pretenders cant preach?
 

From another conversation thread on this board.... "Isnt it strange that pretenders cant build temples?"

I always thought it was odd they couldnt preach themselves to the public. Hmmm are they even sacred? blessable? Maybe there should be Versions that can.

I guess it would require a priest level. but that wouldnt make sense unless a pretender was like a level 10 priest. Maybe make it a setup thing like magic choices. Or they should have priest levels equal to the dominion level you choose when setting up the pretender?

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

of course if anyone wants to play with this they CAN create a pretender that has priest levels. It can be done now by copying one of the .map files and editing it to give yourself a hand-built god. Soon it will be possible by MOD.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

I have always regarded their own natural dominion-spreading effect as superior to preaching.

And I'm not sure you would want to let nonmagical pretenders like a magic-zero manticore with high dominion smite things.

The other thing that seemed strange to me is that blessable units which are in the same group as the pretender don't get blessed unless there is a priest around to bless them. In this unique circumstance, I think units should start out blessed. But that's just my opinion.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

Hmmm sacred pretenders would be very interesting to see, even if balance would have to be redone from scratch. I mean, think of a Earth 9/Nature 9 sacred Big Momma - extra reinvigoration, more protection (both from earth and berserk) and a 20% level regeneration!

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

A blessed Death-9 Prince of Death would have a rather high fear factor. *shudder*

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

Pretenderes PRETEND, so how are they supposed to believe they are the god? I'm not counting in Wyrm or Ettin, or Hydra, or other multi-headed things... But sacred units should become blessed when they fight with their god, and the death of the army's god should affect it too.

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

Endoperez,

That is a wonderful idea...to have the death of the pretender affect the nation.

Was what you had in mind something like not being able to have bless effects until they pray him/her/it back into existence?

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

No bless effect or lessened bless effect. Maybe while he is close to being back here again the bless effect returns... Less effect from scales? Dominion decreasing? No morale boos from friendly dominion? Priest spells being weaker, maybe needing a better priest than before (Serm. of cour. 4, Fanat. 5 etc.).
I haven't thought it out really, mainly because I was thinking things that could happen *in the battle he died in*. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Thanks to you for pointing this 'my good idea' to me, too! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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)

Re: pretenders cant preach?
 

I had the thought Last night that, really, given their auto-Dominion spreading, maybe Pretenders can be fairly classified as ALWAYS preaching and thus don't have a seperate command becaues of that?

If that's the case, you'd think Prophets couldn't preach either, since they also automatically spread Dominion.

Another thought I had is that maybe Pretenders are simply too alien, due to their high stature, to be effective preachers. Maybe the logic is that they can't communicate with the masses any more effectively than they do by simply existing and being, well, godlike.

You'd think a Pretender could raise a temple to his/her/itself though. That's one thing that, honestly, I can't make much sense out of, unless it is purely a play-balancing decision that I don't understand.

I think that, in the end, maybe the real reason is that a Pretender would have to have a very high Priest level (maybe one equal to its Dominion Strength?) for it to make sense, and that would give it access to Smite and other abilities that would potentially unbalance things. And, with the system being set up the way it is, that means the Pretender not only can't cast priest spells, but he/she/it can't do anything else priestly as well.

I'd like to see an exception for being able to build temples shoehorned in there, and I can't see how it'd be unbalancing, but I wouldn't know what to do about the logical flaw behind the fact the fonts of divine power can't harness that power themselves into priestly spells.

Hmm, the Parrot rambles this day . . .

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...