[Cainehill]

Arker said:

That's exactly what I thought you would say

What you're doing there, though, is giving up a huge number of creation points to supercharge them magically, and what you get out of it is really some quirky heavy cavalry.

I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you at least have a fair chance of winning that way. It's still beside the point to me - I'd like to be able to play it in role, that is to say, play them as light cavalry, using their speed advantage to bring those ranged weapons to bear effectively, not converting them into some oddball heavy-cav units.

And of course it's totally inapplicable to non-holy light cavalry, T'ien Ch'i, Arco... and actually not applicable to the Centaurs I was talking about either. You know, the Centaurs, not the White Centaurs, just plain old Centaurs, the ones that should logically by description and theme be the feared and fabled archery section of Pangaeas army, but in reality are totally useless

_Sometimes_ the dual bless strategy gets smashed - sometimes it doesn't. That's one of the things that makes Dominions such a great game - no strategy wins all the time.

But : Vans and centaurs (all kinds) actually both have big advantages over other cavalry, even without an effective bless (though I can't think of a reason to skip the bless with them). Vans have mirror image, _and_ glamour : very stealthy, and completely avoiding some early damage. Then all the centaurs : decent HPs, and recuperating : they recover from wounds if they survive the battle.

Even if non-sacred, both would still be viable units, unlike a lot of the other cavalry/chariot units.