Priests
 

Just how do you increase a priest level during a game?

thx

:confused:

Re: Priests
 

Through the use of artifacts, or by making the priest your Prophet.

Re: Priests
 

Theres three methods, One is communion master/slaves. The second is doing the blood version of the same. The only other way is the crystal shield. There are crystals that allow your mages/priests to be a master or slave of a communion. This takes a combination of earth and astral to make. Look in your book to find the Crystal Matrix stones. That will give you the requirements to build these. Good luck on your future in dominions, its a really deep game. Bwaha. :D

PS. Hb is right about artifacts, I completely forgot them. :doh:

Re: Priests
 

FYI there is no way except through prophetizing or a unique artifact to increase your priest's H lvl on the strat map. The above mentioned ways are only applicable in battle. The Crystal Shield is especially useful if your priest is only a priest, with no other magic. Then you can spam whatever H spells you want since they don't cost fatigue. The usual weakness of the Crystal Shield is its ridiculous enc.

Re: Priests
 

All the shield does is to cast Power of the Spheres at the start of combat, so if your priest has Astral, he can do that himself, too. That's already very specific, though, granted.

Re: Priests
 

The Crystal Shield only works for priests that have other paths as well as H. A priest with no other magic gets no benefit from the Crystal Shield.

Also, you gain 8 casting fatigue from wielding it, even for zero fatigue spells.

Re: Priests
 

Sword of (In)Justice also increases priest level by one.

Re: Priests
 

Hahah, The Shadow.

Classic character. Anyway, I think your question has been answered in full. A communion with power of the spheres leads to some powerful banishes from both master and slaves.

Re: Priests
 

By the way, there used to be a bug with Crystal Matrix and holy-only priests.

They cast 4 times per turn instead of 1!

I haven't tested since the last 3 or 4 patches, so it may have been fixed.

Re: Priests
 

is the need magic + Holy to get Holy boost WAD? I've been trying to come up with a way to get a second divine blesser, and apparently now it's either expensive empowerment or back to scratch.

Wish blood nations could sacrifice empower directly, although I'm sure some cheesy reanimator would find a way to break it.


Damn minimaxers. :D

Re: Priests
 

If you can make a crystal shield, then you can make crystal/slave matrixes, which don't care about paths other than holy. So, just use some of those. They won't bog you down with encumbrance like the shield does either. You really only need 1 crystal matrix if you have any astral mages. What nation are you playing?

Re: Priests
 

Hmmm? Crystal Matrixes do care about having real (non-holy) paths. If you aren't a mage, they don't work for you.

To OP: about prophetizing. Note that you can increase your H arbitrarily high by prophetizing multiple times. One way to do this is via Ritual of Rebirth (every time the Prophet dies, RoR him and re-prophetize). KO says this is thematic--a Prophet who comes back from the dead 4 times is obviously holier than a regular old Prophet (H7!). I don't know of any other way to do this other than maybe Charming someone else's Prophet (he keeps his H3) and prophetizing him yourself.

-Max

Re: Priests
 

Did you test that recently Max? They must have fixed it then, because 1 year ago it was broken:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37086

Re: Priests
 

thx all :)

After playing sp, then reading posts, it had me a wee bit confused. Thought I was missing something.

Re: Priests
 

Mmm, no, I haven't recently. I tried it long ago... come to think of it, what I actually remember testing is that you can't use regular old priests or indy scouts as *slaves*. I didn't test them as *masters*.

[Two minutes later] And... you're right. Crystal matrix on an H1 priest lets him cast multiple H1 spells per round. Fatigue from communion masters is not spread to H1 communion priests even if they have a Slave Matrix, so they don't participate in communions for fatigue-pooling purposes. I didn't check this time whether H1 slaves participate for path-boosting purposes, but as I recall they don't. So, interesting.

-Max

Re: Priests
 

It doesn't just let them cast multiple H1 spells per round. They get the full communion boost. So your H1 with 4 slaves can cast 4 smites per round. It always seems to cast 4 per round, as long as you have at least 2 slaves. Of course, with only 2 slaves an H1 can only cast H2 spells.

Re: Priests
 

This makes me think that it would be kind of a cool idea to have a nation with lots of E and S magic and have a human commander with reinvig 5 or something as a communion slave.

Re: Priests
 

I think it's not intentional (4 casts per round for a communion-boosted holy-only priest), so it's pretty much an exploit if you choose to do it.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "human commander". Communion slaves need at least one non-holy magic path (except Pythium communicants).

Slaves usually rack up fatigue pretty fast so reinvig 5 is not going to help a whole lot, and there's probably better things you can use your gems for.

Re: Priests
 

Pythium communicants are sacred, so Pythium with E10 pretender is pretty much that.

Re: Priests
 

Please mention this on "Exploits, New and Used". Thanks. :D

Re: Priests
 

Regen for slaves is sometimes much better than reinvigoration 5 for slaves. Even better if you can get a master to cast Soul Vortex, so the slaves all Soul Vortex each other + their chaff guards.

-Max

Re: Priests
 

Yeah, this is always one of the things I want to know if its considered an exploit or not in the game. Usually, its not classified as an exploit.

Seems to be too minimally useful to really *be* an exploit althought I love the trick myself. But .. I really thought it worked with crystal shields as well as matrixes.. but no I haven't checked it recently.

Re: Priests
 

Interesting. I wonder if there is a nation built along these lines:

Really need nature on the pretender for regen
and then sacred, big HP units
with blood/astral mages.

Re: Priests
 

That actually has some serious cool factor. The sacred units need not be large, as Soul Vortex only saps 1HP from each neighboring unit. Spaced apart, each slave could have 5 Flagellants for example, and once blessed would become a living Flux Capacitor for your artillery batteries. ;) Just E4/N4 bless would give you +12 Fatigue per turn with 5 guards, and if you can pop on Summon Earthpower you're at +16 fatigue for happy casting times. Then since you need less slaves, may as well throw on a couple items, as that would magnify the number of masters you can have out..... Oh it's sick. :p But I think Soul Vortex is resistable, so you'd have to pay attention to MR on your guards, and maybe even give your slaves an Eye of the Void to guarantee their energy supplies - I notice my slaves tend to lose eyes a lot anyways..... I burn them kind of hard usually. ;)