostly just buffs and utility. Are there some research goals I should be looking on to help me in the mid to late game? is blood just where I have to transition to?
If blessed centaurs is the way to go, what path should i take in blessing them instead?

Actually, yes, the above mentionned buff and utilities. Also, summons. Also, Pangaea is not only about nature magic, it's natively strong in earth and water, and will get air by end-game.

I'm not sure about a list, it may confuse more than help, but anyway here is "my" list of useful nature research goals:
- traumaturgy => sleep, panic, charm.
- enchantment => foul vapor is a good "low" level spell (your dryads with N2W1 can cast them) & poison ward (obviously). Later you can summon dryads, and the treelords, and mass regeneration... all high level spells there are worth a good look.
- evocation => nothing really worth setting a goal for. There are good spells but too far high. Vine arrow / sleep cloud. If you have mother oak up, consider spamming the N1 staff booster (forgot the name) to hierophants, as their attacks become much more potent with N2 instead of N1.
- alteration => most of the awesome is there. Eagle eye, swarm, mother awk, wooden warriors. Also the great earth assault spells are there (maws of the earth). Further down you have transformation, which transform your pans into animals, reducing their upkeep from a dozen gold / turn to 0. There are also others awesome earth spells there, like iron bane (affects you less since you've got less armor than others). There also is frozen heart for your heirophants. If you reached construction 6 you will want to build the ring that gives +1W and use the other water spells there, like wave warriors, prison of sedna...
- conjuration => the rest of the awesome is mostly there too. I don't actually know where to start. Earth power, the vine spells (once you've got the ivy king or put crowns on a few casters), strength of gaia, the Tarraques (emphasis on the S, it's unlimited), fearie court, which gives you access to good air spells. With indy lizards and amazons you can breach into air earlier and commune your way into air spells (arrow fend, wind guide, gift of flight on minotaurs...), but Faeries cast them with much less micro.
- construction => Duh, if I may. Construction is always useful. Cons-6 is game changing for you since hierophantide with W1 can become W2 then for a low price, and only a few expect Pangaea to "water" them to death.
- blood => After a while you might want to build a few blood pandemoniacs in your cap so they can cast a life for a life, cross breeding (maybe, I'm not sure of how good it is in Dom4) , blood fecundity and a few others like demon knight, storm demon, blood vine... For Storm demon, you'll need to either empower the pandemoniacs in earth or preferably empower a pan with blood.

I personally take the bless N9 centaur because I can cast all those nature globals. And white centaurs with N9 bless can and will most often be enough to protect you from the probable N9 rush from another party.

(I edited some stuff)

Edited by: kasnavada

Blessed centaurs are useful, but totally unnecessary. Your regular troop roster can do everything you need it to. It looks like we're talking about EA Pangaea?

Minotaur warriors expand really well against most independents. A small number of them can break the enemy line really fast, and while they're not as armored as troglodytes, they have berserk, which means you don't need to worry about them routing unexpectedly. Alternatively, while centaur archers are really expensive, they are longbow archers in the early era, which means that with sufficient numbers they can kill almost any independents with minimal losses. If you get an early Pan, you can use a handful of maenads to absorb cavalry charges or deal with other problems. When all else fails, buy Revelers. They're not quite tough enough to expand without losses, but there's almost nothing they aren't capable of killing.

Revelers okay for expansion, but they're extraordinarily good at defeating rushes, especially sacred- or pretender-rushes. Because they berserk, they largely ignore fear and awe, which many gods and a few sacreds rely on. They will take casualties in every fight, and you don't want to stack them up in your land. But, their resource cost is so low you can create a giant pile of them in one turn whenever you need to take the field, and they hit *ridiculously* hard for their cost.

MA Pangaea is largely the same. Revelers are the same, and they're still amazing. War Minotaurs are way better than minotaur warriors were, but their resource cost may be prohibitive. If you took sloth scales, you probably can't build enough of them to expand with. Your archers are unchanged, although less effective against the increasingly armored indies, but you pick up 2 armored line-holder units.

