Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Recently, it was revealed that the spell Life After Death presented a way to turn many commanders at once into soulless versions of themselves. The primary use of this was to sidestep the upkeep cost of these mages - a clever trick! But if the trick is used on priests, the resulting undead priests gain access to the Reanimate command. Knowing this, practically any nation can now add the ability to create undead freespawn to thier arsenal.

So, my question to the community is: does this qualify as an exploit? Why or why not?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I would say it's an exploit and also taints the themes for some nations which are opposite.
** It's NOT only available to death nations, pick any nation and I guarantee they can make this happen.


Suggested Fix:
Prevent the spell from working on any sacred units, thus removing the exploit.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

No.
First, it's available only to death nations who should also have something that kills with poison or cold (Foul vapors, for example)
Second, it requires recruiting of many priests and a ton of micromanagement.
And if someone really aims for it and has appropriate magics... Actually, why not?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I like it the way it is.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Meh, requires level 7 spell and it's not that powerful. You've got to have lots of priests, which means either you're not recruiting mages, you're using mages to generate freespawn, or you're putting temples up where there are no castles and getting weak indie priests. By the time level 7 spells are researched a couple hundred free undead is hardly earth shattering. I see this is being only very situationally useful and thematic. You could maybe use it for something interesting like cranking out a bunch of giant undead, but it's just one of the many, many interesting quirks you can exploit into a useful strategy.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

By the time someone has researched level_7 they have plenty of time to buy priests from one location which is only fort/temple. 20 or 30 Indy priests have very little upkeep and would definitely be worth changing into undead reanimating priests by middle or late game. While waiting these priests will be preaching dominion and decoys so it won't be a waste. In any case the strategy benefit is strong enough where it will be seen in both SP games and MP games.

It comes down to whether or not KO and JK feels this strategy taints the themes of some nations enough where a change is desired.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I can't imagine that this really matters. It seems terribly difficult to exploit. I guess the idea is to cast a Battlefield wide spell that deals damage to your own mages so that they'll come back as soulless, and then those soulless have to be immune to the spell or else they'll die.

Even if you did this with indie priests, they're only level 1 holy which means they could only reanimate corpses. Even playing Ermor, finding a buttload of corpses for a ton of priests is difficult and requires lots of pillaging, or micro moving those priests around.

I don't think this is worth the effort.

A good use might be killing off your own mages to make them upkeep free. If you could do that for 300-400 a turn worth of mages that could make a big difference in the long term.

Jazzepi

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Taint the theme? Thematically a powerful death mage has raised many priests as undead. As I think a lich pretender is available to every nation I don't see any nation as being unthematically swayed to the dark side.

Besides, just to run the numbers, if you've got 20 indie priests thats about 2000 gold (counting the temple and upkeep). A whole lot more than that if you get a castle and more powerful priests. Now you've got to ench-7 which is probably either something you went straight for to support this strategy (big opportunity cost) or something you're not hitting terribly early in the game. Now you also need a D-4 mage and a N/W one (or something like that), and spend some gems to set this up/cast.

After all these opportunity costs you're now generating 100 longdead per turn. This is at the point in the game (after you've spent several turns actually raising the dead) where there is widespread use of SCs and battlefield wide spells.

Again, you could probably make a useful strategy with it, but I can't imagine this is balance threatening or even common.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I was under the impression level 1 priests couldn't reanimate long dead? Or am I smoking crack?

Jazzepi

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Undead priests are treated as one additional lvl.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

On the gripping hand, as battlefield wide spells become more important, the actual quality of troops seems to matter less than the number of warm (or cold) bodies. With Army of Lead, Fog Warriors, Will of the Fates, etc 100 longdead a turn seems much nicer than the 20-30 chaff troops I'm able to afford in one game. And they're immune to cold, which helps, particularly against Frostbrand wielding thugs.

Still a lot of work and risk and opportunity cost for a fairly minimal advantage.

