Buffing holy power

[Baalz]

It seems that the Crystal Shield does not work on people who have only holy power (it does buff holy power on mages who have other paths already). Is this a bug or WAD? I know there is an artifact or two, but is there any non-unique way to buff holy power on straight priests? You can't empower, you can't use a communion, there are no regular boosters...

[Reverend Zombie]

Baalz said:
It seems that the Crystal Shield does not work on people who have only holy power (it does buff holy power on mages who have other paths already). Is this a bug or WAD? I know there is an artifact or two, but is there any non-unique way to buff holy power on straight priests? You can't empower, you can't use a communion, there are no regular boosters...



What about Power of the Spheres? I don't know if it works on Holy.

[Valandil]

Actually, you can kill your prophet off, if he's in the hall of fame, reanimate him (via ritual of rebirth), wait 12 turns, and prophetise him again. Rinse and repeat.

Swords of justice/injutice, but their unique.

Hell Power? Power of the spheres? Dunno.

[Halancar]

In battle, you can use a communion on priest with astral or blood, it also boosts holy. I would expect that a crystal matrix works as well, but I've never tried it.

[Valandil]

Crystal/slave matrix works, yes.

[Tichy]

Valandil: Are you saying that if you reanimate a dead prophet he'll retain his H3 (or Hn+1) without being marked "prophet" anymore?

[BigDisAwesome]

You can. I also have done it before Tichy.

[Evil Dave]

I like it! Either "Once a powerful priest, always a powerful priest..." or "Old prophets never die, they just get reanimated and come back stronger!". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Baalz]

Power of the Spheres is actually the effect that the Crystal Shield gives (casting PotS on somebody holding the Crystal Shield has no effect), so it only effects mage/priests.

To give some context of what I'm thinking about LA C'tis has a pretty cool H4 spell to buff all their undead, the H3 version only hits 5 squares, which is ineffective given the large amount of undead you're fielding. It seems like the only way to get a H4 priest before late game is to make a Lizard King your prophet...which obviously is limited to one at a time. Crystal shield, PotS, communion, hell power, and (presumably) Crystal matrix won't work on priests...

[Evil Dave]

The one time I wanted to do that w/ LA C'tis, I empowered my Lizard Kings with whatever path I had the most spare gems in at the time. After that, the mage-only path boosters work fine. This isn't cheap, but I was just fooling around in SP...

[Valandil]

Hrmph. That seems the only way, although what bout smmoning coatls? Are they ctissian?

[Baalz]

Working from memory here so I certainly might be mistaken, but I believe they're H3.

[Valandil]

Yep. I checked.
Edite: But they're also mages!

[HoneyBadger]

Since we're talking about making holy power more power-FULL, I'd just like to suggest giving individual Pretender chassis-either all of them or specific ones-their own personal Holy magic spells that they grant to their priests, in addition to the standards.

I'm not sure how this would work, and it would definitely take some hardcoding and balancing to implement, but it could make chosing a Pretender a whole lot more interesting, especially when it comes to the more unusual Titans, who currently probably don't get picked nearly as much as they should.

I realize also that it could have severe effects on a nation's balancing, but then so do Bless strategies. I can't see why this would be too much different, making priests for a Nation more versatile and powerful, as opposed to making just the sacred units. Especially when you consider that points spent on a Pretender to get that Pretender's specific spell(s) could have been used to get a higher Bless instead, which would have also affected the priests, as well as the basic sacred units.

[Valandil]

That's not really what this thread is about at all... neat idea though.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, you're right. I'll move it to another thread.

[PvK]

I have used astral army-wide magic boost spells for Broken Empire Ermor, to get their holy levels up to cast their higher-level holy spells. One of their core tricks, it seems to me.

[llamabeast]

Sounds like Couatls are your solution Baalz.

[llamabeast]

Actually have Couatls got hands to carry a Crystal Shield? Hmm.

Well if not they can always do Power of the Spheres or communion.

[Valandil]

They have astral magic, but no hands. Power of the spheres is easy for them though.