Unless I'm testing some special situation, I always go for a strong bless effect in my games, and I find that I always get my money's worth, no matter what nation I play. Since the effects are additive to the units, i.e. you get a bonus to your attack from a Fire magic blessing instead of just having your base attack stat replaced by the same one all blessed troops might receive, that's what keeps things in balance. The really expensive sacred units tend to have pretty good stats already, but blessings can either close gaps or boost those units to an amazingly high potency. The cheap sacred units, e.g. the flagellents, aren't that great without their blessings. The power of the blessings makes them into much more potent units, but they still won't be a match for, say, a blessed Warden of Avalon. Because of this, the relative costs for the units still keeps them in balance.
I don't want to raise the spector of "Supercombatents" because, well, there's a counterbalance for everything, but I find 10 blessed Wardens can take on just about any number of flagellents without too much fuss. It's the blessed Knights of the Challice they have to be careful of.
On the note of blessings maybe being over-powered, well, you do have to sacrifice in other areas to get them, and they will follow along certain lines due to their natures. For example, Abyssia doesn't have to concern themselves overly with the flaming weaponry given to blessed troops with a Fire magic 9+ pretender. You can plan accordingly, especially since the new titles give you a peak at what kind of magic the enemy gods are packin', and try to work out counters. I'd worry more about them being over-powered than under-powered, but I think they are pretty well in balance. So much comes from how well you design them, so it is hard to seperate innate power from design skill there, but so far, I haven't had any qualms with their cost or potency.
Now, the second tier blessings are different in that they are effects that are either there or aren't, such as flaming weaponry, but since (to continue this example) the damage for flaming weaponry is in addition to the unit's normal damage, it still works out the same way in most cases.
It all balances out in the end, IMO, although it does take skill (thankfully) to plan and prepare the right kind of blessing for your nation. Obviously, Ulm doesn't really need more Protection, so an Earth magic blessing isn't that useful. Giving them a Fear effect, however . . .
Likewise, the sacred undead usually already have a built-in Cause Fear ability (although blessing them with an additional one gives a cumulative result, if I'm not mistaken), but an MR boost via Astral magic (e.g. Banishment protection) is a marvelous thing.
Maybe I'm overstating my case here, but the blessing effects are one of my favorite parts of Dom II. They really bring the "godly" flavor of the whole thing onto the battle field. A blessing from Ceannthine, the Burning Soul, King of Every Flame is a very different thing from that of Lobheair, Mistress of Poison and Goddess of Decay. There's a dimension added by the blessings that I'd
sorely miss if it weren't there, and the only thing I'd want to tweak about them is to have a summary for your god's blessing available without having to check out a current blessed unit. (I always have to go and check my prophet, as prophets are permanently blessed, if I forget exactly what my god's blessing does.)
Your milage may vary, of course, but I really do think y'all will find the blessings one of the very best parts of Dom II.
[ October 26, 2003, 20:06: Message edited by: Psitticine ]
Poll: How much will the new bless effects affect your pretender design?
Hybrid Mode
