Fire vs. Death heavy bless

[Endoperez]

Squirrelloid - how many sacred units are required to conquer a province? Could you believe that 6 is enough? I was never good at that part of the game, and it obviously depends a lot on the unit, but some unit/bless combinations can get by with really few units. Fire 9 and/or Water 9 are the most useful blesses here, because they force the enemy to rout faster.

That's also what makes F9 useful against chaff - you don't have to recruit as many sacred units to win the battle. On turn 5, you may have 5 armies conquering independent provinces every turn, without mercenaries, and the sacred troops will help you in your first war against almost any nation. High death isn't as useful at that point.

[K]

The benefits of D9 Bless are not just that it makes sacreds better damage dealers but not as good as F9, but when your Pretender finally does make the scene he can do crazy crap like cast Utterdark as his first action. In that sense, he is far superior to a F9 pretender in winning the game.

It all depends on whether winning the game or winning battles is your goal.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by K

The benefits of D9 Bless are not just that it makes sacreds better damage dealers but not as good as F9, but when your Pretender finally does make the scene he can do crazy crap like cast Utterdark as his first action. In that sense, he is far superior to a F9 pretender in winning the game.

It all depends on whether winning the game or winning battles is your goal.

As an aside: as an SP player, winning battles is *much* more fun to me than winning the game. Winning the game just means I have to start a new one (with less micro, yay!) but winning battles means 812 out of 940 enemy units killed. Far more satisfying.

-Max

[Zentar]

I have some thoughts and questions about several things stated in this thread.

1) Calahan clarified AP vs AN with

AP = Armour Piercing, which means the protection value is halfed for the purposes of calculations.
AN = Armour Negating, which means the protection value is ignored for the purposes of calculations.
There is a big difference between AP and AN. With AN obviously being better than AP.

.

So now I don't understand LDiCesare's statement

I doubt the additional 2AP attack by mages has much effect except on lowish damage aera of effect or battlefield-wide spells, but I'd rather have the fire boost early on than rely on that small bonus late game.

2) While in melee combat it is always true that

As far as both blesses go, remember that the bless weapon (whether fire or death) replaces any secondary effects from equipped (or intrinsic) weapons when the bless comes into effect, which means you won't get area damage from brands with a blessed SC if you have sacred SCs (such as Hinnom, Ashdod, Fomoria) etc) or thugs (the glamour nations, Lanka etc).

as Edi has pointed out, I have found that blessed archers stack with a death bless. If you bless Asp Archers (Tomb Kings) with a heavy death bless it stacks with intrinsic Asp bow so that you still get the Asp poison effect while simultaneously gaining crippling and afflicting effects of the Death bless. It appears that the Death bless stacks with both spells and non-melee weapons, but the Fire bless only works for melee and replaces any equipment special effects.

3) I feel that the Fire bless is still better since you cause fire damage every time you hit, but you don't cause an affliction (let alone 3.5 afflictions - instead you are only 3.5 times more likely to cause a single affliction) every time you hit with the Death bless. In addition your number of hits with the Fire bless are higher as previously pointed out in this string.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Zentar

...poison effect while simultaneously gaining crippling and afflicting effects of the Death bless. It appears that the Death bless stacks with both spells and non-melee weapons, but the Fire bless only works for melee and replaces any equipment special effects.

The D9 bless has two parts.

1.) 2 AN + Disease (MR check required) secondary effect that gets put on any melee attack, possibly replacing any other secondary effect that you have (e.g. the area effect of a Shadow Brand will get overwritten by the 2 AN).

2.) x4.5 normal chance of afflictions (i.e. +350%) on any damaging effect produced by the blessed unit.

Only part #2 of the death bless works with spells and arrows.

-Max