H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I have never quite figured out how to use H2 priests properly. Ok, so they can cast Sermon of Courage, they can preach a province to three candles and they can site search for H2 sites. However, this comes with a price, a price which I think is pretty steep, so there must be something I am missing.

I've tried to look at the H2 sites. Not something to call home about, is it?

Two or three candles, does it make a difference? Usually you can buy at least two H1 priests at the price of one H2 priest, so if you are preaching to defend your dominion, isn't two H1 priests *always* better than one H2 priest? If trying to reduce a hostile dominion then a H2 priest would be *almost* on par with two H1, unless the priests are inquisitors, right?

It would be purely lunacy to make a H2 priest to prophet, wouldn't it?

Sermon of Courage. Ok, I have to admit it, it is good. But is SoC the only real reason to go for a H2 priest instead of a H1 or H3 (altough H3 priests are in some cases capital only, and they might be old too)?

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Don't underestimate Sermon of Courage. You can lose a huge amount of troops when you rout (especially if they're slower than your enemies) so in a close fight that morale boost can really make a difference. If you need to sort out a Dom problem H2 is much better than H1. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think H2 mages casting bless and banish have larger AoE and maybe in the case of banish more damage, which makes them much more efficient.

Generally you wouldn't go out of your way to make H1 or H2 a prophet - you should make prophets according to other reasons (e.g. a high HP friendly Dom thug, a flier for more manoueverability). H3 might be worthwhile because they become H4 when made a prophet.

Many times you'll get H2 on a unit you actually want for other reasons (e.g. they're mage priests like Pythium's theurgs, or have a patrol bonus, etc.). If you are specifically recruiting a priest for the sake of it, bear in mind that you're detracting from you recruiting something more useful, as most people may only have temples in their castle provinces. Even if the two H1s are cheaper, it's an extra turn spent building a priest when you could have a mage, thug or whatever.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

A lot of the H2 priests make good troop carriers, as well. That's something to bear in mind. It's much more convenient to build a priest that can lug troops around with 40-80 command, then hiring a pair of indy commanders that just sit on the battlefield with their thumbs up their butts doing nothing whereas the priests can spam sermon of courage.

Also, generally you want to prophetize your first scout. I do that in 99% of all cases. MA C'tis has a scout who can research, so I generally just prophetize my commander then, and leave the scout home for free research.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Blessing has an area of 5 per level
Banishment has an Area of 2+2 per level and damage 3 + 2 per level.

(And 6*7=42 is more then twice as good then 4*5=20, isn't it? :) )

But anyway, the main point should be, that in turns you recruit your nation's priests, you don't recruit your nation's mages.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Communions can be another reason for building H2 units, since you can boost a H2 communion master to H3 or H4 with a smaller supporting cast than a H1 communion master. This can allow Divine Blessing on more armies than the one with your prophet, if you don't have any other H3 commanders available. Also, acts a force multiplier as Maraxus notes.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

And, if you're preaching to reduce enemy dominion, H2 priests are often rather more effective than 2 H1 priests.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

One last thing. When you're invading indy provinces at the very beginning of the game, sermon of courage makes a huge swing.

Since you can pick and chose where you fight, you can always pick a province where you have friendly dominion. This means -1 for enemy, and +1 for all your guys. Add sermon ontop of that, and you have +3 morale for all your guys (which is a 4 morale swing total). 11 morale troops are now 14 morale, and will rarely break compared to the low morale enemy.

This works great against provinces with huge amounts of indy militia which are already very low morale.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

If you've got the gems and know how, pop a crystal Shield on your H2 priest and it is now H3. Very handy if you don't have any other recruitable H3 units and you need deployment flexability with your blessable troops.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I think the crystal Shield only works if your H2 is a mage-priest. Still very useful, though.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

That depends on the number of hostile candles and wether a friendly temple is present or not. For example if the hostile dominion is four candles strong but there is a friendly temple present, the H2 priest has a 70% chance to drop one candle from that, while two H1 priests would have a a very good chance of dropping the number of candles by one or two (48% chance to drop one candle and 16% chance to drop two candles, ie quite a bit more effective than the sole H2 priest).

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Yes, it does depend. That's why I said 'often'.

By the way, in the short term the 2 H1 priests are less likely to affect enemy dominion than the single H2 priest (36% chance of no change, as opposed to 30%). And if you're worried about cost effectiveness, a temple plus two H1 priests costs rather more than a single H2 priest.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

The real cost of an H2 priest is usually not building a national mage for a turn.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Too true. I can only think of one site that gives them as recruitables.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

That is hardly a fair comparison, is it? :) Compare a H2 vs two H1 priests with no temple present, and you are at least in the correct ballpark ;) The H2 priest btw becomes more effective under those conditions if there are 3 or more hostile candles.

