DEATH!!!

[Nick_K]

Your bless effects are based on the magic your god starts with - gaining or losing it during the game doesn't affect this. Whenever a sacred unit of yours is blessed with the 'bless' or 'divine blessing' spell it gains all of these effects.

Taking very high levels of magic can result in sacred units that are ridiculously powerful when blessed. This allows you to steamroller enemies in the early game without having to research or anything first.
Blessing always increases morale by 2 even if you have no magic on your god.

The bless effects start at level 4. You get a 'special' one at level 9.
For instance: Fire gives a bonus to attack (+2 at level 4 IIRC, then +3 at level 6, +4 at 8, +5 at 10). At fire level 9 you get the 'flaming weapons' ability which substantially increases the damage you can do.

Water gives defense bonuses and the quickness +50% ability (move 50% faster, get an extra action every other turn).

Kailisia's elites have a high defnese so with the water bless they are very hard to hit. They hve 2 attacks so the fire bless makes them do a lot of damage. The combination makes them too tough for the AI to deal with.

Of course, there are lots of other tactics. i usually don't like to use expensive blesses because there end in an early-game rush which I find unsatisfying against the AI.

As for morale... I don't think the size of the enemy army is taken into account, but the size of your unit certainly is.

[jimkehn]

OK...Thanks everyone. Especially Wish....for the laugh about the sneeze comment.

Now...I hear talk about a "Dominion Kill" strategy. I think I understand that if your Pretender has no more white candles on the map....Dominion?....then you lose. Is this correct? And is this what is meant by dominion kill? And how does one achieve this? By temples and strong priests preaching? Or I assume....more likely...some sort of strong dominion dominant spells?

[Wish]

it aint easy, strong dominion, blood sacrafices, and sneaky preachers are the only way to go about it.

sometimes all you need is strong dominion.

[Nick_K]

I don't think you can rely on dominion kills... even the AI can usually prevent them. Sometimes an AI will have a low dominion though and will just die out.
You need to be careful it doesn't happen to you, of course. Build temples and preach if you see your dominion getting too low. If you start next to a couple of enemies with high dominion things can get a little troublesome early on.

My main use of dominion kills is to avoid storming heavily defended castles. If I conquer most of an enemies' provinces and build temples there then I can preach in a few besieged provinces until his dominion dies.