Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?

[Agrajag]

Before I start answering, let me remind you that we are discussing the strength of this strategy, which has nothing to do with it being an exploit or not.

kasnavada said:

Now, that's a perfect example of a strawman argument.

If you transform your mages and priest, your mage & priest for those upkeep becomes zero. That's a 100% reduction. That means for the next turns (not only one) you can buy again 1/15 of what you just killed FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. Note in capital letter the part that you missed. It seemed so obvious to me that I didn't even write it.

The rest of the game is more than one turn. I'm assuming 15 turns for the sake of putting up a number, so I said doubled. It could be 30 or 45, that means triple or more...

And if you look over a period of 1500000 turns, you can get 100000 times the mages :O :O :O
More seriously, it's your mage producing capacity that increases by 3.33%-6.67%.
However, if we also assume that out of 15 mages you zombify, one dies (due to accident, or the spell not working properly, or soulless being lame and dying/being banished etc.), that benefit is completely canceled. If more than 1 dies, then the spell starts losing you money.

From the thread, it would seem like I overstated this part. It would seem that only a few mages and priests don't get reanimated...

Now don't forget those that die because they are 5MR soulless.

[Digress]

I guess my only problem is with soulless, mindless priests. That isn't really unholy its just silly - they should really take a hit to their holy magic level to reflect that they have been reduced to zombies.

As for other mages - well they become pretty useless for almost everything other than research (and leading the undead). 1 hit point, poor MR, abysmal precision - and I think mindless beings should take a hit to their research ability.

[Jazzepi]

They end up as one hitpoint mages? D:

Eeeeww. Lord help you if you ever run into anyone casting a battlefield wide AOE spell.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

Digress said:
I guess my only problem is with soulless, mindless priests. That isn't really unholy its just silly - they should really take a hit to their holy magic level to reflect that they have been reduced to zombies.

Clearly you've never seen a Pope.

[thejeff]

And if you're doing this to reduce costs on your researchers don't forget to count in the lost research time in getting them to the battlefield and the risk in exposing them to battle. Which, by the way, has to be a significant enough battle to convince the AI to spend gems...

[Twan]

It may be particularly fun if the AI overwrite Life after Death but not the spell used to kill the mages.

[Amhazair]

Good one.

[Szumo]

Takes just one turn, set mages on patrol so they're outside the castle and cast something that summons independent troops there (horrors, ghost riders, etc.).
You can also use Ankh to make sure Life after Death effect works.
And place mages near a poison cloud or chill creature, with orders to hold, so no need to cast any spell either.
Of course, you'll need to something that will kill the enemy, but not too fast.

[PvK]

I was mostly joking. I think it might work. It was reported in Dom 2 that tainted unit blood slaves could get sacrificed (and IIRC there was a way to crash Dom 2 doing that). I don't know about commander blood slaves or what happens in Dom 3 though. I also don't know if it would set off the amulet of vengeance or not (it might bypass that), nor do I know if two amulets of vengeance both explode - the second one was sort of an explanation point on the joke.

Phoenix Pyre, however, seems like another possibility. Though I think you're right that simple cold aura would do it, given enough time - you just need to keep the artificial battle going long enough, which is the other half of the "how to make this an efficient factory" question.

[PvK]

Plan S: Get a tainted blood slave unit, cast Gift of Reason on her, give her two amulets of vengeance, have a blood mage stand next to her, surrounded by indy priests, script a spell that sacrifices a blood slave, and boom!