As as theme goes, there are very few nations that should be outright opposed death magic and everybody winds up summoning at least Banelords anyway...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Not an exploit. It makes sense and it doesn't even reward you that much.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Whoa.

LOL. I've been playing dominions for over 2 years now. I love all the random crap I find out from out of nowhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Jazzepi

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I don't see any exploit here, it's just the spell working as intended, and reanimation working as intended.
And if your problem is thematic, then what are you doing with those death mages in the first place?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Man, I get the same question all the time about my stockpile of virgins.

Jazzepi

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

The fact that they don't cost upkeep anymore sounds like the exploit to me...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

You don't need a W/N mage to do this. A mage could cast Immolation (Alt3) or Soul Vortex (Alt6) or you could even trade for the Rime Hauberk(s) to use it's chill, although a 1W mage casting Breath of Winter (Enc1) would be easier/cheaper.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Yeah I have a feeling that people are assigning too much difficulty to this particular strategy. All you have to be able to do is cast Life After Death - simple matter with a little planning. There is like a million ways to kill off your mages after that in such a way that they are not in danger beyond your control.

As for the people who dont think its worth the investment - I have to admit I'm surprised. You are telling me that spending enough to just get even 10 indy priests is significant? Not really. And it is even less so when you realize you can turn them into undead to remove thier upkeep. At that point you can just churn out what, 50 longdead a turn? Thats like paying 600gold for an undead generator. Who would say no to this?? There is no point in the game where I would turn down 50 free longdead a turn.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

BTW I am pretty certain that it is hit or miss. Just because a unit dies under the spell does not mean it will come back. I have been doing this in a sp game for a while, using the artifact. But I would often see mages die(by cold aura) and not appear as souless. If this si true than it is a big enough nerf as is.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Yeh, I don't see a problem with a powerful death mage making a ton of undead priests for a nation. It's no worse than creating a pile of Liches or or Spectres for some tooty fruity "good" nation.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I like the idea of a powerhungry evil god who is killing his minions to raise them as soulless death mages.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Question for the thematic argument people: Who leads all these free undead? Don't you need death mages to cart them around, or does turning the priest into a soulless priest grant them to ability to lead undead?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Undead priests get undead leadership.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

But if you use them to move the undead around, they're obviousl no longer reanimating, so it is indeed an extra annoyance.

Question: if you pull the same trick with regular indy commanders, do they gain undead leadership too?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Undead Leadership is not difficult to get. There are plenty of tricks like above or you could just summon a cheap mound king or bane or something.

The fact remains that a "living" nation with access to 50-100 free longdead per turn just seems like an exploit.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

As far as I know, all undead commanders get undead leadership.

What would like as a solution would be to just to make them reappear as regular troops and not commanders...

This 'strategy' is pretty much a must_do solution in end-game to reduce your upkeep. With enough time you could reduce your upkeep to 0 with insignificant loses given your reduction in upkeep. I can't really believe that some people kept this kind of game-breaking strategy to themselves.

The fact that any nation can pull this trick easily with indy priests seems even more dumb to me.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Ok, follow up question: Is it equally unthematic for a pure and righteous nation to recruit circle masters from the Black Tower or cast the Raise Dead spell in combat? In what way is the Life after Death spell an exploit rather than a tool in the toolbox? Are the thematics of the nation a rigid handicap or just a starting point that can be branched out of?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

No, I'm not going to be dragged into a thematic argument. Of course any nation can have death magic, either via thier pretender or mages from sites. But the core of the argument here is about capabilities, not theme. You have the set of "living" nations which, by and large, were designed to operate without undead freespawn. (I'm talking about freespawn here - not something you spend gems on - its a big difference) But now we have a combination of spells which can give undead freespawn to any nation.