When it comes to magic, "buffs and utilities" is all you need. Your primary research should be in Alteration and Enchantment. You get large numbers of free troops in the form of your maeands. Maenads are terrible, but in addition to being free they are berserk, which means they can slow the enemy down for a long, long time. If you're playing EA Pangaea, the sad fact is that your magic is mostly not very good early on. You can grab Tangle Vines at Conjuration 1, but the good nature buffs are all pretty high up in research. Once you get there, wooden warriors/mas protection dramatically improves maenad and reveler effectiveness, and make harpies an incredibly annoying backline disruption. Relief and Mass Regeneration keep your army going and going and going. If you can get Gift of Health down, that combo goes into overdrive.

Eventually, you will have to leverage one of your other paths. You can either use Construction to bootstrap to big Earth. Some of your Pans will have E2, and they can forge earth boots and blood stones to give you a handful of E3 or even E4 casters. Legions of Steel doesn't affect maenads, but is extremely good for revelers. Weapons of Sharpness and Strength of Giants combine to make anything deadly, even Maenads. With your alteration research, Curse of Stones, Maws of the Earth, Destruction, and Marble Warriors are all extremely powerful force multipliers.

Your other choice is to go into Blood magic. This *is* skippable -- you can build more hierophants than pans, blood hunt lightly, and use the slaves you do bring in for blood stones, hearts of life, and armor of thorns. But, if you take it up to Blood 4, you get three decent spells. Rain of Toads ruins enemy economies, Cross-breeding is an emergency chaff infusion should the maenads run out, and Demon Knights are usually too much trouble to mass, but are a radically different tactical option. A few Demon Knights backed up by small-AoE buffs like Iron Warriors, Regeneration, and Quickness, can deal with some things your regular army just can't.

As a final note, Pangaea really likes Air magic. I highly recommend taking A4 or better on your god if possible. The Alteration and Enchantment research you were doing anyway enables arrow fend, thunder fend, fog warriors, and mass flight, all of which are hilarious when cast on 300+ maenads. If you luck into your Harpy Queen hero, your god can forge boosters for her to create a second big air caster.

MA Pangaea is largely the same when it comes to magic, save that they have so much more powerful earth magic. This makes offensive earth magic like Blade Wind, Earth Meld, and Petrify viable, and fortunately, 2 of those 3 are in Alteration.

The best way I've found to improve Pangea's reasearch is to have more money.

As described above, the ability to recruit sacred researchers from any forest with a lab and a (cheap) temple is really powerful, The hierophants also make decent light thugs when you need them. I wouldn't use the earth random hierophants as casters, incidentally. With ironskin and a frost brand they're very decent in melee.

Taking a double bless is going to be forcing you into pretty horrible scales, and I've not found the cap-only centaurs to be good enough to warrant it. Pangea with order, growth and luck at 3, and maybe even not taking sloth all the way to 3, has a LOT more gold available than the more traditional turmoil 3 scales, and you still generate a decent enough number of maenads to work with, especially as you can afford more pans. M3 boosts your research significantly, of course, and synergises very well with using loads of fairly poor researchers with cheap upkeep.

Getting to the point you can cast transformation can help free up more gold too (you transform all the pans you're using as researchers and blood hunters and thus remove their upkeep cost). Note that recruiting extra pans as researchers only works if you're constrained by gold, as you can recruit 2 Dryad mothers in the same time it takes to recruit a pan, generating 26 RP to the pan's 19. Two dryad mothers will cost you 540g and 18g/turn upkeep, mind, compared to 325g and zero (once transformed) so if you've got the castles and N gems to do it, mass pan production is the way to go. In order to be unconstrained by gold you should have a lab+temple in every forest and be recruiting a hierophant from every single one, of course, so gold not being your primary constraint is a fairly unlikely scenario.

interesting things guy I will have to test these before I put it into action in my multiplayer games.
So what would you suggest as far as a pretender, it seems that I want to move to good scales instead and buff non-sacred units that my nation has.
Another question is how much of an effect does order have in Pan's creating Maenads, and is it actually worth getting more of these units at the cost of lower income and hence less traditional units? I guess I could take less order and spend that points on higher stats, and use the maenads as chaff combined with the sacred centaurs.