But as has been pointed out already, if you could recruit a H2 priest, you would usually be able to recruit a H3 priest (or mage) instead (unless there H3 priest is capital only). And H3 priests are way nicer (Smite in addition to SoC) than H2 priests, which further limits their usefullness.


I wonder how useful H2 priests would in general be as thug chassis with some nice bless. I wonder how far for example C'tis High Priests would get with their ~10 HP :D Slap on some armour and a weapon, cast bless and holy avenger, while being buffed by Shamans (Body Etheral, Luck) and wade in :p

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

A thug/sc chassis with H2 gets holy avenger which is a good buff sometimes. Like on the Marble oracles for example.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

That could work sometimes, but many nations also have sacred mages. C'tis Shamans, as an example.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Yeah, but the Shamans aren't H2 priests. In fact, they are not priests at all :)

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I have to admit the only time I'd normally buy H2 mages is if I'm going to be fighting Ermor or a similarly undead-wielding nation. Otherwise, indy H1 priests do most of what I'd want (unless I found a High Temple or whatever the site is called - I'd exploit one of those for everything it's worth).

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

To bless your sacreds? ;)

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Actually, that is quite a nice use for them (if you can't get H3s, ofc). Thing is, a lot of the nations I've played have had priest/mages with H2, so it hasn't been an either/or choice for me so far.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Sorry for not being clear. I meant that, as Shamans can be blessed as well, it's more effective to recruit 110gp sacred mages to research and thug than 100gp H2 priests to preach and thug. This also applies for some other nations' choices about thug chassis: MA Ulm is one (Priest Smith or Black Priest?), MA Jotunheim uses either the Jarls/Herses or Skratti for thugging and not the H2 priests, etc. I'm open for suggestions, I could be missing something.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

But that's partially due to the fact that the Gode has significantly inferior physical stats.

I think the choice becomes fairly complicated. In the vast majority of cases, if you are recruiting a national unit for an H1 priest, you are recruiting them for what they can do for you after they build a single temple to allow you to put out indie priests. And in the vast majority of cases, if you are recruiting an H2 at all, they are a national unit, and thus have other capabilities as well. The only time I could see training an H2 with nothing else, out of a castle, is some time in the first year when you just need a guy to go out and build temples for you.

I guess what it comes down to, is that you should virtually never be recruiting a commander based on whether it is H1 or H2 - and that the answer to "which is better", is actually, "whichever comes with better stuff other than Holy". ;)

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I can go with that.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I get most of my H2 priests from events. But then, I most often take Luck. They're free then. They may not appear in the area you want them to, but then again, they are free.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

They're not really free, they come with a swarm of militia you normally don't want and for whatever reason can't get rid of for ages :( they are only ever useful if you need help sieging nearby somewhere, otherwise it's just upkeep.

I wish there was a disband unit option.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Milita and other living chaff are great for nations that can't convert gold into undead. You can rise taxes and patrol with them, compensating upkeep and providing corpses for your necromancers. You can gather them in your lab and gateway to the front, or to defend your own fort. You don't have to invest into PD — 100 militas with H2 priest can stop almost every single remote attack, including GR, AotD, HfH. They serve as a meatshield for your mages, swarmers for enemy thugs/SCs, spell decoys for your elite troops. I definitely prefer using only cheapest chaff and top-shelf troops such as wigths/trolls/demons, everything in between is just useless.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

So, I guess the consensus is that H2 priests are nice when you happen to get them for free (or find a site from which you can recruit High Priests even without a castle), but there really is not much point in recruiting them (unless they are mage-priests of some sort, when they could have other benefits). Basically what I've been doing so far anyway.

Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion! :)

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

On the subject of disbanding, check out the mod listed in my signature.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I wanted to reiterate how significant sermon of courage can be in *lots* of situations. Bandar Log, for instance, really suffers from not having one - from elephants to markatas pretty much all their units are drastically better with just a little extra morale. More generally for lots of nations, dropping sermon of courage can often make your nice, cheap light infantry a reasonable choice for early expansion opening up strategies for more slothful scales (Abyssia for instance). Even when you're using units with a naturally high morale it can be a very nice buff when fighting awe or fear auras - it's surprising how much more difficult it is to use a thug with a shield of beaten gold to raid PD which gets an H2 priest.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

True but that's a free H2 priest. No commander build slot required.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Yes, but I just used that as a very commonly occurring case for illustration. The exact same mechanics work if you're using non-PD troops against, say an enemy pretender with a dom-10. Depending on the troops in question sermon of courage could certainly be better support than a mage. This is one example, but plenty a fight was won by once side sticking around one more turn. Certainly not always the case, but it's not that uncommon for sermon of courage to be very much carrying it's weight despite the opportunity cost of a mage.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

There's also the Holy War mod that's in its early stages. I'd like to have a mod change holy magic (if you can't guess from the long posts I wrote there), and the more opinions written in the thread, the better the chance of Holy War turning into a balanced and oft-used mod.
linky

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I can definitely vouch for this. With Arco, I use Priestesses primarily for Sermon of Courage and not for their ability to heal or their N1 magic. With a little encouragement, Barbarians (low rcost unit, so good for Sloth scales with EA Arco) stay on the battlefield long enough to dish out some heavy hurt rather than run away at the slightest scratch.

