Reanimation

[NickW]

Anyone figured out what qualifies a priest to be a reanimator in Dom3?. It was easy to tell in Dom2, unholy priests could reanimate, but now it appears unholy is no longer in the game. This leaves me scratching my head about who can reanimate and who can't. I got surprised when a Mictlan national hero showed up and he could reanimate.

[Kristoffer O]

Undead priests automatically qualifies as 'unholy' or reanimators. Apart from undead there are a number of nations: MA ermor, Pangaea, C'tis.

I'm not sure of the specifics. If you find anything that seems odd report it. There might be bugs in the mechanic, or forgotten guys thet should or shouldn't be able to reanimate.

[PDF]

BTW, why did you make Unholy disappear ?
It was a rather simple way to single out those evil, mad undead spawners http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Kristoffer O]

Apart from thematic reasons there were lots of things that were difficult with thet label as well. All living unholy priests were needed a tag in one way or another to be able to perform normal religious activities. So basically the same problem but with other units. The current mechanic is less ad hoc both code wise and theme wise I think.

[NTJedi]

Kristoffer O said:
Undead priests automatically qualifies as 'unholy' or reanimators.



So if your prophet dies with twiceborn or the spell ritual of rebirth is used then your undead prophet will now be able to reanimate??

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[NickW]

Interesting, this means that any mage with both death and holy magic is potentially a reanimator now. I suspect several nations will be able to take advantage of that.

[ologm]

My wight maged oracles suddenly have a new purpose.

[Shovah32]

But getting a priest with death magic, researching twiceborn and spending gems on it just to get a single reanimator seems a little pointless to me, although using twiceborn to protect an important mage/priest and using the ability to reanimate only where its really required could work.

[NTJedi]

Lets not forget ritual of rebirth... if a prophet is in the hall of fame and dies then the prophet can return with ritual of rebirth.
Now unless its changed with Dominions_3... this mummy can not only do reanimation but has the previous priest levels of your prophet without being your prophet.
Now for the extra bonus... which is you can make him your prophet again and raise the priest level even higher... providing you the ability to reanimate Longdead Horsemen!

[NickW]

I think the surprise factor of reanimation could be worth the expense of twiceborn. I don't recall the gem cost of twiceborn, but I don't recall it being expensive. A nation able to easily get death priests could have 6 or 7 of them do it to get a little reanimating squad and build up a horde of undead that might be a nasty surprise for someone. Someone not expecting a horde of undead is going to have to shift gears fast to build up undead counters and it puts them in a bad spot if the undead horde is being alternated with a mortal army. They had better guess right about where to send all those priests, or they are going to lose a lot of priests to mortal troops.

[Sindai]

Sounds like "unholiness" or "reanimator" is a good candidate for an additional unit ability icon.

[BigJMoney]

NTJedi said:
Now unless its changed with Dominions_3... this mummy can not only do reanimation but has the previous priest levels of your prophet without being your prophet.
Now for the extra bonus... which is you can make him your prophet again and raise the priest level even higher...



Sounds like a bug/exploit to me. If he isn't your prophet any more, his priest level should go back down once he dies.

=$=

[Morkilus]

BigJMoney said:

NTJedi said:
Now unless its changed with Dominions_3... this mummy can not only do reanimation but has the previous priest levels of your prophet without being your prophet.
Now for the extra bonus... which is you can make him your prophet again and raise the priest level even higher...



Sounds like a bug/exploit to me. If he isn't your prophet any more, his priest level should go back down once he dies.

=$=



It's not an exploit unless you can gain some huge advantage that you should employ _every_ time because it's so efficient. This sounds like so much effort that it would rarely be worth it; it's little quirks like this that make exploring the game so much fun.

[BigJMoney]

I didn't realize the definition of exploit was relative to its magnitude. Regardless of its severity, I still don't believe this was intended design.

=$=

[Maltrease]

This does work, but longdead horsement are not an option. Longdead, ghouls and souless are all you get. I had a level 4 profit priest. The plus side is you can save a bit on maintence and possibly increaes your skill in death magic with this tactic.

[BigJMoney]

You know, I suppose I already knew that. In my current game, I got a H3 hero who I promptly made my prophet. He did not gain the ability to reanimate Horsemen. I wonder if this is always the case with choosing a prophet, because it wasn't in DomII.

=$=