This is for MA Pangaea

Edited by: jhon9728

If you really want to run order, I would consider going with something like an imprisoned Irminsul. You can get Order3/Growth3/Magic3, Nature 9, and Dominion 8. You'll have a lot of money and research. Your blessing will make white centaurs worth buying and cut down on hierophant casualties in the field. When your god awakens, it can use those N9 skills to put up global enchantments that will be extremely difficult to dispel. Alternatively, the same scales let you run an imprisoned Titan of Heaven with Air 4, Earth 3, and Dominion 8. When he wakes up he can forge air boosters, and with earth boots on he can forge a Staff of Elemental Mastery.

That said, I usually would not run Order. Getting more gold is absolutely better than getting more maenads, but I often prefer to spend my points elsewhere. Luck and Magic have been discussed, but I want to give a shout out to Production as well. Production's gold bonus mitigates the gold penalty from turmoil without reducing the effect of Luck scales or maenads spawn rates. The resource bonus allows you to use War Minotaurs for your expansion force, and also enables you to spot-recruit a few satyr hoplites or centaur cataphracts as necessary in the midgame. You could run something like a dormant Frost Father with Turmoil2/Production1/Cold1/Growth3/Magic1, and Air4/Death4/Water3/Fire1.

Orionja wrote: Blessed centaurs are useful, but totally unnecessary. Your regular troop roster can do everything you need it to. It looks like we're talking about EA Pangaea?

Hum, they are a stronger version of the centaur warrior, which regenerates from turn 1 with N9 bless. That's something that your other troops cannot do, take indy provinces with no losses until you have your buffs (year 2 / 3). Having tried both, the level of expansion and attrition between white centaurs and centaur warrior is in the favor of the white centaurs. Also, when I speak about a rush, I speak about year 1 rush. Also it synergize very well with the casting the N globals, or casting all those numerous summons with the "+" sign (killer mantis, leogryph, the spell which summons the naiads - forgot the name, even if you need 1 water too).

However, I don't mean that as a rebuttal. Pangaea has enough options so a lot of what can be done will be efficient. Other than that, yes, Pangaea is an incredibly versatile nation, especially compared to one-hat trick like Caelum.

To jhon:
To have maenads, you need to have turmoil or no order in your provinces. They're very weak without buffs, which, you excel at. However, it's rather fun to send 100 maenads against indy provinces. You take horrible losses but since they did not cost anything... beware that they might just trigger the auto-rout of your armies though. I personnaly don't use them much, but even then they are useful as a deterrent.

Last pretender I use was this one:
Dormant Horned one, Dom6, O3G3, with N9.

Point was to get ridiculous amounts of gold to build troops, labs and temples, move pans near border for maenads, and generally get the upper hand on every nature global. I succeeded in this game at casting mother oak the exact same turn it was casted by asphodel and I stole it from him. Higher dominion level seemed unnecessary to me because building temples is cheap for you (3 temples = +1 dom, that was fixed when going from dom3 to dom4).

Adding some D to cast Lamias and get into death, reducing the scales a bit might also work, as would putting some E or A or W into the pretender. Contrary to other nations with defined paths, what you like about pangaea generally works. Pangaea is versatile enough so that you can adapt to whatever people throw at you, and not everyone will use it the same way.

Edited by: kasnavada

For MA Pan, even M1 is going to make your Dryads more efficient in raw output than Pans, significantly cheaper over time (their upkeep isn't terribly high, and they're also superb assassins to boot), and they ramp up in output quicker both with items and from experience. You basically need Magic scales for your research to keep up, but you can drop points in Sloth and even Turmoil if that's your scene. Talking about Transformation seems a bit whimsical to me, but if you can do it to keep your Pan outgoings down, go for it, I guess.

On Maenads, they're extremely useful to fill forts with. Pan can make even its Palisades nigh-unbreakable under T3 with enough Pans, although you will run into problems with your mage upkeep unless your expansion goes very well and you can gobble up at least some of a neighbour's territories. I believe Maenad"spawning" is something like (DRN-3)-(Order/Turmoil scale in province), but I could be wrong on that.

I don't know what your bless of choice would be. I absolutely wouldn't go for N9, because White Centaurs already have quite a lot of health, but not enough that 10% regen is going to save them from mid-game evocation spam or several rounds against an X Brand.

