No love for Holy??
 

Why is it that Holy power is so hard to boost? You can't communion, the only item that specificall boosts holy power is the artifact sword whose name escapes me, and while the crystal shield works if your priest is also a mage, you often want them doing magely things. I'm considering modding in a "Staff of Holy Power" if its possible.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

You can communion. Or more accurately, if you can communion it will raise your Holy level. A Crystal Matrix will work.

Those with astral magic can also boost holy with PotS.

All that said, I'd expect on a game balance level it's hard to boost because there's less need to. Nations are divided/balanced partly based on how strong the priesthood is, so making it easy to boost would weaken those differentiations.

Also there is less need for boosters. No ritual magic, a small range of spells that don't have a fatigue cost anyway.
Plus there is no gem equivalent to forge items with, so you'd have to balance any such item around another path of magic.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Well, I can't say for sure it's the reason but holy has a pretty huge power curve. A h1 priest is nearly useless, h2 starts providing tangible benefits, h3 priests can bless entire armies by themself and throw attack spells, and h4 priests can embolden every unit on the battlefield. Since you don't need any research for priest spells, the only thing that limits a priest is their level. I guess another reason would be that a priest has their place in the pantheon of the faith, and you don't really get especially powerful priests - every priest of the same level is viewed with the same level of holy authority.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

I'm pretty sure that if a priest has at least one magic path besides Holy, you can boost their holy level with crystal shield.

H4 is ridiculous for certain nations. I'm using a H4 Epoch for Bogarus in Archaen and the +2 morale to everyone makes him amazing. He's also a great preacher.

I'm actually really impressed by how preaching works, I used to think it was a lot less effective.

Jazzepi

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Does it make sense to mass priests in a province and start preaching, or do you usually just put one or two in the crucial provinces.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Priests can only preach up to their level. So a level 1 priest can only raise dominion to level 1 positive.

It's more useful for clearing out bad dominion.

Jazzepi

Re: No love for Holy??
 

+2 for a temple, so going from a big negative to +3 dominion can take quite a few H1 priests

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Yeah but it's still better then dominion spread naturally into negative dominion, which is far less likely to happen.

Jazzepi

Re: No love for Holy??
 

For lurking newbies:
Dont downplay the priests. They are easy to overlook but the name of the game is Dominions for a reason.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Only one level higher for a temple, according to the manual.

Still mostly useful for getting rid of enemy dominion.

Actually then manual says "Preaching can only raise dominion as high as twice the level of the priest", so a H1 should be able to raise dominion to 2, 4 with a temple.
Is that right? Going from memory it doesn't seem to match when the game tells me preaching won't work.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Sneaky little priests undid my triple 10 (Earth, Water, Nature if I remember correctly-Niefel doesn't need a water bless, by the way...) bless Niefel giants in an MP game.

I wasn't winning, but I was holding my own against LA Ermor (it was the first all-nation game), for a little while atleast, until Pan's sneak-priests pulled my Dominion out from under me.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

From what I know, level 1 priest can preach up to dom level 2, 3 with temple. Level 2 priest can preach up to dom level 3, 5 with temple. So the math is
dom = lvl + 1 or
dom = lvl*2 + 1 (with temple)
I always use this numbers and they seem true.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

You don't still hold a grudge, do you Honey?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Ofcourse not :angel: but I'll likely not forget it either...:evil:

Re: No love for Holy??
 

How is it possible to have a triple 10 bless and still play the game?! Did you have negative 3 on every scale and 1 dominion? :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Not quite, but pretty close...

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Somewhat OT (blood sacrificing is not your normal priests preaching), but I saw in a 4-player blitz game played last week (I was eliminated first through "normal" methods though :P) an awesome dominion kill from Abysia. From practical zero (after the two first of us were killed off) to full dominion kill in 6 turns. He made an excellent AAR on our private forum with pictures and all, I hope he'd post it here too, quite educational :)


Even "regular" priests together with Dominion 10 can be a suprising killer in a game. This does not include LA R'lyeh or Ermor, as they have other huge bonuses with a dominion spread and Dominion kill is what they will attempt by default.


The following strategy is something I love with Pangaea (cheap temples and stealthy preachers), the sad point is of course that when people realise what you are attempting, they will forget all their internal quarrels and try to bring you down fast (you effectively become an Ermor or R'lyeh in their eyes) ;) It works better in single-play though, but nobody prevents one from occasionally trying it in MP :)

Send in the H1 (or higher, if you just have access to them :) ) priests in bunches to provinces without your dominion, build a temple and convert the province by preaching. Move on to the next to do the same. If you have stealthy preachers, send them in to hostile lands to preach the words of wisdom. With areas around your capital getting to Dominion 10, your dominion will start to roll until it reaches the avalanche point and nothing can stop it anymore (with dominion 10 provinces and plentiful temple checks the dominion has nowhere else to spread except to hostile dominion). If you also can blood-sacrifice (like EA Pan or Sauromatia for an example), just before the avalance effect becomes apparent, start blood-sacrificing like mad.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Stealthy preachers? Huh, they`re quite good when you use them with attacking enchantments...but I like to use priests as battle mages
MA Marignon can summon angels and (!) seraphs - and powerful mage-priests in Capital. If you are playing against Oni, Ernor or any player, who using undead/demon commanders, just 2-3 priests with 2-3 lvl Holy can easily destroy everything on the battlefield. Banishment kill ANY undead (Pretender too) with single strike

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Banishment is unlikely to kill undead pretenders with a single strike. It does MR resisted hp damage. On a lucky roll it could kill a low hp pretender outside of it's dominion, but I wouldn't rely on it for killing any undead thugs or SCs.
It's great for blowing away hordes of undead/demonic chaff, especially if you've got high level priests. Powerful single undead require other measures.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Seraph with holy sword kills Ghost King on Deathmatch with single strike. Just yesterday. I lol`d

Great massacre: five priests l.3, one angel with guards and about 25-30 prov.def. vs 200+ undeads of Ernor. Enemy failed to capture my prov.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

That can be a very useful thing to do. Fighting under enemy dominion give a -1 penalty to Morale, while fighting under friendly dominion gives a +1 bonus. That two-point difference can be important in a close fight, or if you're dealing with troops whose Morale isn't unshakable.

