Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wouldn't Shroud of the Battle Saint work for this?
(Construction 4, Astral 1, supposed to give Prot5 and Blessed) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For some reason I never thought of that. In all the games I tested max blessings (all 4's and one or two 9's) I never considered what could be done by giving a shroud to the pretender. Hmmmmm whole new line of thought in that. >:-)

[ January 03, 2004, 17:44: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

I don't think the shroud works on your pretender.....


Although honestally I think that all the pretenders should get their bless affects at all times, it just makes sense ;p

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

The shroud doesn't work with pretenders. A real shame http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is a cool idea, and at least the first part wouldn't be too hard to implement - all pretenders get the ability "at the start of battle, this spell casts automatically: Divine Blessing". There are lots of items that already have start-with-spell-X effects (Staff of Storms, Unquenched Sword, Banner of the Northern Star, Thunder Plate, Pendant of Luck, etc., etc.)

As for the second part: I think that any army that sees their god die before their eyes should automatically rout, unless the god is immortal in friendly dominion. Or at least they should take a MAJOR morale loss (like having Terror cast on every single unit on the battlefield). But this would require extra work to code.

I don't think it's necessary to add any extra penalty to the nation during the turns where the god is dead. You already lose your god's dominion effect and can't use him for whatever you wanted to use him for (research, rituals, forging, searching, fighting, anything else I left out). But if you wanted to add an extra penalty, any of the following would be appropriate (doing ALL of them would be pretty harsh though):
* can't create prophet (I've always wondered why a person doesn't have to see his god face to face, i.e. be in the same province, to become a prophet.)
* can't preach/sacrifice
* temples/prophet radiate at half strength (of course the god doesn't radiate at all while dead)

Note that if you couldn't create a prophet while your god was dead, if you lost your god, your prophet and all your priests and temples all at once, it would be very very difficult to get them back (you'd have to summon an Archangel or something else with priest powers - which would probably require multiple empowerments/items even aside from the research - have it build a temple, and then hire priests to call your god - you might even need a fortress too if the province doesn't have any indy priests).

But I don't think you'd have much of a chance of coming back even if you could create a prophet, in that situation.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

I'd agree with this. Sacred troops should get auto-blessed when with their god, and a god death should be a devastaing blow to troop morale. Both good ideas.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They don't die. They can be called back by priests.

If you want to put more penalty on pretender death for sake of game mechanisms, it's fine. But "realistically", any pretender death can be simply explained to the believers that it's just the perishment of a physical form of the god, and the subsequent reincarnation is a sign of the greatness of his/her/its power. There is no need to complicate things unless there is a reason for game balance.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Careful with this. If you lose your God, and don't have any Priests or Temples left, creating a Prophet is the only way you can bring your God back. Losing the ability would be harsh...