W9 synergises very well with their light lances, and giving them 18 base defence means they're very hard to kill in close combat. Their Attack score is maybe a little low, but remember that most line units with a listed defence around 13-14 are adding their shield into that, while their base defence is down to about 9. You're going to hit them very often, and in Dominions 4, where shield protection is simply added to regular protection on a parry, a strength 14 Light Lance carrier going at about fifty squares is going to punch straight through whatever they hit.

Edited by: jBrereton

I don't know what your bless of choice would be. I absolutely wouldn't go for N9, because White Centaurs already have quite a lot of health, but not enough that 10% regen is going to save them from mid-game evocation spam or several rounds against an X Brand.

Actually, having tried formorian giants against N9W9 white centaurs, yes, it does save them from one / two shoot of brands, when you hit them at all. Because since you don't one shot them, nor hit them every turn, they do heal. Also, with their high defense, they are most often hit on their shield and therefore have a protection much higher than 9, blunting damage by a lot. But, note that I don't see the logic link be both part of your sentence anyway. The point of a regeneration of 4 / turn is more or less to make them immune to anything that hits less than a dozen damage per turn (arrows, earthquakes, poison, sould vortex, indies...), not brands...

Also, in MA, white centaur have a basic 22 defense with W9 bless, and if hit, they go down to 19 (berserk 3), which puts their attack skill at 15 (double checked: if they have a xp level). That's not really low... Also, they have a shield & high def so they are the one getting mostly hit on the shield.

Edited by: kasnavada

kasnavada wrote: Also, in MA, white centaur have a basic 22 defense with W9 bless

No, they have 18 (I was wrong when I said 19). The bonus with a shield isn't the same thing, because you're into the range where you're possibly taking quite a lot of damage still (since their base protection is pretty low).

I'm sorry jBrereton. You make no sense.

There are a lots of arguments against of for not taking a N9 bless with Pangaea. Their troop diversity is excellent enough not to rely on them, you can cast regen instead, Pan are strong enough to cast most enchants and so on, early advantage with the bless and centaur, regen for all your mages when spamming earthquake (you'll survive, the other side... less so), cheap poison protection with foul vapors and so on. It depends on the style you want to put on the nation, and it'll be wrong to say that one is currently better than the other. I personally like the N9 bless, but it suits my style of play.

I have no issues against people saying it's not for them, and that in some situations, which are pretty well explained, it's not optimal. On the contrary. However, N9 is wrong because of resistance to brands ? Not only do centaurs with N9 bless will survive Frost brand quite well, I'm just laughing at the second part. What exactly, in Dominions, and in your opinion, can "tank" both other brands ? Please note that I'm speaking about sacred units in MA. I've done the math and seen it in game, centaurs with N9 bless usually survive one shot by the sword, and 3 shots by the shadow / fire brand aura. Without N bless, they're dead at the first shot, and killed in 2 shots by the aura effect. But still, I'd like to know where you find a national sacred unit capable of regenerating about 25 hit point / turn with the N9 bless. Most units in the game don't even HAVE 25 hit points to begin with.

Edited by: kasnavada

You beat up that nasty strawman kasnavada!

Sombledon wrote: You beat up that nasty strawman kasnavada!

SIgh...

Another thing I don't like about those forum is the tendency of people that have played for ages to offer unhelpful / bad advice, and just spam the forum for a "bon mot". The community would profit from the "experience" of veterans, except sometimes I think their experience is just preconceptions of how the game worked in dom1 or 2 and that they have no clue of how the game is played now. Anyway, I don't actually see many of those actually writing guides, helping new people or just being helpful.

Just look at this thread. Olhmann suggest booster with a nation that can spam researchers in forest for a boost in research, which was the information the OP was looking for. While not useless, from a guy that spams every thread for years, I'd expect the complete answer, not a generic comment that every nation can use. jbrereton argumenting things which make no sense, he forgets the point of the thread was, at the start, research, and rebuts what I say based on thing that never work. You ? Just throw a trolling comment.

The most helpful advice comes from the others which I don't remember seeing on the old dom3 boards.

PS : I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but this whole mindset makes me sick.

You don't take an N9 blessing on Pangaea because it's the best bless effect, anyway. You take it because it's extremely cheap on Irminsul and the Horned One, and affordable on the Gorgon, and various titans.

Water is almost certainly better for White Centaurs, but your only Water gods are the Titan of Rivers, Volla of Bounty and Blue Dragon, which are all pretty lame as gods go.

