Best sacred units?

[Evil Dave]

Zooko said:

It appears to me that if you spend X gold and Y resources on Fire-9/Astral-9 flagellants, then the resulting team of flagellants will decisively win in hand-to-hand combat against other national troops that you could have bought for X gold and Y resources, even if you get a dual-blessing of your choice on sacred troops.

Am I wrong?

Not very wrong. I didn't try too many opponents for flaming flagellants, just ones that I thought might work. Two kinds can beat them. F9W9 Serpent Dancers demolish them on an equal resource basis (100% win), and are as good on an equal cost basis (47% win). E9W9 Heart Companions beat them soundly on an equal cost basis (83% win), but always lose on an equal resource basis. But both of these are capital-only units.

OTOH, it's not possible to perfectly test all opponents. Jaguar Warriors look like they might work, but the simulator can't handle their second form. Since it only handles melee, it can't cope with sacred spell-casters either. I wonder how W9S9 Shamen would do. They're half as many resources, and with a few buffs (Astral Shield and Luck) I think they might be able to hold off 11 guys each. Even with the S9 blessing, Flagellants have relatively low magic resistance, and they only have to fail once vs. the Astral Shield to turn into Walls of Meat for the Shamen to hide behind. Tho in a real battle, the Shamen would probably collapse from exhaustion...

[archaeolept]

meh, who says equal resource needs to be hand to hand? massed longbows swat those little buggers like the flies they are.

Where those guys shine is against early SCs (well, and most indies). I used to do the flaming head strat for Mary against Norfleet; put a bit of the fear of god in him for a change (its esp. successful because the twist of fate negates much of the lifedrain, as target does not seem to be maintained and the Vampire Queen will attack other flags who still have their twist of fate intact as readily as those who don't, it seemed)

I like all mictlan sacreds, the vans, the herse, the tuatha; maybe the dancers, pythium w/ a water bless, white centaurs.

I find spiders too... fragile ;p

[Endoperez]

I think one of the reasons I like to have good blessing for Marignon is the cheap and good Flagellants WITH Knights of the Chalice. If your enemy has Longbows, you can have small army of Knights to kill them off, and not too many early tactics work well against low-prot masses which deal lots of damage and small groups of high-prot high-stat elite units.

[AMF]

Ok, so, new guy here has to confess to something: I'm still not entirely sure what holy/unholy effects are...

I know, this is probably a really lame question, but, really, what is different about a holy/unholy unit, and what do the levels in them really mean? As far as I can tell, unholy commanders can reanimate better/more undead, but other than that, I'm sort of clueless.

Alarik

[Alneyan]

Holy/unholy units (or commanders) are your sacred units, particularly devoted to your cause... you get the picture. In game terms, they cost half upkeep (1/30th of their gold cost), and can be blessed. Blessing them gives a +3 morale bonus, and other effects depending on the magic you picked when *creating* your Pretender. Level 4 in any magic path gives a minor bonus, level 6/8 increases that bonus, level 9 gives a big bonus, and level 10 increases the level 4/6/8 bonus. For example, Fire 10 results in a +5 bonus to attack, plus flaming weapons; Fire 4 would only give +2 to attack. Stacking blessings can work out quite well, and this thread is dedicated to coming up with ways of boosting the power of sacred units via blessings. There is no difference between Holy and Unholy units here, except the colour of their candelabra icon.

Holy/unholy mages have access to Holy or Unholy magic; they are your priests, in other words. All priests can call back your Pretender (you need 40 priest levels to call the Pretender back), can build Temples, and require a Temple to be recruited. Holy priests can preach to boost Dominion in a province; Unholy priests can reanimate creatures. Holy and Unholy priests can also cast some spells, depending on their priest level: Banishment, Blessing spells and Morale spells are the most common for Holy priests, and Unholy priests have different spells depending on their nation. All priests are also sacred, including the Unholy priests of Broken Empire, who lack the Sacred icon, but still cost half the upkeep.

So higher levels in priest magic are only needed to get access to the better spells, and for preaching/reanimation purposes. On a related note, Prophets are effectively priests, but do not cost any upkeep, and will be either Holy or Unholy depending on your nation and on the Prophet (Unholy priests stay Unholy when they are priests, and vice versa).

[Cainehill]

And yet for some reason, "Holy" undead can't preach, even when they have Holy-3. (Evidenced by having a nation like Man make an undead commander such as a black servant the prophet. Gets Holy magic to use on the battlefield, can build temples, but can't preach.)

[Endoperez]

Would you believe an undead's promise of happy afterlife?

[Oversway]

I have a hard time doing anything with the c'tis sacred serpents (not counting DT). They are pretty expensive and die fairly easily. I don't often play c'tis with a bless effect so maybe they are more effective than I realize.

I havn't bothered with ermor Wailing Ladies or Knight of the Unholy Sepulchre. The ladies don't seem worth 15 death gems and I never seem to get enough knights.

[Alneyan]

Endoperez said:
Would you believe an undead's promise of happy afterlife?

If a Ghost King is running arounf as Pretender, quite possibly. And said undead can hide, I think: under heavy robes, it should be hard to figure out your good ole pastor is actually a Revenant. Of course, mindless undeads need not apply.

That, and being an undead can be good, so long as you get to choose *what* kind of undead you want to be; Immortality is certainly good enough for my tastes, and not aging isn't too bad either. That way, if your Pretender was kidding about that "afterlife where you shall get every kind of wonder you can mention", you will do just fine regardless.

Priests for Ashen Ermor will, of course, have a much tougher time doing anything looking remotely like preaching to the human populace.

[Nerfix]

Besides the underworld of Dominions doesn't strike me as a nice place. It almost feels like all those sentient undead creatures are strugling to get out of there.