First of all : Thanks for the huge list of changes you propose... most of them being very very good... I'll comment on them in a late post
Priests do have the chance to gain extra xp per turn from Channeling promotions. If you unlock Healer's Circle, you can buy Potion of Clarity which will give instant xp for the priest. Priests can also cast and attack at the same turn (but this strategy costs lots of faith...). Lastly, Altar of Luonnotar is very helpful in getting high level priests.
If the general feeling is High Priests are underwhelming, I am more inclined to increase their usefulness (by providing new, powerful, miracles for High Priests) rather than reducing their minimal level.
The thing is, there are units capable of 3 movements right off the bat: Hippus mounted units, Austrin recon units (in future patch), Elohim monks to name a few. Not to mention there are Mobility promotion, Hasted These units/civs will be OP if Blitz gives them full exp.
it seems I wasn't clear enough:
-re High priests
Healer circle is only available to good and neutral : My evil svartalfar need to get the xp the hard way, and svartalfar are not vampires
the channeling "free" xp is very slow : my adept take 50+ turns to get 12 xp, and I didn't notice any gain on priests (maybe 1xp every 5-10 turns ?) 1 xp is not much. In vanilla FFH (and other modmods) 1xp is quite good as the xp needed to level are much less. In MoM, the xp cost are great, and the "free xp" is slow and doesn't compensate for increasing HP level from 6 (in vanillla FFH) to 10, and for pushing lvl 10 to 200 xp or so.
IMO healer circle "clarity" should be for enabling your priests to get xp quicker and give a bonus toward good/neutral civs for their priests (maybe accelerating the way to get HP) ... not a way to penalise evil civs by making good civs get HP easily (only through buying xp) while evil get them very slowly. Healer circle should not be the only way to be sure to get HP.
Pleae note that Altar of the Luonnatar is also NOT available to evil civs.... and that most XP-granting buildings (training yard / warrior thingy...Etc) do not give XP to disciples
Evil civs thus have disciples that start with LOWER xp than available to good civs and CANNOT get the healer circle (unless you were not-evil and converted to AV after unlocking healer circle).
re : Cast and attack : not all priests can cast an attack spell (unless on forests, leaves Priests cannot attack using spell) ; and Faith attacks cost much much more than mana attacks (about 5 times more).
Finally, I think that being obliged to select the Priest chapter guild to get those priests and High priests should be enough a requirement. I shouldn't have to have both the Healer circle AND the Priest chapter to have a reasonnable chance to have HP.
-re Blitz :
My point was the following :
there was one mechanic that was strong (blitz) but expensive and rare (the promotion comes late, and is not available to all discipline), and which "might" be OP in certain conditions... which you rendered underpowered (currently I'm leaving the orthus axe to a crow.... so that my units don't lose xp)
and The MAIN POINT of blitz was not to kill multiples units per turn... (even if that is one interesting aspect), it was the possibility to gain xp multiple time per turn... (so you nerfed one of the main interest of blitz)
most units that can get blitz (or Orthus axe) do not not have 3 mvt, or are often capped at 3: melee, recon, some mounted...etc.
Some of those units can get 3 mvt or more... by chosing not to increase damage ! (boot of mobility instead of an attack boost, mobility 1, which comes late, instead of combat, the dagger recon discipline instead of the trap recon discipline, the avenger? class for priests...etc)
Mounted aslo have 3str : they are less strong than melee, and against animals have no recon-bonus : I removed my Orthus axe from my Nyxin... because it earned less than 1 xp/turn as a mean, even when attacking every time possible, as compared to 2-3xp/turn for the other Nyxins.
Some units can get 4 mvt or more (austrin recon mounted with mobility), or even 6 mobility (Hippus horses with mobility and right class)
However, very few of these units effectively attack 3 times in a row... (unless against very very weak units):
- Most often, there are not 3+ units that you can attack every turn
- often, your 4-6 moves are translated into 2-3 attack rounds max : you might need to move to get to the ennemy ; the ennemy might be on a hills, on desert, on ice, on forest, on jungle : all of those take 2 moves, or even 3 for 1 attack.
- often, unless against much weaker units, even if you COULD attack, you SHOULD NOT attack 3 times in a row: your blitz unit has been damaged against the defender (in city, on hill, on forest, .... or because RNG, or because strong defender).
so, taking into accoun the fact that to break even with other units, one needs to kill 3 times more ennemies than other units.
the "break-even" for XP is very rare.
Thus, to be a slight advantage for XP for the unit, a blitz units SHOULD attack 4 times in a turn.
this means that 1 unit get 4 xp in place of 4 units getting each 3 xp.
and I hope to have been able to demonstrate that if 3 kill in a turn is rare, 4 kills in a turn is even rarer
Most of the times, due to your nerf, the blitz unit gain xp much more slowly than non-blitz unit.
So will the nerf you imposed, blitz is a LOSS for 80% of the units of the game, and it becomes viable for 10% (assassins with 4 moves, or very high leveled units that are never damaged... but with 4 moves(rare) ) and interesting for less than 10% (hippus tier IV units, Mounted units with +affinity promotion and movement discipline/class...etc)
IMO, even before, Blitz was not OP, save for those less than 10% units of the late game.
AND even then it was not really OP : xp gained for too-easy battles was 1xp !!!! while 90%chances battles could give you 2-3xp, and 4-6 with a GC...
so a blitz unit that could attack 3 times in a row would not get much more xp than a unit that takes some slight risks.
(maybe MOM version of giving 3xp for every battle as long as you have more than 30 xp, and as long as you have odds higher than 80%, changed that).
From what I remember of Kael"s teaching, a good design is a design that is OK for the majority, bad for a few cases, and good/OP for another few. I think the previous blitz was like that : bad for a few cases : Khazad melee, ok for most of the people : melee with mobility, recon, horses, assassins (can kill a lot, but get reduce xp due to too easy fights) and good/OP for a few: high level recon with cannibalize in savage land, High level Hippus.
FURTHER: the NERF is not proportionnated with any other modifier of xp gain !
- a GC gives 20% xp boost !
- the "clever" promotion, at level 8, also give 20% boost !!
comparatively, blitz is a 66% decrease !!!!!!
THAT SAID:
I can agree with nerfing a bit the xp gain for blitz : (indeed, you can get much more xp in some cases).
however getting 1/3 is too low: when you kill 1 unit you get 1, instead of 3-4 xp, you get 1 (1.33 rounded down) :
while reducing by half could be considered ok, I still think it is too low (see proportionnated), and even attacking 3 times in a row, would not give a real increase in xp as 3 * 0.5 rounded down is 1 so you'll still get 3 xp instead of 9, or maybe 6 instead of 12 (but 4xp battles are rare).
so i'll propose 2/3rd : it means a reduction of 33% of xp (1.7 times the increase granted by GC or clever) ; it also means that 2 battle a turn gives you 4xp instead of the normal 3 for 1 kill (slight advantage) and in the few case that people can get 3 attacks a turn, you"ll get 6 xp... twice the benefits, for thrice the risk.
I appologize for the wall of text and I hope to have made a convincing demonstration.
