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Yes. This sounds like someone's pelting you with Seeking Arrows. There are a few ways to deal with it:
- get better armour, Seeking Arrows are regular damage rather than AP/AN damage
- get a shield. Same reason.
- become ethereal somehow.
- magic domes to protect the province from any spell
- failing that, swarm the province in independent commanders to dilute the target pool.

Yes. I think so, although for some reason I have the notion that SoC also "heals" damaged morale.

I should, but it doesn't. While it does raise the maximum dominion your provinces can have and the number of sacred units you can recruit, all your temple checks will still use your god's native dominion score.

Err, not really ? Not sure what gave you that idea. Or what you consider your opponents' lands, since you can only Blood Hunt in provinces you own :)

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1) yes. In provinces with laboratories you can cast domes of warding as protection with the fire version retaliating. Other than that strike first before they strike you.

2) They don't stack.

3) Not sure.

4) You can do that. Be aware that having too low a dominion and being reliant on temples will have its own issues, probably not a huge issue in SP.

5) No, you need to own the province to find girls in it and you want a province away from the front lines where your blood industry wont be disrupted by silly things like wars.

No time for more detailed answers :)

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1. It is the spell "Seeking Arrow". The most common ways of protecting yourself involve the status effects "Luck" and "Air Shield". Or simply recruiting chaff commanders so that the enemy hits the wrong guy.

2. Yes, only once from the same spell. Different spells with similar effects sometimes stack. But usually not.

3. Not that I know of.

4. In most things yes. I have heard that the chance of a temple check succeeding might not increase. But I have not verified that by myself.

5. No. Bloodhunters are expensive and fragile and the enemy will try to kill them. Place them so that the enemy will have a hard time doing so.

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Ehh, this is not actually true. A Seeking arrow will do 8 points of magical, armor negating damage. Neither armor, nor shield nor etheralness will help against it. The last two just might though.

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Gah ! You're absolutely correct. I was reading off the "things that will NOT protect against seeking arrows" list on the wiki :doh:

So scratch shields, armours and etherealness ; replace with Luck and Air Shield (Air bless + Shroud of the Battle Saint, Robe of Missile Protection).

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The domes will effectively defend a few provinces, but it gets a little too expensive otherwise. That said, odds are its your more stationary casters who need defending, so only a few provinces are going to need domes.

However, because single player is what is being played in this case, there is another option that wouldn't work for multiplayer. Gift of Health alone will vastly reduce the killing potential of seeking arrow, particularly in more central locations.

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Also domes stack in very odd ways. I still want to test that, and apparently Calahan also did some testing. The results where surprising.

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To protect a unit against Seeking Arrow Air shield is definitely the best bet. Or to kill the caster put up the Dome of Flaming Death or the Water equivalent.

Do shields definitely not work? Shields sometimes protect against missile weapons in surprising ways.

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From what I recall, some guy tested and found that air shield from a shroud doesn't work. I can't recall if the guy tested for shields parrying as well.

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Thanks to all, very interesting.

For the Blood Hunting, sorry for non-sensical question, since I have never BHed, I had (evidently) assumed that I would want/need/be able to grab other peoples' maidens, not my own. I've gone off the idea completely... :(

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The idea behind Blood is that you are killing innocents to summon demons. So it would to be said you god has an evil streak, thus why not kill your own virgins?

Although LA Marigon is a bit funny, they are supposed to be about smiting evil yet I'm sure they get Blood access.... A case of the preacher standing at the pulpit preaching against sin and conjuring demons in their own time? :)

Read some guides about Blood hunting, don't worry about getting it perfect the first time, just go out there are find a few virgins, sacrifice them and open the gates of hell. Its quite fun.

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I imagine it more as a "lesser evil" sort of thing, coupled with "fight fire with fire".
"The other guys are summoning devils and it's the worst sin imaginable ! Buuut they're kind of kicking our butts with them so um... look, we'll do it too just this once, all right ? Just to prevent these evil demonmongers from taking over the world and turning it all heretical and stuff. We'll stop once they're all dead. We can stop any time we want. What's the worst that could happen ?"

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Regarding dominion strength, temples with a dom of 1 are mostly worthless. You can more or less compensate low dominion if you pick 5, but not really below. A dominion of 5 + 25 temples will still fail to spread dom half the time, so it's about as efficient as dom 10 + 13 temples. (VERY gross figures - just to give an idea)

As for blood slaves, you want to hunt in provinces with enough population, but that causes unrest so you want to lower taxes and/or patrol. But patrolling kills population too. So the usual strategy is to put some blood hunters in provinces with about 5k+ pop that don't bring much money, and lower taxes and/or patrol.

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Marignon is about smiting undead, not evil in general. Thematically, they're a reaction to the undead menace of Ermor (there are some timeline issues with that, but whatever.) Also - think of the Spanish Inquisition from the perspective of the Spanish Moors or Cathars. Take those two themes together, and you get Marignon.

