Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?

[Ironhawk]

Recently, it was revealed that the spell Life After Death presented a way to turn many commanders at once into soulless versions of themselves. The primary use of this was to sidestep the upkeep cost of these mages - a clever trick! But if the trick is used on priests, the resulting undead priests gain access to the Reanimate command. Knowing this, practically any nation can now add the ability to create undead freespawn to thier arsenal.

So, my question to the community is: does this qualify as an exploit? Why or why not?

[NTJedi]

I would say it's an exploit and also taints the themes for some nations which are opposite.
** It's NOT only available to death nations, pick any nation and I guarantee they can make this happen.


Suggested Fix:
Prevent the spell from working on any sacred units, thus removing the exploit.

[ano]

No.
First, it's available only to death nations who should also have something that kills with poison or cold (Foul vapors, for example)
Second, it requires recruiting of many priests and a ton of micromanagement.
And if someone really aims for it and has appropriate magics... Actually, why not?

[Dedas]

I like it the way it is.

[Baalz]

Meh, requires level 7 spell and it's not that powerful. You've got to have lots of priests, which means either you're not recruiting mages, you're using mages to generate freespawn, or you're putting temples up where there are no castles and getting weak indie priests. By the time level 7 spells are researched a couple hundred free undead is hardly earth shattering. I see this is being only very situationally useful and thematic. You could maybe use it for something interesting like cranking out a bunch of giant undead, but it's just one of the many, many interesting quirks you can exploit into a useful strategy.

[NTJedi]

By the time someone has researched level_7 they have plenty of time to buy priests from one location which is only fort/temple. 20 or 30 Indy priests have very little upkeep and would definitely be worth changing into undead reanimating priests by middle or late game. While waiting these priests will be preaching dominion and decoys so it won't be a waste. In any case the strategy benefit is strong enough where it will be seen in both SP games and MP games.

It comes down to whether or not KO and JK feels this strategy taints the themes of some nations enough where a change is desired.

[Jazzepi]

I can't imagine that this really matters. It seems terribly difficult to exploit. I guess the idea is to cast a Battlefield wide spell that deals damage to your own mages so that they'll come back as soulless, and then those soulless have to be immune to the spell or else they'll die.

Even if you did this with indie priests, they're only level 1 holy which means they could only reanimate corpses. Even playing Ermor, finding a buttload of corpses for a ton of priests is difficult and requires lots of pillaging, or micro moving those priests around.

I don't think this is worth the effort.

A good use might be killing off your own mages to make them upkeep free. If you could do that for 300-400 a turn worth of mages that could make a big difference in the long term.

Jazzepi

[Baalz]

Taint the theme? Thematically a powerful death mage has raised many priests as undead. As I think a lich pretender is available to every nation I don't see any nation as being unthematically swayed to the dark side.

Besides, just to run the numbers, if you've got 20 indie priests thats about 2000 gold (counting the temple and upkeep). A whole lot more than that if you get a castle and more powerful priests. Now you've got to ench-7 which is probably either something you went straight for to support this strategy (big opportunity cost) or something you're not hitting terribly early in the game. Now you also need a D-4 mage and a N/W one (or something like that), and spend some gems to set this up/cast.

After all these opportunity costs you're now generating 100 longdead per turn. This is at the point in the game (after you've spent several turns actually raising the dead) where there is widespread use of SCs and battlefield wide spells.

Again, you could probably make a useful strategy with it, but I can't imagine this is balance threatening or even common.

[PvK]

Yeah, I'd agree it's not so much an exploit as playing a wicked necromantic strategy.

[Saxon]

So, this strategy came out two months ago and we only have one person, Ironhawk, who reports using it. If it is such a great idea, why are we not seeing it more often? Further, Ironhawk reports it is a lot trickier than expected. And from what I know of Ironhawk, he is one of the top grade players, so this is no simple thing to do.

Looks like the poll is right, this strategy is not the exploit that was feared.