[Daynarr]

I'll just post some of my experiences with Flagellants and Wardens. I used Earth 9 Pretender when I played Man and they would get +4 protection from blessing. Sure, Man has no high level priests, which is quite a disadvantage, but it has cheapest low level priests, which he can bring in large numbers on the battlefield. As far as numbers of produced units go, Man is restricted to his home castle to build it so logical choice of castle would be some with very high Admin value (Fortified city is the best choice here, probably). Since Man has tendency to start in forest provinces which have higher resources then wastelands or plains (actually only mountains have higher resources) they will get better production rates then other nations with high resource troops would (like Ulm). Logically, since you are aware that you can produce Wardens only in your home castle you will do that right from the start and since you invested in level 9 magic to get high bless bonus, you will try max out production of Wardens ASAP. That means you will try to get all neighboring provinces to get 50% resources from them, avoid building castles on those provinces and produce Wardens each turn as much as possible. Doing that, in my game, I had a steadily growing army of wardens that had significant numbers quite early. Since blessings give them +4 protection and their fatigue was practically non-existent (enemy didn't get more chance to penetrate their armor) I didn't lose a single Warden during whole expansion, effectively allowing me to expand with no loses (at least to my Warden troops) and doing it fast as well. Wardens also have no great weaknesses in any of the areas, meaning no weak defense or weak attack or weak strength or low hp or ... you get the picture. When I did run into Marignon later, all I had to do is employ lots of archers and a wall of Wardens (with 20 prot there was no significant friendly fire) to massacre the army of flagellants they had.

Lets talk a little bit of flagellants now. They are weak in every aspect except in number of attacks and the numbers that you can field them. Sure, they are less expensive then Wardens and you can produce several of them for each Warden (and not only in main castle) but on the field, if you use them you will lose them no matter what you face. With any blessing they die easily like any light infantry or better say militia would, so when you invest in producing them you are bound to lose a lot of that gold/time/resource in each battle. Can you make an attack on independent province with flagellants and have no losses? NO! So you will be LOSING more money per turn, per battle that way much more then Man will. Also, blessings usually cover some weakness sacred units have. They can add better defense or better attack or protect you some from missiles (some because - level 4 Air gives only 20% chance that missile that would normally hit you will miss), give you better protection, etc. But since flagellants have so many weaknesses you cant possibly cover all of them with blessing. If you make them stronger or give them better attack (fire or blood magic blessings) I will simply use missile troops and kill them all or most before they even reach enemy. Hell, they fall from arrows faster then undead. If you decide go for Air magic and protect them those arrows you wont be able to give them any other boost so they will die in close combat like all other militia troops would (light infantry has much better protection then flagellants).
If you want to use Arrow Fend spell and still go for fire/blood blessings you will have no mages to cast Arrow Fend since they have no air magic - fire is their specialty. Also, arrow fend is level 6 spell so you have to reach it and it costs gems which means you have to have air mage to find them. That means you have to take Air magic for your pretender and forget/weaken fire/blood blessings.

To conclude, flagellants are cheapest sacred troops in game but since they have so many weaknesses it’s EASY to use some of those and kill flagellants in huge numbers should enemy decide to rely on them. In my experience so far, they have never dominated battlefield. They can be valuable support troops but if you go on mass-producing them you are bound to lose a lots of gold (every unit you lose is gold/resource loss). And finally there is that balancing in dominion scales vs. blessing effects.

Oh, and BTW level 9 in any path of magic is NOT particularly expensive if you use right pretender (for example, use Cyclops for Earth). I still get excellent dominion scales, not weak dominion and level 9 Earth at the same time. Getting 2 of level 9 is another story, though.

[ October 27, 2003, 06:22: Message edited by: Daynarr ]