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[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   When it comes to prophets the only special thing to note is that with a priest lv3 and up it adds plus 1 to the level where as everyone else just gets set to lv3. If I don't have a high level priest I just tend to prophetize whatever I can easily get that has the ability to move a lot of troops around at once.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Now that I look at the unicorn knights again - yeah, not sacred. Not like it'd matter much. Even if they costed holy points, they cost so much everything else that I can only produce like four a month.

Also, only the first prophet was the regular human. The second one (the one one-shotted by the opening volley of militia archers) was a Lord Warden. Don't even ask me how the single volley of arrows got to him. Must've been a little beat up. Now I propheted the unicorn-mounted Knight Commander of Avalon, let's see something one-shot that.
...
I'll make him some fancy armor, just in case. Maybe that helmet that autocasts lightning bolts...

Also, speaking of beat-up, what was the most pathetic "victory" in a battle you've secured? Right now I had this downright epic showdown between two massive armies - one mine, a legion of archers (and crossbow midgets) with unicorn cavalry and dual-wielding wardens poised to storm the gateway, and some priests with a Crone of Avalon supplying magical intervention, all brought together by a variety of commanders, including some of the more basic ones like the two Castellians in charge of the archers, and the Hornburg Champion in charge of the midget brigade.

The other army is a much larger, numerically, mishmash of Machakan weirdness, mostly giant spiders and warriors, some archers, several giants and trolls, and of course a large supply of their own mages, who bring out their fire elementals and earth elementals during the fight, and of course there are the castle towers that shoot arrows at us.

So, the battle opens about like I expect it. The crone gets an air shield above her, the priests and daughters do their various blesses/songs, the cavalry and infantry wait, because next the sun is blotted out by arrows, and the Machakan side of the battle suddenly has far less infantry and archers in it. This happens another time for the second round that the melee fighters wait, my archers softening up the defenders while the mages do their various support spells and the castle towers fail to kill anyone of import.

Next, the cavalry charges in... and gets stuck in the doorway thanks to spiders that net it in place. The battle is basically a farce for the next few turns, because the unicorn knights are tough, the spiders are not, and the towers keep firing at us while my longbowmen expend arrows on shooting things and the crone tosses various lightning bolts into the pileup. Between getting unstuck and stuck again, the cavalry and wardens manage to take out some of the bigger monsters. The huge forest giant/troll thing, its accomplices, two fire elementals, an earth elemental, and most of the gaggle of spiders, all go down. At about this point the castle towers finally succeed in killing the crone, and the commander in charge of the knights and wardens. The Machakas are already mostly fleeing, the longbowmen having destroyed almost everyone else, but now the longbowmen are out of arrows, and the towers are starting to rack up kills. Longbowmen flee. Midgets flee. Almost everyone flees on both sides, while the towers happily plink at anyone in range.

The only unit left on the Machakas side is a Black Hunter, the huge black spider. The only units left on our side, the only ones that didn't flee... are the two Castellians and the Hornburg Champion. With nobody else in range, the towers focus fire on our three remaining units. And our three remaining units go full honey badger and plod across the whole space between the wall and the last Machaka spider, while being pelted by masses of arrows. Just the three of them, two humans and a hobbit. This little fellowship, my three last units in the battle, end up winning the fight against the giant spider, and the whole storming of the castle with it.

So... yeah. While that might actually be pretty cool and badass if taken as a story, that fight was a total disaster. Almost all Knights and Wardens were lost, the surviving longbowmen are scattered to the winds, and I'm down two commanders, a priest, and a Crone of Avalon.

Thankfully, that wasn't nearly my biggest army.

[Frumple]

... most pathetic victories I've achieved have all been through Vengeance of the Dead. There's nothing quite like winning a fight through auto-rout after doing zero damage to the enemy.

[Kagus]

At least they fixed the Exponential Vengeance bug (...they did fix that, right?  RIGHT??)...

I've had a few "victories" where one of my expansion forces gets stomped by indies, but then for some bizarre reason the entire defending army gets the spooks and runs for the hills.  Both armies retreat, but the independent one leaves the map first because my only survivors are crippled or limping and can't make it off the battlefield fast enough to lose in time.


EDIT:

   When it comes to prophets the only special thing to note is that with a priest lv3 and up it adds plus 1 to the level where as everyone else just gets set to lv3. If I don't have a high level priest I just tend to prophetize whatever I can easily get that has the ability to move a lot of troops around at once.

Back in Dom 1, priest caster levels went from 2 to 5, rather than from 1 to 4 now (no idea why)...  Prophetizing someone would either set their level to 4 if they weren't priests, or add 1 to their level if they were.  ...so if you prophetized a level 2 priest, you'd end up with a level 3 prophet instead of a level 4 one you would've gotten if the dude was just some random mook.

Looooot of stuff in Dom 1 that seems pretty funny looking back on it now...  Like how clams were level 2 construction and took 10 water gems.  I kinda miss being able to put dowsing rods on non-blood commanders, but I guess I can see that being too easy to bootstrap into blood...

[Shadowlord]

It's not limited to 4, though - there are additional spells at the higher levels, and two unique holy boosters you can use to raise it, although there are better uses for them than powering your H4 up to H6 - like turning H2s into H3s instead so they can claim thrones unexpectedly.