To me, this seems like an oversight, rather than WAD.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Yes, but that goes against the themes for some nations which are not intended to be EVIL. And there's a significant gem cost difference between using 5 death gems to change 20 priests(or more) into undead reanimating priests verses using 120 death gems to summon a few liches and several sceptres.

In regards to the gold for buying these priests, this purchase provides multiple uses... it's not a one bucket investment. The priests will not only be preaching dominion, but they provide decoys, item catching and banishment defense. The fort and temple already exist for most strategies, so it's not like an extra pair will need to be built. Not every fort should have a lab in early game.

As mentioned earlier the overall gem and gold cost is extremely cheap for nations becoming undead generators.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I don't see the problem. As pointed out earlier, it is a late game spell which requires a lot of research. And Undead are nothing but chaff. Especially at a late game like that.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Life after death is just doing what it says on the box, giving a unit wether it be militia or mage or priest a extended unnatural life.

By the time players can pull it off, the battlefield is ruled by SC's, thugs, battlefield wide damage spells and large area effect evocation and master enslave etc, etc anyway. So 50-100 per turn longdead is no big deal. If you could pull it off in the early to midgame it would be a exploit but not as a lvl 7 spell.

Doesn't it also reduce MR to 5 or something low as well? Which destroys the mages/priests usefulness on a battlefield.

I don't think its an exploit and not even unthematic as you can play a evil god with any nation.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Any nation can be evil with the right God. (Speaking of which, how were your non-death-using nations planning to get a LaD caster in the first place?)

Anyway, even once you do this, it's vulnerable to assassins with anti-undead items, or dominion push with Purgatory since their priests are busy (which will also zap the undead they've already gotten), or just spamming anti-undead spells/items in general to wipe out the freespawn (or the undead commanders; send over a flying thug with Flambeau and watch the soulless dissolve after their leader goes down) after they reach the battlefield. It's not like soulless are some kind of unstoppable killing machines - without something like Storm or Darkness practically any nation can butcher them easily.

As an exploit, it seems to have a long way to go to catch up to clams, and they've been around forever.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Well, the prevailing attitude definitely seems to be that this is not an exploit. Or perhaps better said that it may be an exploit but occurs to late in the game to unbalance things. I can't say that I agree with these positions but if its not an exploit you can be sure I will be using this in my next game.

You may wish you had changed your vote when I overrun your nation with my unstoppable undead hordes in the next game!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

for the costs, does the spell cost any thing?

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Yeah, I'd agree it's not so much an exploit as playing a wicked necromantic strategy.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Personally I'd much rather see your undead death mage machinery than the usual Tartarian SC / Abomination stuff.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Well Tartarians and Abominations are research level_9 and definitely late game where the massive undead chaff are level_7, so there will be a time window difference.
It won't stop the usual strategies we see... it means we'll only see this added into existing strategies. Minimal effort, small cost, for massive amounts of free undead chaff... oh yeah it's coming.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Tartarian are getting changed too. So the chaff armies will be even more problematic.

The thing is that thematically you can justify anything, so dropping this "argument" sounds like a good idea.

From a term of balance, armies of chaff are rather useless at lvl 7. Well, if it were not for the turn limit that guarantee you a victory. However, a 100% reduction in cost of mages and priest for minimal effort ? Doesn't that sound a bit unbalancing ?

I mean, the MR argument is a joke. You can just buy again the same amount of mages and priests in a few turns. Even if half of your low MR resurrected units get killed, you doubled your capacity for buying new fresh mages !

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

They cost no upkeep because they are lame undeads. Even Dusk Elders or Tartarians don't cost any upkeep. WAD.
You might say that this makes this spell too good/overpowered/unbalanced, but that's not the same as an exploit.

1) Doubled? Upkeep is just 1/15 of unit cost, so zombifying all of your mages will increase your mage money by 6.67%. 3.33% for priests.
2) Losing half of your mages is serious business! And it is going to take some time to recruit them back, not just gold.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

The fact that most summons don't cost any money or upkeep seemed dumb to me in the first place, but that's the way the game works. It's be great if that changed too, something like spending 1 gem every 15 or 30 turns to keep your summons alive would make summons more "balanced" toward regular units.

