How can you use heretics?

[Edratman]

Last night I found the site "Temple of Sacred River" and that made two mages avaialble, Renata and Renatus.

The description of one of these is that he is a heretic that takes people away from the true god. I cannot figure out how to use this mage. In fact, the new LA serpant cult has similar mages and I haven't played it for the same reason.

How do you use this mage? What does he do? The description reads like he will lower my domain. EA Arco has a heretic, but at least he has stealth and I've sent them into opponents territory to lower domain. But this Renata chap doesn't have stealth.

I assume I am missing something about this chap.

[Humakty]

No, it seems you are true : they are worst than useless, they are dangerous for who dares recruit them. I think Serpent Cult have them to compensate for their top notch army.
But maybe that if you have dom 9/10 and need them to diversify your magic, then it is worthy to buy some.

[Juzza]

1.way to use them is if you yourself have a weak dominion to lower enemy dominion in your own lands.

2. if you have, lets say a -3 drain dominion but you want to be able to research alright, well just chuck a few heretics in a province (not too close to your capital, god, or prophet) and research away in a nice 0 magic environment. This should be combined with a strong dominion.

3.Ever been in one of those really important sieges? where it's your god, your prophet and your biggest army, vs there god in there capital, and no matter what you do you can't get their dominion down? Heretics are the answer!! combined with your own priests you can drop an enemy dominion in no time!

Thats just some uses, theres probably more out there, personally I don't use them that often, except for the research one, thats a handy little trick.

[Agema]

The simplest advantage would be to give you options in an area of magic you wouldn't otherwise have, as pointed out - the advantages could easily outweigh the Dom problems. These mages would also be good to take with your army campaigning, as you'll likely be in someone else's dominion and the heretics will be bothering them instead.

[Sombre]

I don't think the ability makes them useless at all. As long as you don't take big squads of them trekking around in your own dominion all they will do is nix your dom in one or two provinces where you keep them. They go well with raiding armies, sieging armies etc and also work very well with negative scales, since they reduce the amount you'll suffer from them. As long as you keep a squad of priests preaching in your cap you don't really have to worry about domkill either - plus your heretics will nix enemy dom coming towards you.

[Humakty]

I usually play with positive scales, which I intend to use to the maximum(it costs darn lot of good points to be a nice god!), so it is true heretics seemed to me like shooting my own feet to run faster...

[Edratman]

Everyone seems to confirm what I thought.

In this particular game, I started in a corner as usual, and the site is even deeper into the corner than my capital. So short of teleport, which I'm not even sure he is pathed to do, he would be even worse. I don't recall much about him but he has maybe 2 magic paths.

[VedalkenBear]

Apparently, I'm the only champion of the heretics here.

For Serpent Cult Pythium, they are the source of your wide magic diversity. In particular, a Blood Reveler gives you access to one of your best national summons (the Satyr you get from Orgy), as well as starting the 'blood chain'. Finally, as others have said, you can take very bad scales and remove them from where you don't want them using them.

For _anyone_, they are very useful in removing enemy dominion from your territory. Yes, they aren't stealthy. They don't need to be. Have them with your advancing army and watch your opponent's dominion drop. On p.94 of the Dom3 rulebook, it states that the Preaching command (which is presumably what the heretic uses every turn, at their Heretic level) gives a chance of increasing dominion in the province equal to (30%*Holy)-(5%*Dominion).

This means several things. First, the heretic doesn't care about your dominion strength (like temple checks do). So if you plan to have them in your dominion (and your dominion is positive), make sure your dominion strength is high to lower their chances of lowering your dominion. Second, since most Heretics are the equivalent of Holy-3 Priests for their 'preaching', they have a 40% chance of knocking any dominion down a point, and it snowballs from there. If you have 3 in a province that you recently took from an opponent, and the dominion is -10, the following table gives you the chances that the dominion will be lowered (assume that the preaching checks are done sequentially):

0 points = 0.6^3 = 0.2196
1 points = 0.4*0.55*0.55 + 0.6*0.4*0.55 + 0.6*0.6*0.55 = 0.451

and so on. In the case that they are not done sequentially, then it is a simple binomial distribution. Finally, considering they are primarily found in the Late Era (the Serpent Cult), it's a valuable way to fight the dominion of Ermor and R'lyeh.

So yes, they definitely have their uses.

[Morkilus]

Sombre already pointed this out, but to make it clearer: they don't "spread" their heretical views like an enemy prophet; they only drop all dominion in the province they occupy. So if you have to recruit them in your capitol, just have their first job be to GTFO and hang out somewhere they are appreciated - like California.

[Stryke11]

Morkilus said:
just have their first job be to GTFO and hang out somewhere they are appreciated - like California.

Considering LA Pythium heretics are supposed to represent different cults, wouldn't Utah be more appropriate, Morkilus? Just 'cause Cali has a lot of progressives who are socially liberal that doesn't make them a religious cult like say the LDS.