Two questions on preaching
 

I have the feeling that preaching doesnt seem to raise my dominion at all. Or at least I dont notice it. Does anyone know how it works exactly -- do I need to do it three turns in a row? Or a number of turns equal to the priest's level?

Maybe this is common knowledge, but I was experimenting: A sneaking sage in an independent province / enemy province cant search for magic sites, it apparently counts as an attack on the country (odd), but a sneaking priest CAN preach! But does this work the same way that preaching in your own province does (however that may be -- s. question 1)?

Btw, does having the "sneaky" symbol have any effect on the battlefield?

thank you

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

As far as I know :

- Preaching has a chance of success equal to your God dominion * 10%. So if you gave your God Dominion 6 at the start, preaching has a 60% chance of success.
- Every five temples you build raises this chance by 10%
- If it succeeds, your dominion in this province goes up by 1
- Preaching can't raise the dominion of a province above the preacher holy (or unholy) score. A lvl 2 priest can only preach to level 2. You get a message ("XX cannot raise the dominion of the province any higher") if you try to preach but can't raise the dominion (but the order to preach stands).
- If you put a priest on "preach" order, and leave him there, and he hits his limit, you won't see any message, and he'll keep preaching without further effect.

And finally :
- preaching in an enemy province makes your priest more likely to be discovered, but can be done. Searching in an enemy province can't be done, but don't ask me why...

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Thank you. That the success rate of a preach is dependent on the Dominion set and is affected by number of temples I hear for the first time, and is interesting indeed. This goes towards "what good Dominion setting" is for.

So the success of a preaching is not dependent on skill / power of priest, also interesting. Thanks.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Temples and prophets raise dominion the way Tacticus explained. Priests do not. Priests raise in some other way whose mechanisms I do not remember exactly, it is something like x+(priest lvl)y%. Where I do not recall the values of x and y. A high lvl priest also gains a chance of an additional raise, IIRC. Priests cannot however raise the dominion above their priest lvl.

Why should one be able to sneak search for sites? From a game mechanis perspective there certainly is little or no reason, since the sites one finds only benefit the owner. And argued from some sort of realism perspective either is as viable as the other, as there is no definitive authority on how mages go about searching for magic sites, as far as we know they might need to pound on enormous bells or light huge bonfires. It would also be odd if the owner of the province suddenly recieved a site he had not searched for from a searcher he did not know was there. The alternative would be to implement another layer of ownership on sites, but this is a lot of work for little or no benefit, complete with a whole new range of possible bugs and problems. Sneaky preach on the other hand can be useful when used against other players, and if you want an in game justification assume that they are preaching at secret meetings and handing out religous pamphlets and spray painting the religious slogans of their faith on enemy church walls.

Edit: Changed the * to a + in the formula.

[ January 18, 2004, 12:26: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

thanks -- no I meant: not what number x and y be, but they are a variable standing for what "factor" (like is it: opposing dominion, number of temples, etc. etc.)?

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They are just arbitrary numbers. The x and y are constants, y is multiplied with the priest lvl. So x + y*(priest lvl) should be something like 20+20*2 = 60% for a 2lvl priest ie a 60% chance of the dominion increasing 1 step in the province where he preached.


Edit: Turns out there isn't any x involved. Just (priest lvl)*20.

[ January 18, 2004, 14:41: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

To clarify things I made a check in the code.

Temples increase priest lvl by one.

Chance of dominion increase:

In friendly dominion: (priest lvl)*20%
In enemy dominion: (priest lvl)*20-(enemy dom)*5%

Inquisitors priest lvl count double in enemy dominion.

So keep your weak sneaking priests in border provinces.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

hey thanks

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

When you say "temples increase priest level by 1" does that mean a temple in the province? 5 temples in your empire? 1 temple somewhere in your dominion? And I'm assuming the level increase is just for preaching, right?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wow! And I'm playing Marginon now! Man, did I miss the memo or what! No wonder I couldn't raise my dominion in an enemy province until I sent in the High Inquisitor screaming about them being heathens, sex before marriage, worshipping pagan gods and all sorts of stuff. The annoying thing was they had an immoratal protecting the place. I'd kill him and he'd keep coming back until I "preached him down".

For some reason the description "Inquisitors are especially good at supressing enemy dominions" just seemed like "fluff language" to me. I didn't know they got an actual in game bonus.

Darryl

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Temple in the province allows priests to preach as a priest 1 lvl higher. Every 5 temples increse max dominion spread lvl by 1.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Grr ok ... darn, I sort of *liked* the way Gen Tacticus explained it and felt I could deal with that. Anyone know how it works / how do you know Gen Tact isnt right?

