Another bunch of newbie question

[Jezter]

Disclaimer: please excuse my bad English and the sheer noobishness of my questions

First - what about blessings?
As it is seems to me from dom3 faq - as soon as i got a recent level in one of magic schools (F9 for example), a bunch of sacred units and a priest - all of these units will receive a fine bonus when blessed in battle by this priest. But this is a theory.
In practice i made a f9 pretender, chose Mictlan - and quickly made a group of jaguar warriors accompanied by a priest. According to faq al by sacred units will receive flaming weapon bonus as well as bonus attack - but nothing happened. Units received no new special ability in battle.
So - how do these blessings work? Do they work in my dominion only? Or everywhere i got a priest and sacreds? Do they work on common units (mean no the sacred ones)? And finally - is it worth it?
And another question. Many guides here advise to focus on crafting magical items for my commanders. I've been using zerg tactics in most of the games - just overrunning my enemies with tons of cannon fodder - with a little bit of mage\priest support - and found out that even the most stout enemy units\leaders fall very quickly to a zerg. My own commanders\pretender god also fall to a well-numbered army very quickly. So is it really worth it? Is it possible to make an overpowered commander\deity using craft items? And would he be able to survive the zerg?

[Micah]

I don't know why your blessing didn't work, it sounds like you did everything correctly. When your sacreds get blessed properly the candles in the sacred icon get lit, did you click on your troops and make sure they were targeted properly with the bless? If you're not casting divine bless the normal bless can leave a lot of unblessed troops. In addition they don't get any new graphics on the battlefield while the bless is in effect, just the modifiers (although flaming weapons should cause the occasional fire). All you need is someone casting bless and sacred troops for it to work (there are some problems with undead sacreds, but Jaguar warriors should work fine). Bless has no effect on non-sacred units.

How worthwhile your bless is depends on what nation you're playing. Mictlan relies on their sacred troops, whereas Ulm doesn't have much worth spending the design points on.

And yes, a properly built commander can take on limitless amount of unbuffed troops, but pretty much everything will die to hard-hitting troops if they're buffed. The AI is especially bad at dealing with tricked-out units, but players can counter them. Try an Earth King (summoned from conjuration 8) with a charcoal shield, stymphlian wings, a wraith crown, the weapon faithful. Fill his misc. slots up with resistance items depending on what you're fighting and then script him to cast Summon Earth Power/Invulnerability/holdx3/attack and watch him go. Enough mages will likely be able to take him down, but you can see the effects he'll have on normal troops pretty well.

[Ferrosol]

Stupid question did you script your priest to cast blessing/divine blessing on your sacreds?

[Ironhawk]

Jezter - crafting items is far more important in MultiPlayer, rather than Single Player. Against the AI you will not likely need many special tactics

[Dedas]

Jezter, have you read the manual? All the basic stuff is described there.

[Aethyr]

Jezter,

"Divine Bless" blesses every blessable troop on the battlefield. If, instead, you are casting "bless" you must remember that the spell has a range. If your troops are out of this range, they will not be blessed.

Try placing your priest in the middle of your blessable troops, and scripting Bless, Bless, Bless, etc. Place your Blessable troops on "Hold & Attack" (nearest, rear, etc., according to your preference). Good luck