First game with High Priestess: Impressions

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I tried High Priestess on a medium map with three enemy AI's on knight level. I had a good start I think although I didn't have any desert fields in range even if savanna was everywhere. Since High Priestess can get better summons in the desert, that was unfortunate.

Although I managed to get a decent economy running, it wasn't enough to keep up with the senators tremendous spam power. I've no idea how this class can afford so many troops and commanders. I didn't even meet the other AI's, but he was already enough. Since the High Priestess and her hierodules are pretty much completely useless as combat casters I was mostly dependent on ritual summons and regular troops which just wasn't enough against the senator. The Ba'alite archers are the only ranged unit and not all that great.

T1 rituals:

Lesser Ceremony to Baal is a decent low level summon spell for 10 sacrifices. Since I didn't have desert fields, I didn't get to see the better stuff.

Lesser Blood Feast is a really tricky spell. It eats up a village level so it's mostly good to cripple the ecomony of an opponent. Unfortunately, I was only in defense so I couldn't really use it since I would have cripelled my own economy. I tried it once and got an Anakite giant kin. Maybe worth the 15 sacrifices but not the village level.

T2 Rituals:

Ceremony to Baal is the bigger version of the T1 spell for an increased cost of 75 sacrifices. I mostly got about 5 scorpion beast which are pretty good tank units. The big problem is just the missing fire power from the back to make use of the tanking abilities. Sometimes I also got the weaker Giant Spiders. Too bad I didn't had a desert in range to get even better stuff. But overall this was my favorite spell.

Blood feast is the more powerful version of the T1 spell for 50 sacrifices. Tried it once and got an Anakite captain with 3 Anakite troopers. Same problem like the T1 spell. It's only worth if you want to cripple the opponent. Otherwise, Ceremony to Baal is the much better spell despite being more expensive.

T3 Rituals:

I never got them since with 480 sacrifices upgrade cost I was not even remotly able to pay that. Apparently here's the ritual to call Baal, but judging from what I've heard he's not really worth the cost. Not sure if there's another T3 ritual. Maybe T3 versions of the Ceremony and Feast spells maybe?

Anyway, High Priestess seems to be a fairly weak class, mostly because of the severe lack of ranged fire power, at least in early and mid game, although it's possible that a desert field for better summons changes things a bit. I'm still a bit underwhelmed by the lack of spell diversity. A few generic summon spells and that's all? There's hardly room for any strategy since you don't really have much choices.

I also lower my opinion about the combat summons from completely useless to utterly worthless since they weren't even useful in bigger battles.

I think for my next game I'll lower the difficulty a bit. It's a bit frustrating to loose a game without having even seen all the possible rituals. I guess I'll try the witch next.

Current class rating: Druid > Voice of El > High Cultist > High Priestess.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Okay, I won the game now. Well, techically I lost it since I kept my last opponent alive to try some things out, and then there was that mad wizard who opened a gate to hell, and then *Sigh*. I must admit, demon lords a pretty hard, and I mean REALLY hard.

Anyway, I take everything back about the Blood Feast spells, they are great. Especially the lesser one if used on farms. Hardly any loss, but much less annoying protection work and you can gather a quite powerful army. The damage output of the giants is indeed much higher which makes them definitely superior to the scorpion beasts.
Sacrificing some of your own farms and villages much it also much easier to carry the war to the opponent and hit him very hard with both Blood Feast spells and the troops you got from them.

I also found a solution to the summon spiders/scorpions combat spells. Just teaching the hierodules or High Priestess a new spell in a magic library allows them to choose another more useful spell for 50 gold.

Hellbind Heart is also a very powerful T2 spell since it allows to take over very powerful creatures. I got a Manticore, a Troll, a Giant Moose, elephants, etc. Upgrading a hierodule to a High Priestess is well worth the price for what you get.

I only got two of the T3 spells until I got my a*s wipped by Mephisto and one of his buddies, Sun and Grand Ceremony of Baal, but I think I got the picture.

I think I learned quite a lot in this game, so I'm really satisfied. I've also reconsidered my opinion about the High Priestess, she's great.

New ranking: Druid = High Priestess > Voice of El > High Cultist

Now to the Witch...

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

ArkhanTheBlack lähetti viestin:

I must admit, demon lords a pretty hard, and I mean REALLY hard.

Ahhh! Which one did you meet, lol? Was it Belial? He's the one that turns half of most armies to his side before battle even begins.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Mephisto got my secondary army for breakfast and Leraie wiped out my main army. While I could destroy Leraie's army I wasn't able to kill himself since he was permanently summoning new demons. It was kind of fun though.

[Lucid]

Who do you put as the commander of a lammashta?

If you try to have lammashta 1v100 any commander with her will die... No?

If you have her as single contributer to an army, she gets a couple soullless for you, but doesnt really lower attritition or get you zombie armies..?

[jeffbrianvictor]

I've had kind of a change of heart regarding Summoning Baal though. He's pretty much the only way to defeat certain opponents. I faced a Demonologist with massive amounts of Infernal Horde summons. We're talking 3 rows of nothing but Demonic Hounds and Knights. This has the effect of all those rows spewing fire at the begining of every turn in addition to normal attacks, which will decimate everything. Even my Anakites went down after 2-3 rounds of that, and since Demonic units are so increadibly beefy, there was nowhere near enough time to take them down.