[E. Albright]

If you want to cast H4 or (for some reason ) H5 spells, communions are a better bet than the boosters.

[Kagus]

Do communions still boost priest levels?  I noticed that power of the spheres no longer does that, haven't done any communions recently.

The old H5 spell used to be smite.  Fanaticism was just a reg'lar ol' H4, so any lizard king or high inquisitor could pop one off.


The new H5 just seems like a "Banish ALL the things!" button, can't come up with much of a better use for it unless you want to turn a bunch of H2's into smiters for some reason.


Also, this LA R'lyeh LP is...  Odd.  He's taken what I consider to be some bizarre scales.  I should watch it a bit more to find out how he's winning even with what I'd consider to be weirdness, especially since he took a dormant pretender and then didn't use the points as "a handicap".


EDIT:  Is there actually ever any reason at all to pick the celestial carp pretender?  I'm failing to see any sign of usefulness in the git.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Carp is the cheapest water bless chassis for some nations, at least. Some folks have said it expands you into water nicely, though I haven't tried that myself.
50 points, basedom 3 W2S1 is fairly reasonable as far as titans go.

I googled up some posts from the desura forums which say that priests with a master matrix boost just fine. Presumably same would be true of S1/B1H1's who cast communion master as well.

[Kagus]

Only nations that get the carp are T'ien Ch'i and Yomi/Shin/Jomon, and of those only EA and *possibly* LA (if you're insane, like me) T'ien Ch'i.  And of THOSE, only EA seems like it could really do much with a water bless.  Even then, an immobile pretender would probably be able to get you an overall better bless.

And if you wanna go diving, T'ien Ch'i gets the Devi of Good Fortunes, which not only provides the same leadership/waterbreathing but also gives a 25% increase in good events...  Which, for me, beats out population eater any day...  So, basically, it's just there for giving Yomi or Jomon waterbreathing, since Shinuyama can get an underwater foothold with kappas.


He can't fight worth a damn, eats population, and in my opinion really doesn't offer much of anything...  W/S doesn't offer a whole lot as far as crosspaths go, and even if it did you could just pay the same to get the jade emperor to plop air in the mix for free plus the 33% bad event reduction.  Or nab the celestial general for E/S/A, and all the goodies that brings.


I'unno...  I mean, it's a giant fucking carp, the thing should at LEAST have a fear aura.

[E. Albright]

The new H5 just seems like a "Banish ALL the things!" button, can't come up with much of a better use for it unless you want to turn a bunch of H2's into smiters for some reason.

I've never actually tried it, but IIRC I read it only boosts 1H to 2H. So pretty much supercharging banishers, yeah.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Only nations that get the carp are T'ien Ch'i and Yomi/Shin/Jomon, and of those only EA and *possibly* LA (if you're insane, like me) T'ien Ch'i.  And of THOSE, only EA seems like it could really do much with a water bless.  Even then, an immobile pretender would probably be able to get you an overall better bless.

There's no immobile W's, so carp is the cheapest W bless you're going to get if you want one.

It's my opinion that W9 is (if we must make generalizations) the best troop bless in the game. Most of the above nations get high defence sacreds that really benefit from W9 by going from hard to hit to nigh impossible to hit, not to mention the offensive benefit of 1,5 attacks per turn.

Now if you don't want a W bless then I agree there's little reason to take the carp. Most of the nations that get the Carp aren't exactly lacking in W and there's a better pretender selection if you want to pump S instead. The poploss I consider negligible though, it's only one unit after all and won't show up for the first thirty turns (I'm assuming people play Carp as an imprisoned W9). So... I guess we're agreeing then? Carp is good if you want a W bless but for any other purpose there are better pretenders available.

[Kagus]

As far as "better bless in general", I mean you can probably afford a bigger kind of bless with an immobile.  Like, I've been dicking around with an EA T'ien Ch'i bless that's 9B9W, imprisoned blood fountain.  If you're going for straight water then yeah, it's the best, but if you want more things it might be a better idea to pick summat else.

And while they do all get sacreds, that doesn't necessarily mean they're much in the market for a bless.  I was under the impression that MA TC and Shin/Jomon benefit the most from just having good scales to leverage their decent national lineup of dudes.


But yeah, if I wanted a straight water bless or W9 with a spot of Astral (less than would make the oracle the more economic choice), then it seems to fill the niche.  It's just doesn't seem to be one of those niches I'm particularly concerned with.

Hrmm...  Don't suppose anyone's played Yomi as a bless nation, eh?  They've got the summonable shikome and various tengus.  I just don't really see leveraging those summons as particularly, well...  Easy.  Then there's the priest problem.

[Rez]

Is there any information on what the changes to Pretenders will be?

[Delta Foxtrot]

No specifics, just what the changelog says. Around the official forum there's been very non-specific talk of point cost, stat and ability changes and such.

Goal seems to be to buff rainbow and monster pretenders so that people will use more than just dragons/titans/immobiles.
Alternatively the latter group will get nerfed to hell. It remains to be seen what exactly happens.

[Kagus]

Mmm, yes.  I mean, the game is just about taking the role of a god attempting to compete with other gods to gain ultimate control of the universal pantheon.  Why should your god actually mean anything or be at all as useful/powerful as generic summons?