Raising dead with a mummy

[thejeff]

You get more undead, you just don't get the option for better undead.
No longdead horse or whatever.

[MaxWilson]

Okay, good, that's what I thought. So what's the beef, chrispederson? Isn't getting more undead better than a slight increase in number of candles? (If I could trade candles for troops at will I'd be a happy man.)

-Max

[vfb]

Every additional H gives you +5 soulless or +1 longdead or +1 ghoul.

I agree with Max, and think that there are much better things to do with even non-undead prophets than preaching. If you don't need him blessing/smiting/banishing in battles, then unless you like using Achasic Record, your prophet is best used for site searching H. MA/LA Ermor are better off if he's raising undead, Demon prophets are more useful raising undead, and if you can blood sacrifice he's better off sacrificing. Probably the only times I'd preach with my prophet is if:

- I need him to stay in a province for defense and it's already H3 searched
- I need to flip the dominion from black ASAP to kill an immortal
- I'm sieging a castle
- I took low initial dominion and it's critical I raise dominion in a province, either to create a dominion wall or to prevent my own dom death
- I'd like to flip the dominion from black ASAP to get a few useful turns out of an opponent's scales

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by vfb

Every additional H gives you +5 soulless or +1 longdead or +1 ghoul.

I agree with Max, and think that there are much better things to do with even non-undead prophets than preaching. If you don't need him blessing/smiting/banishing in battles, then unless you like using Achasic Record, your prophet is best used for site searching H. MA/LA Ermor are better off if he's raising undead, Demon prophets are more useful raising undead, and if you can blood sacrifice he's better off sacrificing. Probably the only times I'd preach with my prophet is if:

- I need him to stay in a province for defense and it's already H3 searched
- I need to flip the dominion from black ASAP to kill an immortal
- I'm sieging a castle
- I took low initial dominion and it's critical I raise dominion in a province, either to create a dominion wall or to prevent my own dom death
- I'd like to flip the dominion from black ASAP to get a few useful turns out of an opponent's scales

Really? I *never* bother site searching H, with a prophet. Why do you think its worth the time? I rarely search with an H1 or H2 unless my site searchers incidentally happen to be priests.

But I find preaching as a prophet *incredibly* valuable. Take a look at the algorithym in the manual. Only inquisitors and high holy have chance at converting high enemy dominion. And yes, castle sieges is one case.

I also like to thug prophets.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not sure about H2 provinces because I usually only search with H1s, but Ancient Temple is reasonably common. Buying 2 or 3 indy priests for site-searching will not-infrequently yield +5 or +6 pearls per turn. My prophet is usually busy leading troops so I don't know how common H3 sites are.

-Max

[vfb]

Because I like to find all sites in my lands.

There's only one non-unique H3 site. It's uncommon, and it's total crap (it just lets you recruit priests). However, finding this site can mean that I've now found 4 sites in the province and do not need to waste time or gems looking for paths that I have not searched yet.

Sorry, I did forget one other situation which calls for preaching: removing damaging enemy dominion (LA Ermor/LA Rlyeh/MA CTis).

But my main point was that a prophet that can reanimate is much better than a preacher. I would never use an undead or demon prophet for site searching, unless there was a hint that there was a holy site in the province (holy fire/less unrest/+50 gold), and I has no other priest available who could search it.

[chrispedersen]

I generally find troops worthless past middle game. Without means to animate tons of them, I consider the primary value to be morale. So.. I don't waste turns animating... generally.