Also, I recently fought a MP battle where I had a squad of blessed, encouraged Heart Companions (which already have high morale for non-undead or non-mindless troops), and they fought down almost to the last man. Granted they didn't get to engage the fear-and-awe SC which I recruited them to fight against, but it was still impressive to see them re-enacting the Greeks at Thermopylae....

Sermon of Courage is a great buff. I've experienced enough battles fought with and without it to be a believer in the significant difference it makes. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't feel cheated recruiting some H2 commanders instead of mages.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I remember my expansion Awe god getting absolutely trashed by a "special" barbarian indy province that had an H2 priest commander. It wasn't there from an indy random event, since there were no militia. I've only ever seen that special indy the one time.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I really don't mind the militia they come with. I use them to fill up frontier forts, making them harder to siege. I don't fight with them of course, just use them for wall defense. And sometimes that "free" H2 priest you get from luck scales comes with flaggies, instead of militia. And those can be useful.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Given that you can only have a finite number of commanders (mages/priests) on the battlefield, I think the below holds true.

I would rather trade a mage slot for a single H2 priest spamming sermon of courage (remember that it has a pretty big AoE and costs the priest no fatigue) over the course of a battle than have NO H2 mage. This would be true for just about any nation.

So, generally, if your nation has access to H2 priests. I would stick one with every large army. They'll buff the fighters first if you stick them near the front, and then the archers later, and then they'll probably spam it some more on the fighters getting any they miss.

At the very least you can send that preacher around to preach. something that most newer players don't know is that if you don't have at least one white dom candle in a province you own, all the positive scales have ZERO effect, but all the negative ones are still working at full force. Sometimes just preaching yourself up to 1 white candle can give you half again in income from a province (if you have good scales, or if the dom of someone else does), which easily pays for the H2 priest.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

So which nations with h2 priests do you recruit them for?

At the moment it seems people are talking theory and citing niche examples where having +2 morale makes a difference. I think it's much more common that it makes no difference and the national H2 is a waste. And it's silly to compare it with just a support mage slot - it should be compared with a researching, site searching, ritual spamming mage slot. The general run of the mill mage you make almost every turn wherever you can. While the H2 is a near complete waste if he doesn't toddle off and support an army, that isn't true of the mage, so don't restrict the comparison as if it is.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I hired a few H2s as MA C'tis. They are 100 gold versus 280 for an H3. By saving 180 gold on the priest I can almost afford another marshmaster.

H1s are crap for preaching and have no leadership. The H2s can raise dominion better than an H1, and MA C'tis troops benefit from the morale boost too. MA C'tis suffers from a lack of troop leaders because indy commanders get sick from miasma and die.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Ah yes vfb, in the case of MA Ctis they might be worth it. Their preaching is more useful there also, due to the income boost from dominion.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

True, the majority of battles are sufficiently one-sided so that +2 morale may not be here nor there. Although as pointed out, if you've switched the dom on a province to yours, you'll be fighting with +3 to your opponent's -1, (as opposed to +1/+1) and that's beginning to look like a big advantage.

Priests should not be sitting around idly. They should be busy preaching every turn they aren't moving or helping an army. This can give you the battlefield advantage above, but it's not just that. H2s convert provinces MUCH quicker.

A province owned but with enemy Dom means suffering several of the worst aspects of their scales and none of the benefits. Convert your provinces, you get the benefits quicker, which means more gold. Not only that, but your temple/God/prophet dom will stop filling your provinces and start spilling over onto your opponents' provinces, meaning they'll start losing productivity. Thus preaching can potentially (depending on scales) increase your wealth and decrease your opponents'. Then also consider combining that with certain globals made effective by your Dom (e.g. The Looming Hell).

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I recruited about 3-4 H2 priests with MA Caelum in a game I played recently. The one with Juffos that had too low VP requirements. I was using them to lead elephants, cast sermon, keep my dom up (I had really good scales) and then to stealth preach.

I also recruited a pair of the L2 Priest (Level 1 F? Woo D:) priest/mages for MA Marignon in Beardaxe to lead troops, cast sermon, and preach. It's been a good investment.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Well that's a silly run of logic. It's not like you have to recruit a H2 mage on turn two and have him sitting around with a thumb up his *** w. It's easy enough to produce him, and pack him up with an army a few turns before a big battle.

