H2 priests: Why, when, how?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

Yeah, but the Shamans aren't H2 priests. In fact, they are not priests at all

Sorry for not being clear. I meant that, as Shamans can be blessed as well, it's more effective to recruit 110gp sacred mages to research and thug than 100gp H2 priests to preach and thug. This also applies for some other nations' choices about thug chassis: MA Ulm is one (Priest Smith or Black Priest?), MA Jotunheim uses either the Jarls/Herses or Skratti for thugging and not the H2 priests, etc. I'm open for suggestions, I could be missing something.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

MA Jotunheim uses either the Jarls/Herses or Skratti for thugging and not the H2 priests, etc. I'm open for suggestions, I could be missing something.

But that's partially due to the fact that the Gode has significantly inferior physical stats.

I think the choice becomes fairly complicated. In the vast majority of cases, if you are recruiting a national unit for an H1 priest, you are recruiting them for what they can do for you after they build a single temple to allow you to put out indie priests. And in the vast majority of cases, if you are recruiting an H2 at all, they are a national unit, and thus have other capabilities as well. The only time I could see training an H2 with nothing else, out of a castle, is some time in the first year when you just need a guy to go out and build temples for you.

I guess what it comes down to, is that you should virtually never be recruiting a commander based on whether it is H1 or H2 - and that the answer to "which is better", is actually, "whichever comes with better stuff other than Holy".

[Gregstrom]

I can go with that.

[Lingchih]

I get most of my H2 priests from events. But then, I most often take Luck. They're free then. They may not appear in the area you want them to, but then again, they are free.

[Dragar]

They're not really free, they come with a swarm of militia you normally don't want and for whatever reason can't get rid of for ages they are only ever useful if you need help sieging nearby somewhere, otherwise it's just upkeep.

I wish there was a disband unit option.

[alhorro]

Milita and other living chaff are great for nations that can't convert gold into undead. You can rise taxes and patrol with them, compensating upkeep and providing corpses for your necromancers. You can gather them in your lab and gateway to the front, or to defend your own fort. You don't have to invest into PD — 100 militas with H2 priest can stop almost every single remote attack, including GR, AotD, HfH. They serve as a meatshield for your mages, swarmers for enemy thugs/SCs, spell decoys for your elite troops. I definitely prefer using only cheapest chaff and top-shelf troops such as wigths/trolls/demons, everything in between is just useless.

[Jarkko]

So, I guess the consensus is that H2 priests are nice when you happen to get them for free (or find a site from which you can recruit High Priests even without a castle), but there really is not much point in recruiting them (unless they are mage-priests of some sort, when they could have other benefits). Basically what I've been doing so far anyway.

Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion!

[llamabeast]

On the subject of disbanding, check out the mod listed in my signature.

[Baalz]

I wanted to reiterate how significant sermon of courage can be in *lots* of situations. Bandar Log, for instance, really suffers from not having one - from elephants to markatas pretty much all their units are drastically better with just a little extra morale. More generally for lots of nations, dropping sermon of courage can often make your nice, cheap light infantry a reasonable choice for early expansion opening up strategies for more slothful scales (Abyssia for instance). Even when you're using units with a naturally high morale it can be a very nice buff when fighting awe or fear auras - it's surprising how much more difficult it is to use a thug with a shield of beaten gold to raid PD which gets an H2 priest.

[Sombre]

True but that's a free H2 priest. No commander build slot required.