Mod in Progress: Holy War

[Jarkko]

You mean independent priests would only be available through random events (and possibly special sites which first would have to be searched for)? Sounds interesting, and quite thematic in fact (at least to me ). I don't personally ever recruit pure H1 national priests (and practically never H2 priests either) unless under spesific conditions, because indy priests can do everything and don't take a slot from a mage.

Have I seen H4 priests at use? I certainly have. I've used three communed Marignon mage-priests (who were H6 after communion) against an undead heavy MA Ermor, and *that* was quite spectacular. Incidently, three such H6 priests, considering communion-slave costs and all, still would cost less than 3 x $600 (which was the price for H4 priest I suggested above). True, it wouldn't be as cheap LA where Ashen Empire is, but with communions and mage-priests it is still quite easy to reach H4. The question is then why should mages be better priests than pure priests?

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Hmm, well how about a combination of non-recruitable indy priests and jiggled national holy levels (mostly swapping holy strengths between mage-priests and pure priests)?

This is a good idea. I'll do something akin to that. I'll probably leave amazon priestess' and that hoburg priest as they are, but the rest will get the resourcecost 800 treatment.

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I'm just uncomfortable with (a) not having a national H1 priest, and (b) including recruitable H4 priests.

a) Of course I'll make sure that all nations have access to priests. If the nation has no pure-priests (only mage-priests) I'll probably leave it unchanged.

b) Yeah, I'm also kinda against H4 priests for thematic reasons. Besides, they'd overshadow my new H4 heroes.

EDIT: I've now really started working on the Holy Word: Divine. I've already done 4 spells from the 20 I'm going to add. You can see the stats and changes to the spells in the first post, if you're intrested how is the mod coming together.

[darloth]

Looking good, looking good.

I'm looking forward to experimenting with the divine magic.

Also, if you're worried about magepriests communioning themselves up to really high priest levels, you could always make a pure-holy communion spell. I mean, it's quite thematic for dozens of lesser priests to boost each other's powers until they can cast massive demon smiting bolts of light, is it not? I think so, anyway.

[llamabeast]

It does sound like a nice idea, but I fear the balance changes caused by non-astral magepriests gaining communion are a little much.

[chrispedersen]

I haven't read the whole thing, Im just catching up on a lot of this.

Well reasoned and thought out.

Spells I have made for other mods include:

A. Priestly version of Charm - based on apostacy, removing the sacred only.

B. National spell for Oceania that boosted movement.

C. National spell for oceania that Remotely increased dominion (still working out the kinks on that one).


Some quick comments:

I would love to see items that allowed healing. Or increased the area of a banishment.

However, if you do a lot of the things you mention here, you are radically screwing with game balance. Even things like healing (screw arco).

I made a similar argument in a different thread, that only rarely is dominion death an effective tool. I'd like to see a mod that made that more possible.

(Note to self: BalancePriest - every H3 spreads Dominion).

Would also be interesting to see things like Bishops Mitres; items etc that when worn by a priest spread dominion.

Would be nice to see priests have a "pray for miracle order"
Which when given might heal disease, give supplies etc."

Can't do it in this game but in my mind I've got it charted out....

[Fate]

Imo, the problem with dominion death is that while it is easy to arbitrarily spread your dominion, it is *very* difficult to take out those last 3 candles, especially if you don't have military superiority. And if you are superior militarily, that means that death was just a matter of time anyway.

What I see happening with dominion attacks is that the opponent notices eventually (normally a little before they die) and recruit an army of priests to defend their dominion. Then both nations go back to fighting the old fashioned way.

Now consider that if both nations *already* have priests because they have been recruiting them all game (because priests are now effective in battle), that means you don't even have the 1-2 turns between when you opponent notices and when they manage to field a defensive priesthood.

To sum up, I think that by giving everyone more dom-pushing units that double as good battle units (a win-win) you are, in fact, reducing the chance of a dom-kill.

[Burnsaber]

Darloth: That would be quite thematic, but as Llamabeast said, problematic on the balance front. I could perhaps make a researchable H2 or H3 "Communion Master" thought.

Chrispedersen: Yeah, like you said those items really can't be done. As for your concerns on the healing Arco has 100% healers. I'm currently playing MA T'ien C'hi and soon noticed that when facing massive infliction gain (MA C'tis dominion in this case) healers 20-30% aren't really going to cut it unless in large groups. If I give healing acceess, it will be of 10% or below. A true miracle when it actually heals something..

Fate: Actually, that's the direction I'm going for. Dom-killing has some niche uses (defeat a foe who has castled up with considerable defences in his capital), large scale dom-kill is hard to accomplish in vanilla and will be hard in Holy War. Why? It is quite a boring way to defeat someone. They get a message "Sorry, you're dead!", that's a bit anit-climatic, don't you think? It's okay now as it is because dom-killing requies using a lot of resources to work. If it would be easy (or easier) it would result in more boring games. This game is about pretender gods smashing each other into the face, not logistics.

But anyways, I've now done 10 of the 20 spells I'm going to add. See the first page on details. Endoperez gave me a bunch of good ideas, but I'm still kinda unsure about what I'm going to add as level 7 researchable holy spells. Evocation will be a "holy bolt" and construction the "Holy Tablet" summon, but I've got no clue on others. Feel free to suggest something if you got ideas.

[Burnsaber]

Damn. This day wasn't too hot for this mod. First I learned of the limitation on #nextspells and then I noticed that pure holy summoning rituals don't work! I made two units for nothing!

If I can't make holy items nor holy summons for construction, what can I do? Well, nothing probably.

There's a silver lining thought, the fewer spells to make, the less time will the rest take. Well, I can probably release Holy War: Divine by the end of the month.

[llamabeast]

What was the limitation on #nextspells?

[Trumanator]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

I'm currently playing MA T'ien C'hi and soon noticed that when facing massive infliction gain (MA C'tis dominion in this case) healers 20-30% aren't really going to cut it unless in large groups. If I give healing acceess, it will be of 10% or below. A true miracle when it actually heals something.

I was wondering how much damage my dominion was causing. Not that it helped me that much.