Sacred Troops

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I've been thinking about sanctifying normal troops into holy troops.



Those are my thoughts...

-Cherry

I really like this idea too, but I think it could be done much more simply that what you were suggesting.

My suggestion would be that any priest could 'sanctify' troops, so long as he's in a province with a temple, and he would only be able to sanctify as many troops as his priestly level. The way I would envisage it would be that when in a province with a temple the priest (or prophet) would have an option to "sanctify troops" much like the Arco Priestess option "heal troops". Then 2, 3, or whatever the priest's level is troops randomly would become sacred. Note this would be instead of preaching, etc., and would be a relatively slow process, unless you had masses and masses of priests, because you're only sanctifying 2 or 3 troops at a time (for most nations).

Note that this *would* perserve the weaknesses and strengths of different nations when it comes to things priestly, because someone like Ulm could make troops sacred only much slower than a nation like Marignon, because he can only make level 2 priests - which is only 2 troops turned sacred per turn per priest (as opposed to 5 or 6 for Marignon). [although you might want to boost the cost of lower-level priests a little to prevent mass sanctifying ]

You could limit it to the prophet, but that seems like a too limited conVersion to make any difference at all.

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

quote:

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Originally posted by PDF:
I like SC's idea on "Sanctifying" troops
It makes sense, it will bring more variety in styles (cause even if you play Ulm you can eventually get a good blessing effect, and a Ulm Blessed Black Knight would be something akin to a M1A2 tank ) !
In addition I find that Prophets aren't that fun : good priestly nations have it cast Fanaticism, for other it makes a pumped-up commander, but I don't find them acting often "prophetically".

You might call them 'Black Templars' and you might find them in the 'Iron Faith' theme.

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Might you indeed? Very interesting…

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

quote:

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Originally posted by PDF:
I like SC's idea on "Sanctifying" troops
It makes sense, it will bring more variety in styles (cause even if you play Ulm you can eventually get a good blessing effect, and a Ulm Blessed Black Knight would be something akin to a M1A2 tank ) !
In addition I find that Prophets aren't that fun : good priestly nations have it cast Fanaticism, for other it makes a pumped-up commander, but I don't find them acting often "prophetically".

You might call them 'Black Templars' and you might find them in the 'Iron Faith' theme.

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Hey, don't make my best ideas obselete before I even suggest them! Who's in charge of this game, anyway?

[Saber Cherry]

My suggestion would be that any priest could 'sanctify' troops, so long as he's in a province with a temple, and he would only be able to sanctify as many troops as his priestly level. The way I would envisage it would be that when in a province with a temple the priest (or prophet) would have an option to "sanctify troops" much like the Arco Priestess option "heal troops". Then 2, 3, or whatever the priest's level is troops randomly would become sacred.

Yeah, that's basically the way I wanted it to work, mechanically. But as for letting any priest sanctify - I think that would be a big problem. I would mass priests and make every unit sacred. As Ulm, for example, you can only produce about 8 units per turn in the capitol... so 4 priests (160 gold, 5 gold upkeep) would be able to sanctify all of them. Unless it was limited to the prophet, I imagine that all units would end up sacred. Also, limiting it to the prophet means that you have to decide between sanctifying with your second-most-important unit, or using it to spread dominion / cast courage or fanatacism / smite / be a supercombatant / annihilate undead, which is a major trade-off.

-Cherry

[ October 09, 2003, 16:42: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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My suggestion would be that any priest could 'sanctify' troops, so long as he's in a province with a temple, and he would only be able to sanctify as many troops as his priestly level. The way I would envisage it would be that when in a province with a temple the priest (or prophet) would have an option to "sanctify troops" much like the Arco Priestess option "heal troops". Then 2, 3, or whatever the priest's level is troops randomly would become sacred.

Yeah, that's basically the way I wanted it to work, mechanically. But as for letting any priest sanctify - I think that would be a big problem. I would mass priests and make every unit sacred. As Ulm, for example, you can only produce about 8 units per turn in the capitol... so 4 priests (160 gold, 5 gold upkeep) would be able to sanctify all of them. Unless it was limited to the prophet, I imagine that all units would end up sacred. Also, limiting it to the prophet means that you have to decide between sanctifying with your second-most-important unit, or using it to spread dominion / cast courage or fanatacism / smite / be a supercombatant / annihilate undead, which is a major trade-off.

-Cherry

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You have a point… but on the other hand I think that limiting it to the prophet might be too much of a limitation. If you made priests a bit more expensive it might solve the problem - that is, you could still make a lot of troops sacred if you wanted to, but it would be a really expensive operation to do so.

Yet another option would be to have it be *half* the priest's level made sacred, rounded up. Then weak priests [lvl 2] would be able to sanctify one unit per turn; medium to powerful priests [lvls 3 & 4] would be able to sanctify two, and very powerful priests would be able to sanctify three. Even with this I think the cost of cheap priests should be increased some, say up to 100 gold. In this case you *could* [as Ulm] sanctify every guy produced, but at the cost of 4 or 5 priests who would cost a lot, and who would prevent you from making other commanders (such as researchers). So there would be the flexibility to go this way, but not without cost in other areas.

Or, on the other hand even just having prophets able to sanctify would be kinda cool.

[Pocus]

I think a better formula would be priest level -2, excepted the prophet.

[Psitticine]

There are a goodly number of sacred troops in Dom II. I'd be worried it would tip things out of balance if any troop could become sacred. What would the point be to Marignon's fragile flagellants then, for example?

I think it would also make god design too much of a blessing-engineering event as well. As it is, I think the balance is right between trying to get the right magic power, the blessings you'd like, and sparing points for a good strong dominion and the fortress type you want. Being able to sanctify troops would tip more importance towards blessing power during god design, and that would devalue other equally-interesting paths.

(Oh, and speaking of the random flagellant event, it happens a lot now. I get more of the little weirdoes than I care for, honestly. )