(Think province defense.)

Then there are all of the other advantages that can come with friendly dominion, such as your scales. The effectiveness of various global enchantments also depends on dominion.

Like Gandalf said, the game is called Dominions for a reason. :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Of course it can also be useful to keep enemy dominion around.
I'm playing around in SP with LA Mictlan, terrible scales to finance the abusive bless. While you don't benefit from good enemy scales, even neutral scales can be better than what you've bought. Targeted preaching, or in Mictlan's case blood sacrifice, lets you bump your dominion up to reduce enemy scales that are bad, but leave your dominion low to keep neutral scales in place.

Does anyone know the mechanic for scales changing actually is?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Crevan,

No need to apologize. You did very well.:up:

This a very friendly forum, so you won't have to waste any energy worrying about the grammer police. :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

I have questions as well. I see a lot of priest spells well above holiness level 4, but I have no idea how to reach it. Can't I just make a holy book as an artifact and give it to a priest? Priests should have their levels upped per 2 levels of experience imho. A well literate priest with years of hard experience should know how to preach and pray.

Plus, I want a "Pimp my Religion" feature. Mine involves sacred Mass of Tuna Fish every Thursday, with the Tuna sandwiches SYMBOLICALLY become the flesh of my God(not literally), anime is sacred, and gay couples can marry as long as they swear to run a Tuna Fish farm and give tithes to priesthood.

We accept tithes and donations in silver coins, tuna fish, columbian coffee and anime in cbr. format.

It is a sin to harm kittens, even greater sin not to photograph a kitten in a weird situation and make a LOLCAT out of it.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

For H5...

Prophetise a Seraph. Or prophetise a H3 priest and use one of the artefact H boosters.

I like the 'Pimp my Religion' idea - but how about a ritual where the flesh of your god symbolically (or not) becomes tuna sandwiches? Much more interesting.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

My Wyrm can make tuna sandwiches out of the flesh of your Dagon whenever you want, no ritual required ;)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

What's the benefit of getting H5? H4 priest can cast all the battle spells, no?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

It'd make your banishment, and probably your smite/word of power, more difficult to resist, and in the case of banishment, have higher damage/AoE.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Ha, i remember that! Dryads are really nice for that kind of thing :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

I read some H5 H6 h7 and H8 spells somewhere, am I mistaken?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

i think you are unless you have some weird mod enabled

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Oops. I miscounted the chandeliers. Army setup.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Is word of power any good? I find it an annoyance. I tend to have few H4 priests, and having them spam word of power instead of smite irks me.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Helps with SCs :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

I agree "word of power" is definitely not worth casting and not worth the trouble of boosting a priest to that level to cast the spell. They should switch paralyze and "word of power".

Re: No love for Holy??
 

the problem with world of power is that H4s tend to spam it even if there are no SCs. (and in SP, which is all I play, SCs are rare outside the player´s faction) Most of the time you´d rather have your high level priests spam smite, which can thin down a mass of enemies. Instead, they paralyze one enemy (each. If this is your prophet, this means that you are paralyzing one enemy overall) which hardly dents the incoming mass.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

How are you getting more than 1 H4? Are they mages with Crystal shields?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

One way - yes. Another ways: summon Seraphs (fire 4, air 4, astral 4, holy 4), use Sword of Justice (+1 holy) or prophetize h3 priest
-
Anybody use Stone Idol to reduce enemy dominion? It works like "Holy Negator" - erase all dominions (slowly, sure...but unstoppable)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Well, I was thinking of my prophet + my H4 Marignonian hero. I think, too, and, isn´t the Bogarusian patriarch H4 (not sure. Got to check)?

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Really I think word of power should be upgraded to an AOE paralyze effect. I think that would be /vastly/ more interesting then the current damage/paralyze effect split between smite and word of power.

Jazzepi

Re: No love for Holy??
 

It seems to me that the all-path boosters should affect holy also.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Hmmm, I had no idea that Crystal Shields boost Holy as well. I ought to build them more often then :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

As far as I know, crystal shield will only boost holy if the commander has additional magic paths.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

That's fine, because Arco is my favorite nation, and their priestesses do have the measly Nature 1 :)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Well, just use mage-priests ;) Not as primary commander (they are too old and rarely have high leadership), but as second. Also you can give them some artifacts like Herald Lance (bonus - Standart) or Cauldron/Summer sword (supplies)

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Keep the shields high encumbrance in mind. Not a big deal if you just want a divine bless, but if you're spamming smites or banishment they'll tire a lot faster.

I'm not sure whether the extra AoE and damage outweigh getting fatigued out sooner.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

I tend to defend my casters well with body guards and often opt for high Earth bless for that reason :) (I tend to double max bless Astral and Earth, with minimum Nature required for regeneration).

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Artefacts with ability to cure fatique. And - you right - overpowered monks are usable for blessing, not for combat. Smite is mighty spell, but there are tons of spells with more deadly effects

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Holy spells don't have a fatigue cost. At least I don't think they do.

Re: No love for Holy??
 

Whoa! Please, check (I can`t do it now)