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In Dominions history it's all a reaction to the fall of Ermor. In the Late Age, Marignon turned in desperation to demon-worship to hold off the swarms of undead from Ermor.
More of the "lesser evil", less of the "fight fire with fire". I picture devils (or devil-worshippers) whispering in Marignon's ear "we can help you. We just need a few virgins so we can come through. And they would just die anyway when the Ashen Empire destroys you. We can save you."

In Dominions mythology, death magic is the big evil threat. Blood magic not so much.

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I think its more along the line that in MA Marignion was the enemy of both demons and the undead. The reason for this was because of the dangers they presented to the nation. However, in LA they have discovered that the demons can be bribed with virgin sacrifice and are thus not only not a threat, but could even be considered a boon. As they can be bribed in to fighting the undead, that are now more dangerous than ever.

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On the subject of blood hunting, the classic strategy to deal with resulting population loss is to select Growth scales when designing your pretender. As Growth also helps with gold production and makes you a less annoying neighbor, it is an easy choice for most blood hunting nations.

And, not only does blood hunting cause unrest, but that unrest will make the blood hunting much less successful. I forget the math, but with one or two blood hunters I typically can keep unrest at or close to 0 by lowering taxes to 50 or even 0. More than that, I always use patrollers. And, for this task, the cheaper the better. Black Hawks summoned with the Call of the Wind spell are a good example for a nation with good air resources. You get quite a few for 5 air gems, they don't cost upkeep and, as they fly, are very efficient patrollers.

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So (as a consequence of these blasted arrows) my Prophet has "lost his one & only eye", and has Att/Def/Prec=0. OK, I'm beginning to understand this game, I build "Eye Of The Void" --- that replaces an eye, so it must be right. Lo & behold... I'm still blind --- wtf :confused:

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The eye of the void will always make an eye blind but gives the commander pen+2. Often a fine tradeoff as precision 100 spells always hit even when cast from a blind mage (they may be resisited though depending on MR..will help Smites cast by prophet) Was your prophet single eyed because of an earlier injury? You can heal units in the game in a number of ways that will cure blindness, etc. However the eye of the void is cursed and can't be removed.
-ssj

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The "one and only eye" refers to a single eyed unit, such as cyclopes, Agarthans, and a few others. If the unit had two eyes to begin with, it would be "lost the other eye as well" or something like that.

You can't see through any of the magical eyes - they just occupy an eye socket.

As sansanjuan says, being blind doesn't necessarily matter if you're casting either battlefield-wide spells (divine blessing, for instance) or precision 100 spells (soul slay, etc.)

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That's, by the way, another reason to use bloodhunting deeper into your territories: provinces recently taken and/or with enemy Dominion usually have higher unrest - so hunting is less effective.
As for Blood magic in general: yes, Ermor threat was greater, even though MA Marignon also considered demon-worshippers an enemy.
Also, Blood magic per se does not mean your god is evil. It may be practiced by secular mages of the nation regardless of it's god having any particular opinion on the subject (Bogarus). God's evilness may be measured more by the fact of whether he/she accepts blood sacrifices. The most evil in this respect would be, of course, EA/LA Mictlan. As an interesting aside, in MA Mictlan we have the only case where the god clearly forbidden Blood magic. Unfortunately, game engine does not (for now?) enforce this. Another interesting bit is that EA Marverni's god accepts blood sacrifices, but the nation has no Blood mages. :)

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He's an Agarthan "Oracle of the Ancients". Giant. I think they only have one eye coz of what it said, but I can't tell/see :) Now I'm stuck with EotV, as you say. But my Precision is still 0, coz I have no eyes. Which makes no sense, since it says EotV replaces an eye. And if you need 2 eyes and I haven't got them, at least warn me!?

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I just ran a few tests, funny thing is you can equip one Cyclops with two magical eyes - even if the first one blinds him - or a Master Lich with three. :)

Btw, you can give a magical eye to a Granite Cyclops without blinding him - two eyed Cyclops, yay :). But the game I used to make the tests uses an ancient version of Endgame Diversity, maybe it has been corrected recently.

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It is long known that magic eye can be stuck onto any bodily surface. Palm, chest, forehead, back of your head, crotch, tip of your tongue or tentacle...etc

Which begs the question, why did they have to put them in their eye socket first in most cases?

Also for Allfather pretender, couldn't you stick the eye in his empty eye socket?

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It is a rule. The, my commanders are idiots, rule.

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It seemed like a good idea at the time.

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Oracles of the Ancients have death magic. You could have the unit cast Twiceborn (might need a death staff if it's only got 1D), and then get it killed in dominion to return it as a Wight Mage. You'd have more precision than an "off the rack" oracle that way, even if you decided to re-apply the eye of the void (not to mention two eyes, amusingly enough.)

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Agarthans are decribed as being one-eyed.
And for a prophet, putting an eyye of the void gives better penetration, and smite doesn't need precision, so you can still use your prophet effectively.