My point is that if your decision is between building one more mage to sit around and research, or building one more combat support mage, then I would rather have the H2 priest packed up with my main army.

I mean, maybe you don't build any armies over 50 troops, but I do, and I'd like them to have more morale than the enemy troops. Especially the heavy infantry.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I don't think it's silly logic at all. You're talking about producing an H2 priest instead of a mage fairly early in the game.

I deduce early in the game, because there's no way the effectiveness of sermon of courage competes with even lesser spells later in the game and you're talk about throwing him in with a mundane army that needs an extra 2 points of morale on a bunch of troops.

How much research is the mage going to get done over the course of the game? He can fill a support role then later go research, or more likely the other way around. The priest can't.

I'm not saying H2 mages are useless, I'm simply saying I've never built a pure H2 national mage and I don't follow the logic that because sermon of courage can be useful (which is certainly true) it would be worth doing so over a mage slot.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Well, a direct comparison is a bit difficult because they fill such different roles, but to sum up:

1) H2 priests are pretty cheap, so recruiting a couple (rather than more expensive premium units) will get you almost an extra 800 gold fort in some cases. Certainly it'll speed up getting your second fort if you're doing this early.

2) Research is important, no doubt, but I think you're completely discounting the benefit a H2 priest gives you outside of combat. Pushing your dominion to cover those border territories which otherwise wouldn't be is significant. Not only do you get the benefits from your scales (which is often drastic), this is also the area you're most likely to be fighting in and also right where it's usually unwise to put up temples. Aside from preaching, you can gain a non-inconsiderable astral income from site searching with the priests.

3) As Agema mentions, if the priest is responsible for a fight being in dominion which otherwise wouldn't, it's really a 4 swing in morale for your friendlies and a -2 for the enemy. You tell me, is there a big difference in troops with an 8 morale and ones with 12? This type of swing can *certainly* be significant even in the late game. How much is it worth for your blockers (soaking up those big evocation spells the enemy is dropping) to stick it out a couple extra turns so your own mages get some more shots in? As pointed out, this doesn't make a difference for lopsided fights, but it's going to win you the close ones.

What more could you ask out of a unit costing 100 gold? Certainly they're not as useful as a 400 gold big mage across the board, but they can carry their weight. It's also kind of silly to ask for examples of when they make sense to use, several suggestions have been made already - Arco, C'tis, Abysia - well, using your mage/priest as a priest at least. There actually aren't that many straight h2 national priests, but I think they have a role most any time you've got them. They also make sense to recruit non-nationally when you've got the opportunity.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Also, because of the way national casters are designed, it's true that few of them fall under the "aren't useful except for Sermon" clause.

Just 2 of the last 3 direct examples - Caelum's Seraphines are stealthy, and can fly. And Marignon's H2 is an Inquisitor, no?

I think Sermon is of rare actual use in expansion (if you are suffering much attrition, you are probably doing it wrong to begin with!), but it definitely is of great value in those BIG fights, where a large portion of what decides the battle, is whose line starts breaking first. When your more timid chaff breaks too early, all your elites get swarmed and chewed to pieces - and you wasted a lot of buff casting. Some nations in particular have mages more suited to casting little spells over and over, rather than dropping a few Thunder Strikes, and napping. With an endurance army, Sermon is certainly of more value than with a shock (no pun intended) army.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

H2 priests can be very important for bless tactics whenever you don't have an H3 handy. You want to bless your troops quickly. If you've been recruiting H1s you'll need more, and they'll have detracted from you building national mages instead. If you don't have enough holy power you'll have had to put your sacreds and Hold & Attack, which limits their tactical usefulness or potentially exposes them to more damage from ranged attacks.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Why do you say a swing of 4 morale Baalz? I thought dominion gave +/- 1 morale.

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

I think he means you are preaching the area to be your dominion (so morale goes from -1 to +1, ie a swing of two) and you are then able to cast SoC in combat (giving +2 to morale, thus going from -1 to +3). While I can see it happen at times, I don't think it will happen *that* often (but I might of course be all wrong on this :) ).

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Bah :O Baalz attributed that to the wrong person. I said it originally.

+1 for your troops
-1 for theirs
+2 from SoC

And actually, in Beardaxe, I just watched a battle where morale was /the/ deciding factor with both sides spamming SoC. If Baalz had gone in without his SoC prophet, he definitely wouldn't have stood any chance. Notably he lost the battle, but that was because the opposing army had a free level 2 priest from PD spamming SoC which made every single one of the squads stay in the fight until the bitter end.

Jazzepi

Re: H2 priests: Why, when, how?
 

Heh. Quite true. I first mentioned in this file that your priests should be out preaching to affect scales. :)