heretics

[sidhos]

What use would I have for recruiting a unit with the heretic ability? From the way I'm reading the description, the heretic lowers MY dominion. I may be missing something, so I'm asking. What strategic benefit would I have in lowering my own dominion?

[Quitti]

If they are stealthy, you can hide them in your opponents lands, or in your own lands where enemy dominion is seeping in.

Heretics generally offer something unique for a nation or a choice for extremely cheap benefits with the drawback of dropping your dominion. eg. LA Pyth gets only reliable source of blood/fire/earth magics from heretics and the mages are very very cheap.

[BlanketThief]

Heretics lower any dominion if I recall. Sometimes you might want to recruit them for the paths they offer, or if they're stealthy to act as stealth preachers basically.

[Tecnócrata]

If your dominion is high enough, 1 or 2 value Heretics should be a minor problem, since every point cuts their chances of lowering dominion by 5%. 3 value heretics, having (3 x 30 = 90%) chance of lowering before substracting, are more harsh.

[brxbrx]

For Pythium, heresy is the price to pay for the greater variety of mages with cool abilities.
If you have a heretic that isn't stealthy, you can still use him to your advantage by planting him in an area with strong enemy dominion since the heretic preaches against all gods, not just you.

[Jarkko]

Heretics allow you to take a low initial Dom score. If you get past the initial rush phase, place heretics in your border castles. No dominions, absolutely none, will get to a province where you have a dozen or fifty heretics working as lab-slaves/researchers. Mictlan may happily try to blood-sac your dominion to death, and you will just laugh behind your wall of heretics who don't believe in anything :)

Just make sure you have no heretics in your capital and a few provinces around it. Heretics drop the dom just in the province where they reside.

[sidhos]

Thanks for the help everyone. The ones I encountered, as a random special in a province, don't have stealth. All the replies were useful, though. Thank you.

[Soyweiser]

Wow, which units where those? I didn't know there was a heretic site.

[Foodstamp]

Wow, which units where those? I didn't know there was a heretic site.

+one

[Valerius]

Don't know if there are other sites but one is the Telesterion, a nature site that generates 1N1E and allows recruitment Epoptes (Heretic 2, Healer 20, N1 100% EN 10% N) and Mystes (1N 10% EN, no specials).

[Foodstamp]

Ah that is right. I remember seeing that site during an MP game. It must be pretty rare because that is the only time I ever saw it.

[Soyweiser]

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Telesterion

Nice, the mages are also pretty cheap.