Now, that's a perfect example of a strawman argument.

If you transform your mages and priest, your mage & priest for those upkeep becomes zero. That's a 100% reduction. That means for the next turns (not only one) you can buy again 1/15 of what you just killed FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. Note in capital letter the part that you missed. It seemed so obvious to me that I didn't even write it.

The rest of the game is more than one turn. I'm assuming 15 turns for the sake of putting up a number, so I said doubled. It could be 30 or 45, that means triple or more...

EDIT : the counterargument I see coming is that the upkeep for the new mages will cost money. I will already answer that argument : the combo can be done more than once.

From the thread, it would seem like I overstated this part. It would seem that only a few mages and priests don't get reanimated...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Level 7 mean the game is in a stage where there is probably no neutral province.

So to use this trick you need to *risk* your mages/priests in a fight where they will end with MR 5 and vulnerable to any anti-undead spell (and iirc they will also get morale 50 so you lose all if your forces have to retreat).

This alone balance this use of LAD for me. I can't see how someone can want to reduce the MR of all his mages in a late game battle against a real opponent, so the only possibility I see to use that is in an arranged battle...

But it's also very unlikely I would trust sufficiently anyone to arrange a fight to do that (and imagining someone succeed to arrange such battles, it's like the pseudo sickle exploit : if you have the diplomacy skill to convince someone to let you win battles, instead of trying to steal your artefacts / kill your mages, you just desserve the benefit after all).

Anyway, I understand that some players can consider this overpowered and bad for the game, which does not mean it's an exploit. Personally I consider instant battlewide offensive spells cast by the defender in round one far more overpowered and worse for the interest of the game, but I won't use the word "exploit" to try to convince people of my views. Like other too powerful spells, or unperfect game mechanics, LAD just work like it was designed to.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Before I start answering, let me remind you that we are discussing the strength of this strategy, which has nothing to do with it being an exploit or not.

And if you look over a period of 1500000 turns, you can get 100000 times the mages :O :O :O
More seriously, it's your mage producing capacity that increases by 3.33%-6.67%.
However, if we also assume that out of 15 mages you zombify, one dies (due to accident, or the spell not working properly, or soulless being lame and dying/being banished etc.), that benefit is completely canceled. If more than 1 dies, then the spell starts losing you money.

Now don't forget those that die because they are 5MR soulless.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

I guess my only problem is with soulless, mindless priests. That isn't really unholy its just silly - they should really take a hit to their holy magic level to reflect that they have been reduced to zombies.

As for other mages - well they become pretty useless for almost everything other than research (and leading the undead). 1 hit point, poor MR, abysmal precision - and I think mindless beings should take a hit to their research ability.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

They end up as one hitpoint mages? D:

Eeeeww. Lord help you if you ever run into anyone casting a battlefield wide AOE spell.

Jazzepi

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Clearly you've never seen a Pope.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

And if you're doing this to reduce costs on your researchers don't forget to count in the lost research time in getting them to the battlefield and the risk in exposing them to battle. Which, by the way, has to be a significant enough battle to convince the AI to spend gems...

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

It may be particularly fun if the AI overwrite Life after Death but not the spell used to kill the mages. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Good one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Takes just one turn, set mages on patrol so they're outside the castle and cast something that summons independent troops there (horrors, ghost riders, etc.).
You can also use Ankh to make sure Life after Death effect works.
And place mages near a poison cloud or chill creature, with orders to hold, so no need to cast any spell either.
Of course, you'll need to something that will kill the enemy, but not too fast.

Re: Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?
 

Hi, the spell in question only works on members of the hall of fame. It would be a really sorry game if there's even one indie priest in the hall of fame. so I don't see it as a problem at all. Bwaha