How can you use heretics?
 

Last night I found the site "Temple of Sacred River" and that made two mages avaialble, Renata and Renatus.

The description of one of these is that he is a heretic that takes people away from the true god. I cannot figure out how to use this mage. In fact, the new LA serpant cult has similar mages and I haven't played it for the same reason.

How do you use this mage? What does he do? The description reads like he will lower my domain. EA Arco has a heretic, but at least he has stealth and I've sent them into opponents territory to lower domain. But this Renata chap doesn't have stealth.

I assume I am missing something about this chap.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

No, it seems you are true : they are worst than useless, they are dangerous for who dares recruit them. I think Serpent Cult have them to compensate for their top notch army.
But maybe that if you have dom 9/10 and need them to diversify your magic, then it is worthy to buy some.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

1.way to use them is if you yourself have a weak dominion to lower enemy dominion in your own lands.

2. if you have, lets say a -3 drain dominion but you want to be able to research alright, well just chuck a few heretics in a province (not too close to your capital, god, or prophet) and research away in a nice 0 magic environment. This should be combined with a strong dominion.

3.Ever been in one of those really important sieges? where it's your god, your prophet and your biggest army, vs there god in there capital, and no matter what you do you can't get their dominion down? Heretics are the answer!! combined with your own priests you can drop an enemy dominion in no time!

Thats just some uses, theres probably more out there, personally I don't use them that often, except for the research one, thats a handy little trick.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

The simplest advantage would be to give you options in an area of magic you wouldn't otherwise have, as pointed out - the advantages could easily outweigh the Dom problems. These mages would also be good to take with your army campaigning, as you'll likely be in someone else's dominion and the heretics will be bothering them instead.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

I don't think the ability makes them useless at all. As long as you don't take big squads of them trekking around in your own dominion all they will do is nix your dom in one or two provinces where you keep them. They go well with raiding armies, sieging armies etc and also work very well with negative scales, since they reduce the amount you'll suffer from them. As long as you keep a squad of priests preaching in your cap you don't really have to worry about domkill either - plus your heretics will nix enemy dom coming towards you.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

I usually play with positive scales, which I intend to use to the maximum(it costs darn lot of good points to be a nice god!), so it is true heretics seemed to me like shooting my own feet to run faster...

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

Everyone seems to confirm what I thought.

In this particular game, I started in a corner as usual, and the site is even deeper into the corner than my capital. So short of teleport, which I'm not even sure he is pathed to do, he would be even worse. I don't recall much about him but he has maybe 2 magic paths.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

Apparently, I'm the only champion of the heretics here.

For Serpent Cult Pythium, they are the source of your wide magic diversity. In particular, a Blood Reveler gives you access to one of your best national summons (the Satyr you get from Orgy), as well as starting the 'blood chain'. Finally, as others have said, you can take very bad scales and remove them from where you don't want them using them.

For _anyone_, they are very useful in removing enemy dominion from your territory. Yes, they aren't stealthy. They don't need to be. Have them with your advancing army and watch your opponent's dominion drop. On p.94 of the Dom3 rulebook, it states that the Preaching command (which is presumably what the heretic uses every turn, at their Heretic level) gives a chance of increasing dominion in the province equal to (30%*Holy)-(5%*Dominion).

This means several things. First, the heretic doesn't care about your dominion strength (like temple checks do). So if you plan to have them in your dominion (and your dominion is positive), make sure your dominion strength is high to lower their chances of lowering your dominion. Second, since most Heretics are the equivalent of Holy-3 Priests for their 'preaching', they have a 40% chance of knocking any dominion down a point, and it snowballs from there. If you have 3 in a province that you recently took from an opponent, and the dominion is -10, the following table gives you the chances that the dominion will be lowered (assume that the preaching checks are done sequentially):

0 points = 0.6^3 = 0.2196
1 points = 0.4*0.55*0.55 + 0.6*0.4*0.55 + 0.6*0.6*0.55 = 0.451

and so on. In the case that they are not done sequentially, then it is a simple binomial distribution. Finally, considering they are primarily found in the Late Era (the Serpent Cult), it's a valuable way to fight the dominion of Ermor and R'lyeh.

So yes, they definitely have their uses.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

Sombre already pointed this out, but to make it clearer: they don't "spread" their heretical views like an enemy prophet; they only drop all dominion in the province they occupy. So if you have to recruit them in your capitol, just have their first job be to GTFO and hang out somewhere they are appreciated - like California.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

Considering LA Pythium heretics are supposed to represent different cults, wouldn't Utah be more appropriate, Morkilus? Just 'cause Cali has a lot of progressives who are socially liberal that doesn't make them a religious cult like say the LDS.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

What happens if I make a heretic my prophet ? Does he:

- lower hostile dominion faster than either prophet or heretic would ?
- raise my dominion at all ? If so, presumably at a lower rate ?
- Or was it recently patched and you can't make them prophets anymore ? I seem to remember Sceptics could be prophetised.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

I believe it will just function like a prophet and a heretic. which works double well in enemy domain, But do not expect him to spread your domain (85% chance preach down at domain 1 vs your temple check).

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

IMO, making a heretic your prophet should make their head explodey. Or at least not be a heretic anymore.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

He should get the insanity tag... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

I'd love to see those messages:

"A proclamation from Pythium: Revelerguy is the Prophet of Wallabanga"
.
.
.
"An unexpected event has occured in Hipperboce: Revelerguy's head asploded, five units were injured, one was killed."

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

Since I feel like I should post something on topic:

1st of all, I'm not sure about the neutral site, but if you are playing LA Pythium, Renatus and Renatas are NOT HERETICS. They are a splinter cult of the Serpent Cult and accepted by them. They are also incredibly useful for that nation as they provide the only real chance to get Death 3 (Renatus have 1D plus a random D, plus a skull staff they can build). Same for Water 4 with the Renatas. The Reveler provides access to blood magic (something I didn't take advantage of but now that I read above about special summons I may look into it). The green heretic lady (sorry, forget the name) is a potential E2, E3 with boots, and the ONLY earth mage of LA Pythium (the little non-heretic version has a very small chance of getting earth one, but that's useless). Oh, and she heals wounds. It's rare to get the 2nd earth pick, but if you do, excellent mage to keep with the troops.

The fire heretics are useful, too, and if you have fire on your pretender you can kit them with Fire Helms and Flaming Skulls and then even your Leo's can support the (fire resistant border troops) with flaming death.

The one caveat to all this is with a low gem income you are SOL. I upped the magic site frequency to EA game levels for this purpose. Without boosters your mages are of little value, but with them you can excel at pretty much everything (even Air and Astral, with boosters and your Theurgs - capital only).

As for Heresy in general. I put two serpent priests with crappy random picks in a province way in the hinterlands and sent all my heretic mages with equally crappy picks (the green ladies with 1E1N rather than 2E and the fire guys w/o 2F) there, and with a temple and two priests preaching, I still had five candles in that province, so heresy ain't all that bad. Oh, and your Theurgs can cast telestetic animations (sp?) which can preach for the same effect.

This is all for single player tho. I'm sure in multi it would make more sense to focus on one strategy/path than all of them at once.

Re: How can you use heretics?
 

After reading these posts, I finally realise the full value of heretics.. I always was paraniod that they wouldn't just lower my dominion, but somehow take it to negative.. Silly paranoid me!