Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

As I find myself repeating yet again: poison works only about 50/50 and when it does, you have a good chance of afflictions ruining the mage/priest you are trying to convert.

However I have not tried chill auras. The idea of using a pack of winter wolves to stack thier auras in that way hadnt occured to me. That would be worth a shot... chill causes fatigue damage right? So at least they would not be able to run away, as with poison. However, I think that keeping the battle going long enough to kill from fatigue would be difficult.

Edit:
Another thought occurs - using both Chill AND Poison at the same time. Chill freezes units in place and would theoretically cause more critical hits, speeding thier demise from poison. You know, that might just work...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Plan S: Get a tainted blood slave unit, cast Gift of Reason on her, give her two amulets of vengeance, have a blood mage stand next to her, surrounded by indy priests, script a spell that sacrifices a blood slave, and boom! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Oh, I see, you guys are talking about using the battlefield enchantment Life After Death so you can use indy priests with no magic abilities. I was somehow thinking you had a way to cast Twiceborn on them in advance, but of course that's a caster-only Death spell.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

When I have done this exploit, I always just use the frost father, and take a cold dominion.

He has chill 17 with cold power that boosts it up to like chill20 (chill23?) in a cold 3. Also there is a cheap fatigue spell that surrounds you with chill.

I don't see this as particularly hard or an issue...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Does that actually work..?
And does two amulets work better than one.. seems counter intuitive.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I was mostly joking. I think it might work. It was reported in Dom 2 that tainted unit blood slaves could get sacrificed (and IIRC there was a way to crash Dom 2 doing that). I don't know about commander blood slaves or what happens in Dom 3 though. I also don't know if it would set off the amulet of vengeance or not (it might bypass that), nor do I know if two amulets of vengeance both explode - the second one was sort of an explanation point on the joke.

Phoenix Pyre, however, seems like another possibility. Though I think you're right that simple cold aura would do it, given enough time - you just need to keep the artificial battle going long enough, which is the other half of the "how to make this an efficient factory" question.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Funny timing on this thread, I just had a big battle involving it. Instead of casting Control Undead, my mage casts the “life after death” spell. Not very helpful, as I am MA Ermor and don’t have a lot of live troops at this stage. Then he casts rigor mortis. I also have a big communion going. Soon, my mages start dying from fatigue, not ideal.

Oh well, they come back to life, so not a problem. They can still re-animate, so nothing changes. The next turn, the army gets sieged by the enemy SC pretender, who has high regeneration due to high dominion. No problem, I will just preach it away and then smack him down. Except that my newly undead priests can not preach…

Seems that getting re-animation comes at a cost.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I was thinking of indy priests for nations without easy access to chill/heat auras. Perhaps MA Ashdod/Hinnom or something. You don't care about ruining these now upkeep-free commanders.

I say that producing undead priests in general is not exploitish for any nation whatsoever (yes, it taints the theme. But it´s also themish in it´s own right if you dabble in necromancy). Mass production is not kosher, imho, through (what kind of mass production are we talking about here?)

No one cares if those 50G indy priests get afflications. They have only one purpose, that is to reanimate skeletons. Why should you care if they get blinded/crippled or whatever. (does feeblemindedness remove priest levels as well for pure priests?)