Part 56: Lanka - Turn 2

Turn 2 - Prophets




I've prophetized my starting scout. Prophetizing gives the commander level 3 Holy magic, or +1 level if it already has level 3+. It also grants stat bonuses in your own dominion, and stat penalties in enemy dominion.

As I see it, there are five main choices for a prophet:
Your starting scout. By far the most common choice. This lets you overtax-patrol with your starting commander, and starts prophet dominion spread immediately. The scout either accompanies an army, providing Divine Blessing for any sacreds you've recruited, and Smite support, or you can use him to scout, which gives you the option of stealth preaching.
Your starting commander. You give up overtax-patrolling on turn 1, but you can move your scout out immediately, and use the scout for scouting instead of Divine Blessing and Smite. You give up stealth preaching.
A H3 priest. You will have to recruit the priest, which delays prophetizing until turn 2. This gives H4, which accesses Fanaticism, a battlefield-wide morale buff. Handy, but not critical.
A mage or thug commander. Not recommended if you don't know what you're doing. You will have to recruit the mage you want, which delays prophetizing until turn 2, or even turn 3 if the mage is super expensive. And, a mage having Holy has no real benefit in battle. You can only script/cast one spell a round, and therefore it's more efficient to cast holy spells with a non-mage prophet and cast mage spells with your mages.
You prophetize a mage or recruited commander if:
-you want free upkeep for that unit (for example a 500g niefel jarl)
-you want access to national or modded holy spells that require non-priest paths as well as holy (for example Jomon's signs)
-you want a communion-capable prophet, for penetration bonuses to Banish and Smite in the midgame
-you want a very strong unit to gain prophet stat bonuses (for example a niefel jarl) or a non-sacred to gain bless stat bonuses, keeping in mind being a prophet makes him weaker outside your dominion
An Undead or Demon commander. I delayed prophetizing until turn 5 for this once. You do this only if you want to reanimate undead, and your nation cannot do so by default. Lanka, MA Ermor, and LA Ermor can reanimate by default. Everyone else can only reanimate with Undead or Demon priests. This is often done with nations with unique undead, like Pangaea and LA C'tis. The target commander is often a Black Servant (Conj 1) or a Mound King (Ench 2)



Since the commander and his army was free, I overtaxed the capitol at 160% and patrolled.



And will continue to do so. I'll introduce Lanka's starting army later. Suffice to say it is much more useful patrolling than fighting.



More sacreds, and a mage:


Cap-only and expensive. She can get A3, D3, N3, or B3, but those combinations aren't common. Thankfully A3 and B3 are more readily available on the other cap-only mage.



Bid base cost +1 on a merc group. Most mercs aren't worth bidding high for (a few are), but base+1 is fine for many of them. The Villains are a group of 11 short bow archers, which I'll gladly bid 31 gold for.

Finally, battle orders:


20 Ichtyids is extremely weak. As a rule of thumb its best to go after the weakest province on turn 2. Most nations need resources ASAP, and so it's better to go for the sure kill.

Next turn: In which I may choose to continue keeping the audience ignorant of my bless