Two questions on preaching

[onomastikon]

I have the feeling that preaching doesnt seem to raise my dominion at all. Or at least I dont notice it. Does anyone know how it works exactly -- do I need to do it three turns in a row? Or a number of turns equal to the priest's level?

Maybe this is common knowledge, but I was experimenting: A sneaking sage in an independent province / enemy province cant search for magic sites, it apparently counts as an attack on the country (odd), but a sneaking priest CAN preach! But does this work the same way that preaching in your own province does (however that may be -- s. question 1)?

Btw, does having the "sneaky" symbol have any effect on the battlefield?

thank you

[General Tacticus]

As far as I know :

- Preaching has a chance of success equal to your God dominion * 10%. So if you gave your God Dominion 6 at the start, preaching has a 60% chance of success.
- Every five temples you build raises this chance by 10%
- If it succeeds, your dominion in this province goes up by 1
- Preaching can't raise the dominion of a province above the preacher holy (or unholy) score. A lvl 2 priest can only preach to level 2. You get a message ("XX cannot raise the dominion of the province any higher") if you try to preach but can't raise the dominion (but the order to preach stands).
- If you put a priest on "preach" order, and leave him there, and he hits his limit, you won't see any message, and he'll keep preaching without further effect.

And finally :
- preaching in an enemy province makes your priest more likely to be discovered, but can be done. Searching in an enemy province can't be done, but don't ask me why...

[onomastikon]

Thank you. That the success rate of a preach is dependent on the Dominion set and is affected by number of temples I hear for the first time, and is interesting indeed. This goes towards "what good Dominion setting" is for.

So the success of a preaching is not dependent on skill / power of priest, also interesting. Thanks.

[johan osterman]

Temples and prophets raise dominion the way Tacticus explained. Priests do not. Priests raise in some other way whose mechanisms I do not remember exactly, it is something like x+(priest lvl)y%. Where I do not recall the values of x and y. A high lvl priest also gains a chance of an additional raise, IIRC. Priests cannot however raise the dominion above their priest lvl.

Why should one be able to sneak search for sites? From a game mechanis perspective there certainly is little or no reason, since the sites one finds only benefit the owner. And argued from some sort of realism perspective either is as viable as the other, as there is no definitive authority on how mages go about searching for magic sites, as far as we know they might need to pound on enormous bells or light huge bonfires. It would also be odd if the owner of the province suddenly recieved a site he had not searched for from a searcher he did not know was there. The alternative would be to implement another layer of ownership on sites, but this is a lot of work for little or no benefit, complete with a whole new range of possible bugs and problems. Sneaky preach on the other hand can be useful when used against other players, and if you want an in game justification assume that they are preaching at secret meetings and handing out religous pamphlets and spray painting the religious slogans of their faith on enemy church walls.

Edit: Changed the * to a + in the formula.

[ January 18, 2004, 12:26: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[onomastikon]

thanks -- no I meant: not what number x and y be, but they are a variable standing for what "factor" (like is it: opposing dominion, number of temples, etc. etc.)?

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by onomastikon:
thanks -- no I meant: not what number x and y be, but they are a variable standing for what "factor" (like is it: opposing dominion, number of temples, etc. etc.)?

They are just arbitrary numbers. The x and y are constants, y is multiplied with the priest lvl. So x + y*(priest lvl) should be something like 20+20*2 = 60% for a 2lvl priest ie a 60% chance of the dominion increasing 1 step in the province where he preached.


Edit: Turns out there isn't any x involved. Just (priest lvl)*20.

[ January 18, 2004, 14:41: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Kristoffer O]

To clarify things I made a check in the code.

Temples increase priest lvl by one.

Chance of dominion increase:

In friendly dominion: (priest lvl)*20%
In enemy dominion: (priest lvl)*20-(enemy dom)*5%

Inquisitors priest lvl count double in enemy dominion.

So keep your weak sneaking priests in border provinces.

[onomastikon]

hey thanks

[Darryl]

When you say "temples increase priest level by 1" does that mean a temple in the province? 5 temples in your empire? 1 temple somewhere in your dominion? And I'm assuming the level increase is just for preaching, right?

Inquisitors priest lvl count double in enemy dominion.

Wow! And I'm playing Marginon now! Man, did I miss the memo or what! No wonder I couldn't raise my dominion in an enemy province until I sent in the High Inquisitor screaming about them being heathens, sex before marriage, worshipping pagan gods and all sorts of stuff. The annoying thing was they had an immoratal protecting the place. I'd kill him and he'd keep coming back until I "preached him down".

For some reason the description "Inquisitors are especially good at supressing enemy dominions" just seemed like "fluff language" to me. I didn't know they got an actual in game bonus.

Darryl

[johan osterman]

Temple in the province allows priests to preach as a priest 1 lvl higher. Every 5 temples increse max dominion spread lvl by 1.