Re: Balancing the blesses
 

To MaxWilson:-

Thanks for those tests, they are very interesting. Did you take the +4 to attack into account that F9 gives? Does F9 bless still do more damage overall because it hits more often because of the +4 attack or did your tests include the +4 attack and still find the B9 inflicted more damage?

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

Fire bless can also be nice in that it is a magic attack and can go through/dispell things like ethereal/mistform.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

Unfortunately they also only have a MR of 5. Don't try and use them against somebody with astral 4 mages and enslave mind researched, as I found out in one game.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

Damn, knew it was too good to be true.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

In the first set of tests I just assumed 2000 hits, so attack didn't come into play. In the second set of tests I included the +4 attack from F9, the +2 from F2, and the -2 to defense from a second attacker. It was the attack bonus that made F9 clearly better than B9 vs. the Wraith Lords. Of course I forgot to take Etherealness into account, too.

-Max

P.S. You can treat the first set of tests as the limiting case vs. swarms of attackers. You can confidently say that +4 Str (from B9 or SoG) is better than an F9 bless against lone SCs of Prot 20, without Etherealness. The second set of tests, assuming one square vs. one square, is for large numbers of units where the battle front is roughly a line, as often happens. This doesn't necessarily mean equal numbers of units on both sides, but both sides have at least 20-30 units.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

I'm pretty sure the following is right but I want a doublecheck:

Mistform is always totally useless for a supercombatant fighting nothing but Fire9 blessed sacreds.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

The Fire Bless is nice(and imho best) when you have a sacred with multiple attacks, especially against low hp ethereal units with high defense, such as MA Ermor.

Every bless has it uses in certain situations, because the game has almost infinite possibilities. But the Melee based
sacred, especially one with 2 or more attacks, fire just stands out. Hit more, hit for more damage, and you negate ethereal to a large degree.

Water bless is very good also, as is nature. I still think Astral, Death, Air, and Earth, in general, are not as useful.

Earth is obviously great for casters, but the 4 protection does not really help that much on low protection units. I like the theme of Earth, but would 8 protection put Earth on scale with Fire, water, and nature?

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

I take a earth bless purely for the reinvigoration, the protection is just a nice bonus. Astral is a perfectly good bless as it is, twist of fate and +3 magic resistance are always useful. S9 magic path is probably the best path of magic in the game as well, for winning the end game.

Air is definetly the weakest, I like adding +3 precision for A9. The E9/A9 combo bless for strong magic nations would be cool.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

On units with high protection +4 prot can be good, the difference between 4 damage and 0 damage can be huge.

Re: Balancing the blesses
 

And on units like knights of the chalice, black templar and living pillars the E4 bless can be a very nice bonus(4 extra prot on a unit with 10 prot is nice. 4 extra prot on a 20 prot unit is great. the reinvig helps these units and your sacred mages too).

Earth is a good bless for nations with tough sacreds/those who need reinvig(niefelheim being the obvious choice) and i also like astral on alot of sacreds(mictlans sacreds, flagellants, shadow vestals and sometimes lanka's sacreds)