H2 priests: Why, when, how?

[Sombre]

Ah yes vfb, in the case of MA Ctis they might be worth it. Their preaching is more useful there also, due to the income boost from dominion.

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Ah yes vfb, in the case of MA Ctis they might be worth it. Their preaching is more useful there also, due to the income boost from dominion.

I recruited about 3-4 H2 priests with MA Caelum in a game I played recently. The one with Juffos that had too low VP requirements. I was using them to lead elephants, cast sermon, keep my dom up (I had really good scales) and then to stealth preach.

I also recruited a pair of the L2 Priest (Level 1 F? Woo D priest/mages for MA Marignon in Beardaxe to lead troops, cast sermon, and preach. It's been a good investment.

Jazzepi

[Agema]

True, the majority of battles are sufficiently one-sided so that +2 morale may not be here nor there. Although as pointed out, if you've switched the dom on a province to yours, you'll be fighting with +3 to your opponent's -1, (as opposed to +1/+1) and that's beginning to look like a big advantage.

Priests should not be sitting around idly. They should be busy preaching every turn they aren't moving or helping an army. This can give you the battlefield advantage above, but it's not just that. H2s convert provinces MUCH quicker.

A province owned but with enemy Dom means suffering several of the worst aspects of their scales and none of the benefits. Convert your provinces, you get the benefits quicker, which means more gold. Not only that, but your temple/God/prophet dom will stop filling your provinces and start spilling over onto your opponents' provinces, meaning they'll start losing productivity. Thus preaching can potentially (depending on scales) increase your wealth and decrease your opponents'. Then also consider combining that with certain globals made effective by your Dom (e.g. The Looming Hell).

[Sombre]

I don't think it's silly logic at all. You're talking about producing an H2 priest instead of a mage fairly early in the game.

I deduce early in the game, because there's no way the effectiveness of sermon of courage competes with even lesser spells later in the game and you're talk about throwing him in with a mundane army that needs an extra 2 points of morale on a bunch of troops.

How much research is the mage going to get done over the course of the game? He can fill a support role then later go research, or more likely the other way around. The priest can't.

I'm not saying H2 mages are useless, I'm simply saying I've never built a pure H2 national mage and I don't follow the logic that because sermon of courage can be useful (which is certainly true) it would be worth doing so over a mage slot.

[Agema]

H2 priests can be very important for bless tactics whenever you don't have an H3 handy. You want to bless your troops quickly. If you've been recruiting H1s you'll need more, and they'll have detracted from you building national mages instead. If you don't have enough holy power you'll have had to put your sacreds and Hold & Attack, which limits their tactical usefulness or potentially exposes them to more damage from ranged attacks.

[llamabeast]

Why do you say a swing of 4 morale Baalz? I thought dominion gave +/- 1 morale.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Why do you say a swing of 4 morale Baalz? I thought dominion gave +/- 1 morale.

I think he means you are preaching the area to be your dominion (so morale goes from -1 to +1, ie a swing of two) and you are then able to cast SoC in combat (giving +2 to morale, thus going from -1 to +3). While I can see it happen at times, I don't think it will happen *that* often (but I might of course be all wrong on this ).

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Why do you say a swing of 4 morale Baalz? I thought dominion gave +/- 1 morale.

Bah :O Baalz attributed that to the wrong person. I said it originally.

+1 for your troops
-1 for theirs
+2 from SoC

And actually, in Beardaxe, I just watched a battle where morale was /the/ deciding factor with both sides spamming SoC. If Baalz had gone in without his SoC prophet, he definitely wouldn't have stood any chance. Notably he lost the battle, but that was because the opposing army had a free level 2 priest from PD spamming SoC which made every single one of the squads stay in the fight until the bitter end.

Jazzepi

[Agema]

Originally Posted by Jazzepi

Bah :O Baalz attributed that to the wrong person. I said it originally.

Heh. Quite true. I first mentioned in this file that your priests should be out preaching to affect scales.

[Baalz]

Yeah, it's a swing of 4 for your troops for the reasons outlined, but in *addition* it's a swing of -2 for the enemy troops (from +1 friendly to -1 hostile dominion), for a net difference of 6 in your relative morale. As pointed out, this really makes a big difference in close fights where generally the morale on both sides is an issue. If you're concerned about who breaks first, that -2 to their morale is as significant as the +4 to yours.

That is, of course, if you accept the premise that you're fighting in friendly dominion because of the priest. I fully agree that is not the case all that often, but there is one particular case where it is very common, and is well illustrated by my bloody nose in Beardaxe that Jazzepi just brought up. A relative swing of 6 is a staggeringly huge difference in your PD. In this case I made several sneak attacks on Arco with Abyssia and 3 out of 4 of my attacks were rebuffed by nothing but surprisingly high PD. The PD took much higher casualties and my guys had higher base morale, but the fighting was in hostile (to me) dominion and Arco gets a H2 priest in their PD, so my guys just got wore down and broke. Abysians don't run away very fast, my casualties were significant.

Now, this is a very specific example, and I've got no idea if my opponent used priests to push his dominion there, but the point of the story is that having friendly dominion on your border territories can be a very significant strategic asset in conjunction with H2 priests buffing your troops. Its very common to have enemy dominion creeping into your territories on the border, so it's very common that having a H2 priest will result in battles on your border being in friendly dominion when it otherwise wouldn't. Not to mention the scale benefit which can often be pushing upwards to a 50% increase in income for having friendly dominion vs just the negative aspects of your neighbors.