Blessing Question

[earwicker7]

Fairly easy question... if a priest wants to bless himself and the units next to him, does he need to cast Bless once, or twice, or is it a situation where another priest has to bless him? I'm not sure if Bless is a "Self" or "Target" or "Self/Target" spell.

[iRFNA]

The AI basically blesses as it damn well pleases. Itself, other units, whatever. They can bless themselves, though, as well as others.

How many casts it takes could vary greatly from battle to battle depending on what squares the AE lands on and the effects of precision on blessing from afar.

[earwicker7]

Gotcha. Thanks!

[Executor]

Sometimes he even misses and blesses regular troops instead of sacreds all together!

QM - Remove the little bugger wolfs from the Yomi Kings escort!!!

[Kobal2]

Bless is targeted, but has an AoE (which gets bigger the Holier the priest is). Your best bet to bless both the priest and some troops at the same time is to put the priest inside the block of holy units.
Even so, where exactly the spell lands is dependant on the priest's precision, and the spell itself doesn't have a precision bonus so it can be quite inaccurate. In fact, it's not altogether rare for solo thugs/SCs with a single Bless order to miss themselves entirely !

As a rule of thumb, a lone H1 priest trying to bless himself + the 9 squares of troops around him he should Bless 3 times to reliably catch everyone (obviously the troops need to be on Hold and Attack or Guard Commander to stay nice and clumped).

[thejeff]

Actually it's a little more complicated than that, though the basic advice is sound.

Bless is 100 precision. It will never miss its target. Sometimes it will miss the only sacred unit in the area. This does not seem to make sense.

If you look a little more closely it becomes clear. Though Bless always hits the one square that it targets it also has an AoE. Which squares are in the AoE are random. The AI tries multiple castings of Bless on different targets to see which one gets the best results. Then when it actually casts the spell it rerolls the AoE.
Any unit, sacred or not, or even an enemy can be the target. What matters is that the test casting got good results. This is what leads to the solo thug missing himself. It will never happen if he's alone, but if he brings chaff with him or if the enemy has fliers who attack on round one he could miss himself. Pan PD's harpies are good for that.

[Executor]

And hence Yomi Kings wolfs should be removed cause they only screw up their thug/sc capabilities.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Executor

And hence Yomi Kings wolfs should be removed cause they only screw up their thug/sc capabilities.

Or do the wolves just balance the Dai Oni's out by making them that little bit more difficult to use (ie. you have to script bless as 2nd spell, and they rout a lot quicker when used solo)


Maybe all recruitable SC's (or maybe all SC's?!) should have a crappy retinue with them in order to make them more difficult to use solo. As if the battle started with the SC fielder losing 50% of the total HP in battle in first 1-2 rounds, then the route checking each turn will make their lives a lot more difficult (with one or two hits putting it over the 75% mark). But in large battles the SC's will act as normal.

Not sure how this would work in practice, but it's possibly an interesting idea (rather than all the new uber SC killing spells or SC nerf ideas I've seen mentioned before)

[thejeff]

It may have that effect, but it's stupid. Not necessarily from a mechanics/balance point of view, but from a "realism"/suspension of disbelief one.

Giving a powerful creature bodyguards to make it easier to beat doesn't match expectations from the real world or even from fantasy sources. Just this games mechanical quirks.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by thejeff

It may have that effect, but it's stupid. Not necessarily from a mechanics/balance point of view, but from a "realism"/suspension of disbelief one.

Giving a powerful creature bodyguards to make it easier to beat doesn't match expectations from the real world or even from fantasy sources. Just this games mechanical quirks.

Hhhmmm, I'm not sure I agree with that. Powerful beings would surely attract minnions of much weaker power. Whether or not they wanted to attact them is another matter but it would surely be a possiblity with regards 'realism'.

Do all the pop/films stars etc want all the crazy obsessed fans that follow them everywhere. Some do, some don't I'd guess, but one thing for certain is they can't do anything about it. So maybe powerful beings in Dominions can't do anything about the crappy chaff that follows them everywhere. As that's the price they have to pay for being big and powerful, and famous in the eyes of the people of that nation.

Since thematically, surely some feeble or weak, citizans or creatures, of Niefelheim's empire would be attracted to the might and fame of an uber Jarl, and follow him everywhere he went. Flies and **** etc etc.