Frankly, if I could have any major bless I wanted I would have Air 9, but that locks you in to the Titan of Heaven and is still kinda pricey.

Edited by: Orionja

MA Pan has pandeomiacs with B2. Would it be beyond stupid to get one or two of those guys, have them blood hunt in your cap (or some fort/lab province) and use that minor B income to forge imp familiars for their +3 research? There's no cap only commander they'd be competing with and it requires no research into blood proper. I'm envisioning a low mainteanance long-term research boost with this set-up.

If that is viable, would it still be viable with EA Pans and their blood randoms? I imagine the Pan upkeep could be prohibitive here.

Don't blood hunt your capital. You don't even need to blood hunt a fort, although you can. If all your forts are in high-income, high-population provinces then just blood hunt some random forest. Either use one of your forest lab research farms, or just pay 30 gold for an independent scout to carry the slaves back and forth. Blood hunting with a few Pandemoniancs is a very good idea.

Imp familiars, however, are... not necessarily stupid, but not ideal for Pangaea. The problem is that your blood mages are so big that the action economy doesn't work in your favor. A Pandemoniac has 15 research points in neutral scales, 16 in magic-1. If you spend one turn blood hunting and one turn forging a familiar, you're forgoing 30 points of research, so you're going to have to wait 10 turns before you actually come out ahead. Except it's worse than that, because you build the pandemoniacs in the capital, then move them somewhere else to hunt. So assuming they can get there in one turn, you're behind by an additional 15 research out of the box. So it's slow, but it is gold efficient?

In one year, a Pandemoniac costs 204 gold in upkeep, plus whatever income is lost to unrest, or the upkeep cost of your patrolling troops. This might be pretty minimal, especially if you have sloth and/or turmoil scales. Still, let's assume you're losing at least 3 gold per turn, for a total outlay of 240 gold in upkeep and forgone income. During this time, you can expect to make about 6 familiars, so basically each familiar is a like a mage with 3RP who cost 40 gold to recruit. That's not a very good deal, but at least you aren't paying upkeep on them, right? Well, sort of. Every slave harvested does permanently reduced your population, and patrolling reduces it more. That's lost income every turn as long as you hold that province. It's hard to estimate the exact gold cost of losing 15 population -- there's factors like how much unrest the province in under, negative events, losing the province in warfare, and so on -- but it's not unreasonable to think that each familiar costs you 1 gold/turn in missing population. Since a Spire Horn Seraph only costs 3 gold per turn for 7+ research, you can see that this is not a significantly better deal than tiny mages are for the nations that get them.

Building a Pandemoniac costs 2 turns and 255 gold. If I wanted cost-efficient research, I would rather spend 2 turns and 240 gold to make 2 Centauride Hierophantides. They make 14-20 RP, depending on scales, with relatively little upkeep. If I wanted to generate faster research? Well, it takes 510 gold to buy 2 Pandemoniacs, who will then craft one 3RP familiar per turn. It only costs 700 gold and ~14RP to build a lab and a temple on some forest, where you can then recruit one 7+ RP Centauride every turn.

TL;DR: For MA Pangaea, investing in imps is usually worse than building more small mages. Imps are worse the more favorable your scales are, and better the more disadvtangeous they are. If you were running Tumoil/Drain or something it would be worth doing, but probably not otherwise.

For EA Pangaea it's an even worse way to research, since you're giving up 38 up front RP per imp instead of 30, and paying 48 up front gold per imp instead of 40. But at least you get a bunch of free maenads.

Edited by: Orionja

Someone wrote: Don't blood hunt your capital. You don't even need to blood hunt a fort, although you can. If all your forts are in high-income, high-population provinces then just blood hunt some random forest. Either use one of your forest lab research farms, or just pay 30 gold for an independent scout to carry the slaves back and forth. Blood hunting with a few Pandemoniancs is a very good idea.

No idea if it changed, but in dom3, basically the number of blood slaves depend on the quantity of inhabitant in the province. The limit where it started not to matter anymore was supposed to be 6000. Also, I'm pretty sure orionja meant harpies (recrutable in any forest). So basically, as blood searching gives you unrest, you want to search provinces which have less than 6000 - 7000 population and more than 4000 to ensure a good success rate.