I didnt realize sneaky searches would be hard to implement; wouldnt it be kind of easy for you to know "found site in XYZ" but the current owner wouldnt get that message and no one would get the gems?

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Oh, I'm sure he's right : he's one of the developpers of the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

And he looks grumpy!

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

J ostermann, you are / were on the dev team? wow ok thanks. So how can one go about figuring out how preaching works, or just sort of "ungefähr" how it works (um... "sort of" how it works, without the exact numbbers, but maybe just saying what factors x and y stand for?)

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, kind of, most of the actual work is done by Kristoofer or Johan K. I do a little stuff occassionally though.

X is a value, 10 20 or 30 I think, y is a value, 20 or 30 IIRC.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So a ulm priest(default theme, lvl2 holy) preaching in -10 dominion has 2*20- 10*5 = -10 % chance of making a difference. no chance at all.

An iron faith priest (lvl3 priest, bonus praying in hostile dominion) would have 3*20*2 - 10*5 = 70% chance.

In -6 dominion the odds are 10% vs 90%.

In friendly dominion the odds are 40% vs 60.

All assuming iron faith priests gets the same bonus as marignon does.

Very interesting stuff.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

How would this work with multiple generic lvl 2 priests. Is each one handled individually, which would still not give them a chance in an enemy province or do the work together to get a better chance?

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

Perhaps, with some future patch/mod, we can get priestly communion. Heck, religious communion should have been in the game from the start if there is wizardly communion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

I assume the preaching effects would be resolved in sequence, like other things seperate commanders do. That combined effect would already be pretty good.

There is something I don't quite understand going on with the effect of enemy dominion, though. I notice that provinces near enemy dominion have a lower level that "can't be raised any higher by preaching". My guess has been that every nation can have dominion in every province, and they subtract from each other somehow, in a slow process from turn to turn, and that dominion also slowly spreads from province to province. I don't particularly want to know all the details, since it is fun just seeing it be a bit unpredictable, but has someone explained how the dominions interact somewhere? Just curious.

PvK

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There was a discussion about this a while back, but I don't think it was explained in great detail. The thread is here, it might give you some further info:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...4;t=000300;p=2

I am still a bit concerned with Fires of Faith Marignon and their insane dominion values. I gave up in one game I was playing against them, but their dominion at that point was at (-)19, meaning not even my lizard kings would be able to do anything about it. It's interesting to fight them, since you can't use either your god or your prophet really, but this also means that there is no way you can lower their dominion through preaching. A fun feature, but kinda worrysome when you think about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 19, 2004, 07:20: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Enemy dominion works to lower your current dom, but it does not change the "cap". If the priest has holy-2, then you should be able to preach to that level (though enemy dom may prevent you from making any headway). I have spread dom up to and beyond my priest's level by building temples at my enemy borders, then letting the temple's own effect continue to boost dom level after my priests reach their own (and then they move on to other provinces to repeat the procedure). If you are unable to counter the effect of enemy dom so that you can preach up to your max, then you must have a low dom score for your pretender (and not enough temples overall to boost it). Or you need to throw more priests at the problem. I have never seen a message saying I cannot preach further until my priest does, indeed, hit his displayed max. OTOH, I also control provinces I preach in (unless I'm sieging). With Dom-10, I can siege a keep with the enemy god inside it and still move the balance in that province in my favor, though it may take months to go positive. All of this leads me to believe that your overall core dom value affects the effectiveness of your priests.

As for spread effects, they seem confined to adjacent provinces to your own dominion "generators". It also seems that a province that has high dominion will "spill" some of it over into adjacent provinces, even if that high-dom province itself has no temple or priest. Or at least that's the ripple effect I've been noticing. But the ripple appears much weaker than the effect of temples in pushing dom outwards.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And multiple priests in a province have a cumulative effect (but still can't go beyond their individual limit of course). Just put 20 priest on that siege with the enemy god inside, and watch his dominion disappear from the province, even if you have a low Dominion score yourself...

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just a little note: According to the formulas posted by Kristoffer, holy2 priests cant affect enemy dominion of 8 or higher, you need lvl3 or better priests for that.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point. However, it's easier to just build a temple (or several) nearby and knock the dom below 8 that way.

Re: Two questions on preaching
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point. However, it's easier to just build a temple (or several) nearby and knock the dom below 8 that way. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Or bring your prophet or God - but watch out for break siege attempts.

Now, does anyone know how Ceremonial Faith and Restless Worshippers affect these formulae?