Best sacred units?

[Zooko]

Yeah, those Black Hunters and Black Hunter Lords are sure something. It's hard to afford their gold+resources in addition to getting good blessings though...

[jeffr]

I'ved used Pan's White Centaurs effectively. The only real problems (other than losing in the middle/end game ) I have had are with Machaka's Black Hunters and Mictlan's Jaguars Warriors.

I overcame the Hunters because I could outproduce them. If the Hunters could have been fielded in something approaching similar numbers, I probably would have lost.

I couldn't beat the Jaguars one on one and had to resort to a combined arms approach of softening up the Jaguaur hordes with ranged fire. Preferrable lots of ranged fire. The Jauguars are very tough, I think.

These latest battles were in a Zen modded game using Sabre Cherry's unit mod (which gives the White Centaur the light lance). But the White Centaurs were never defeated by any normal troop (sacred or otherwise) in any unmodded game I've played in the past that I can remember. Summoned troops (Mass Ghost Riders, Mass Devils, etc.) and Super Combatants are another matter entirely

[Zooko]

I think perhaps Flagellants with Fire-9/Astral-9 dual blessing are the best. The reason is that they cost only 10 gold and minimal resources each, and they can be recruited in any fortress. And when you throw them into hand-to-hand combat, they deal out great damage before falling.

You can find evidence of this in Saber Cherry's battle simulator. It appears to me that if you spend X gold and Y resources on Fire-9/Astral-9 flagellants, then the resulting team of flagellants will decisively win in hand-to-hand combat against other national troops that you could have bought for X gold and Y resources, even if you get a dual-blessing of your choice on sacred troops.

Am I wrong?

Note: flagellants are susceptible to missile fire. An Air-4 blessing might be valuable, or else battlefield tactics to protect your flagellants from being decimated by missiles before they get into the fray.

Also note that your supply of Flagellants has to be continually replenished. They aren't like Vans or Daoine Sidhe or Niefel Giants who are intended to slay enemies and keep going. Rather they are intended to slay enemies, then die themselves, and then be replenished by a new wave of even more Flagellants.

[Zooko]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Marignon can use The Baphomet, which starts with 2 Fire, 2 Astral, and is cheap (since he is immobile), which means you can get 9 Fire/9 Astral blessing for your Flagellants for fewer design points than almost any other popular dual blessing. And you can also recruit White Knights if you prefer expensive, durable, capitol-only sacred units.

I rarely recruit White Knights. They cost -- what -- 90 gold? and they don't dish out as much damage as nine Flagellants would. However, they do have their uses, such as being heavily armored (and thus safer against missile fire), being able to flank attack, and lasting for more battles.

I once had a White Knight or a Paladin or two successfully flank attack and chop up the enemy's entire leadership of half a dozen mages and bodyguards. That was fun! (The enemy was C'tis, played by Argitoth.)


Okay, just to recap:

Marignon, Baphomet, 9 Fire/9 Astral, Flagellants:

1. Cheapest sacred units period.
2. Among the best hand-to-hand fighters available at any price.
3. Plenty of design points left over for dominion (you need it to recruit more Flagellants per round), scales, etc.

[Zooko]

P.S. And don't forget the +4 Magic Resistance of the Astral-9 blessing. I'm currently playing a team game where my team-mate is doing this dual-bless-Flagellants strategy and my enemy is R'lyeh. It turns out that blessed Flagellants are resistant enough to mind blasts that they can go ahead and destroy the R'lyehn troops despite being under a barrage of mind blasts.

[Evil Dave]

Zooko said:

It appears to me that if you spend X gold and Y resources on Fire-9/Astral-9 flagellants, then the resulting team of flagellants will decisively win in hand-to-hand combat against other national troops that you could have bought for X gold and Y resources, even if you get a dual-blessing of your choice on sacred troops.

Am I wrong?

Not very wrong. I didn't try too many opponents for flaming flagellants, just ones that I thought might work. Two kinds can beat them. F9W9 Serpent Dancers demolish them on an equal resource basis (100% win), and are as good on an equal cost basis (47% win). E9W9 Heart Companions beat them soundly on an equal cost basis (83% win), but always lose on an equal resource basis. But both of these are capital-only units.

OTOH, it's not possible to perfectly test all opponents. Jaguar Warriors look like they might work, but the simulator can't handle their second form. Since it only handles melee, it can't cope with sacred spell-casters either. I wonder how W9S9 Shamen would do. They're half as many resources, and with a few buffs (Astral Shield and Luck) I think they might be able to hold off 11 guys each. Even with the S9 blessing, Flagellants have relatively low magic resistance, and they only have to fail once vs. the Astral Shield to turn into Walls of Meat for the Shamen to hide behind. Tho in a real battle, the Shamen would probably collapse from exhaustion...

[archaeolept]

meh, who says equal resource needs to be hand to hand? massed longbows swat those little buggers like the flies they are.

Where those guys shine is against early SCs (well, and most indies). I used to do the flaming head strat for Mary against Norfleet; put a bit of the fear of god in him for a change (its esp. successful because the twist of fate negates much of the lifedrain, as target does not seem to be maintained and the Vampire Queen will attack other flags who still have their twist of fate intact as readily as those who don't, it seemed)

I like all mictlan sacreds, the vans, the herse, the tuatha; maybe the dancers, pythium w/ a water bless, white centaurs.

I find spiders too... fragile ;p

[Endoperez]

I think one of the reasons I like to have good blessing for Marignon is the cheap and good Flagellants WITH Knights of the Chalice. If your enemy has Longbows, you can have small army of Knights to kill them off, and not too many early tactics work well against low-prot masses which deal lots of damage and small groups of high-prot high-stat elite units.

[AMF]

Ok, so, new guy here has to confess to something: I'm still not entirely sure what holy/unholy effects are...

I know, this is probably a really lame question, but, really, what is different about a holy/unholy unit, and what do the levels in them really mean? As far as I can tell, unholy commanders can reanimate better/more undead, but other than that, I'm sort of clueless.

Alarik

[Alneyan]

Holy/unholy units (or commanders) are your sacred units, particularly devoted to your cause... you get the picture. In game terms, they cost half upkeep (1/30th of their gold cost), and can be blessed. Blessing them gives a +3 morale bonus, and other effects depending on the magic you picked when *creating* your Pretender. Level 4 in any magic path gives a minor bonus, level 6/8 increases that bonus, level 9 gives a big bonus, and level 10 increases the level 4/6/8 bonus. For example, Fire 10 results in a +5 bonus to attack, plus flaming weapons; Fire 4 would only give +2 to attack. Stacking blessings can work out quite well, and this thread is dedicated to coming up with ways of boosting the power of sacred units via blessings. There is no difference between Holy and Unholy units here, except the colour of their candelabra icon.

Holy/unholy mages have access to Holy or Unholy magic; they are your priests, in other words. All priests can call back your Pretender (you need 40 priest levels to call the Pretender back), can build Temples, and require a Temple to be recruited. Holy priests can preach to boost Dominion in a province; Unholy priests can reanimate creatures. Holy and Unholy priests can also cast some spells, depending on their priest level: Banishment, Blessing spells and Morale spells are the most common for Holy priests, and Unholy priests have different spells depending on their nation. All priests are also sacred, including the Unholy priests of Broken Empire, who lack the Sacred icon, but still cost half the upkeep.

So higher levels in priest magic are only needed to get access to the better spells, and for preaching/reanimation purposes. On a related note, Prophets are effectively priests, but do not cost any upkeep, and will be either Holy or Unholy depending on your nation and on the Prophet (Unholy priests stay Unholy when they are priests, and vice versa).