Baal is really the only way I've found of winning such a battle. Load him up with gold-units and 2-tier summons and have him stand in the back casting "hurt everyone" spells (this way, nothing important gets spent). This would, of course, decimate my own troops much quicker than the Demonic ones. But when the Demonic troops could reach Baal they where practically limping towards him and could be taken out at a sufficient speed. Baals ability to do life-draining spells always kept his HP afloot.

Really a drastic diffrence. My army of Anakites and 3rd level summons could barely dent the Demonologists 2-rd tier demon summons. Yet Baal sliced right through them. He's really a situational unite, since much of what he does hurts your own troops as well. But when he's needed, he's really your only option.

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

Lucid lähetti viestin:

Who do you put as the commander of a lammashta?

If you try to have lammashta 1v100 any commander with her will die... No?

If you have her as single contributer to an army, she gets a couple soullless for you, but doesnt really lower attritition or get you zombie armies..?

That was an extreme example, so yeah, in the situation where Lammashta and a normal commander will face a horde of 100 things, commander will probably die. But, this is not Dominions, so Lammashta will just keep going despite the dead leader and murder everyone else. And attrition will probably not kill her, since she has a bit more health than most normal troops, so other troops will die of attrition before she will.

In reality, having Lammy be the only trooper in the army is just silly. She's not a super endgame summon, so there should always be some other stuff in support. Her strength is not in the fact she can kill everything instantly, she just cannot be killed by many armies at all. And if she's allowed to fly into castle defended by a swarm of missile units... She'll massacre them all before the ground troops will get in (unless there are some mean mages defending too).

[niddhoger]

I got a couple lammies and gave them to a manticore. I'd just abandon the soulless or drop them off at a nearby citadel. With a few archers behind them they work nice as distractions. Which is the only point in making them mid-battle. One Archer becomes a soulless and prevents his old buddies from shooting the manticore before he fears them away. Sure, he'd eventually die, but what do you expect from guerilla commanders? The point of the flying army is mobility that can quickly disrupt enemy income. Leaving them in a huge army feels like a waste, too. With so many targets their invuln doesn't get utilized. I loved sending them to raid mage-less armies to really leverage that cheese factor :)

[♔ Affable 7th Wave Teaboo ♔]

niddhoger lähetti viestin:

I got a couple lammies and gave them to a manticore. I'd just abandon the soulless or drop them off at a nearby citadel. With a few archers behind them they work nice as distractions. Which is the only point in making them mid-battle. One Archer becomes a soulless and prevents his old buddies from shooting the manticore before he fears them away. Sure, he'd eventually die, but what do you expect from guerilla commanders? The point of the flying army is mobility that can quickly disrupt enemy income. Leaving them in a huge army feels like a waste, too. With so many targets their invuln doesn't get utilized. I loved sending them to raid mage-less armies to really leverage that cheese factor :)

There we go!
Though, in situation where you are up against Senator(or some other pure physical spam) that goes heavy on troops and few mages a single Lammy will 100% guarantee a win in battle. Which is hilarious.

[Orion @ UVA]

I'm actually a big fan of the High Priestess. She's actually very strong, in my opinion, so long as you accept that your endgame is mediocre (and, unfortunately, you seem to auto-lose certain matchups). You might think she'd be like the other human level-2 mage factions and play for endgame rituals, but actually she's more of a beef faction like pale ones or trolls or something. Let me address some of the OP's specific points, (though I understand that enough time has passed they may have figured this out)

--Dark Prayers is, in my opinion, actually a really good combat school. Yes, you can stuck with animal summoning. But Lashes of Pain is one of the best attack spells there is. Leech will save your life at some point. The other single-target attacks -- pain, blood boil, etc. -- become kinda mediocre eventually, but they're amazing in your starting expansion.

--Your recruitable troops are pretty good actually. They're not sneator-level, but your spearmen have javelins, unlike the vanilla flavor. Mostly you just make archers though.

--Lesser Ceremony to Baal quickly stops being useful, because the Tier 2 version does all the same stuff better. It's still one of the best things about this class. It's a summon for 10 sacrifices that always works. Bakemono and Demonologists have to spend 30 sacrifices for guaranteed beef. If you throw it in a desert you tend to get either Se'ir (basically cool-looking ogres), or big scorpions. Outside the desert you get like scorpions or spiders or something. This is exactly what you need to get rolling. Recruit 5 more archers asap to get your starting army up to 10 archers, and you should be able to roll through most early targets with relatively-little casualties. You'll still lose some guys, but you can afoord to. If you sacrifice 1 or 2 spearmen each time you take a village, you'll be able to replace them with some animals by the time you're running low.

--Blood feasting an early farm will easily pay for itself in rapid expansion

--I recommend using the t2 feast to fish for a zamzummite 'cause using hands is nice but also because it gives you an excuse to make armies of giants.

--The T2 ceremony to Baal is intense in the desert. Lammashtas have been discussed. Scorpion beasts are just a crazy amount of beef that will keep an army with ~20 archers going for a long, long time.

The only thing I don't like is how incredibly hard it is to deal with constructs (and to a lesser extent, undead). You have no bludgeoning damage at all. Early on, you rely on all piercing. Many of yoursummons do poison damage (though other do slashing). Virtually nothing in Dark Prayers affects inanimates. Charms don't affect constructs. You can summon some guys with necromancy, but a lot of that doesn't work on non-living either Hoburg constructs are especially horrifying because they shred your ethereals and your armored scorpions. I have no idea what I'm supposedn to do. I even summoned Baal himself, and he literally cannot damage a clockwork horror.

[Menkerot]

High Priestess is fun and cool. And anyways CoE isn't a game for munchkins and other sort, so bad on ya.