How do you get Level 5 Priests?

Yojinbo · #1 November 14th, 2003, 04:35 PM

Unless you play me or Gandalf you probably will not have your commanders stolen this way. (grin) It's expensive and time consuming. However, it is a way to "recruit" some diversity into your ranks.

Smite is cool, but it's just another tool in the box. That's the beauty of Dominions; there is no "tank rush". Everything has a cost. Dominions is not balanced perfectly (I or II) but the players balance the game out with tactics and planning.

Yo

LordArioch · #2 November 14th, 2003, 04:44 PM

Speaking of priests, what ever happened to level 1 holy priests? Did they exist at some point early in the creation of dominions? I notice that there are now spells and such for level 1 unholy priests but it seems that if you made a level 1 holy priest all he could do is preach badly.

Taqwus · #3 November 14th, 2003, 07:15 PM

Even normal Ulm gets level-2 priests, but perhaps there's an independent level-1 priest I've not noticed.
As for Charm (or its blood equivalent, Hellbind Heart), if memory serves the range isn't all that great on them, and they are resistable using MR.
Wind Ride was (probably still is) rather expensive to cast -- 20 Air gems or so in Dom I, requires good Air magic as well. It can be blocked using dome spells (can be expensive, not guaranteed), or mitigated by using cheap commanders as spell-fodder. At least in Dom I, I think the victim also gets to know where the Wind Riding mage was, because he gets the battle replay incl. province identification, so it opens up the possibility of retalliation.

Saber Cherry · #4 November 14th, 2003, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordArioch:
Speaking of priests, what ever happened to level 1 holy priests? Did they exist at some point early in the creation of dominions? I notice that there are now spells and such for level 1 unholy priests but it seems that if you made a level 1 holy priest all he could do is preach badly.

Are there such spells? I think they're Ermor / Desert Tombs specfic, if they do exist. But the point is not preaching badly, it's reanimating. If Ermor recruits indy Holy-2 priests, they become Unholy-1 priests. But I've never seen a Holy-1 priest.

And a correction on communion - it's not 1 level per 2 slaves, but rather an additional level per log(base 2) of the number of slaves; so 8 slaves give a bonus of 3. The number of slaves may be divided by the number of masters first; I'm not sure.

Psitticine · #5 November 14th, 2003, 09:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by HJ:

quote:
Originally posted by Psitticine:
In addition, every two Communion/Sabboth Slaves also grants the Master a +1 to all his magic levels. This allows the Master to cast more powerful magic and suffer even less fatigue damage.

The drawback is that the Master can continue to "share" his fatigue costs even unto the death of the Slaves. The Slaves can be driven past unconsiousness and begin to take injury instead of additional fatigue, especially since they don't get the same reduction to fatigue that the Master will get from his increased power levels from the Commmunion. The spell-casting AI is good about not going to such lengths unless the situation is dire, however.

I never understood how communion works exactly. So, 1 master and 2 slaves get all 1/3 of the listed fatigue if master is casting at his max level, right? And if he has e.g. 3 in astral and casting 2 astral spell, he will get 1/2 of the 1/3 of the regular fatigue, while the slaves will still get 1/3? And what if he uses gems to increase his casting? He gets even more reduced fatigue, while the slaves get the same as if he wasn't using any? And what happens if the slaves are casting their own spells after casting the slave spells? They don't affect the master at all in terms of fatigue, and/or shared benefits, like they would if master casts e.g. personal luck? And you can increase by 1 only the paths you already know, and it doesn't make those you don't know available, right? And what happens when there is more than one master, how is that calculated?

All Slaves on a side, be they Sabbath or Communion, are available for all Masters to draw from, and they gain none of the bonuses the Masters have for gem use, Slave # boost, or anything else except for what they themselves already have. That's what makes it dangerous for them. They also don't get to draw from the Master when they cast spells themselves. (I've noticed the spell-casting AI seems to take that into account and Slaves go for less fatiguing spells than they would otherwise. I'm not 100% sure that's the way it works, but it is at least circumstantially appearing that way from what I've seen.)

On the plus side, many spell effects are shared. On the negative side, many spell effects are shared. The various units making up a circle get seperate MR rolls, but still: beware Mind Burn and the like!

There are some units with Priest 1, I believe, but not many, and they are magical combo types that one would think of as mages first, priests second. I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head, however.