Questions on Promoting Units/Elephants

Playing Into the Desert right now. New to FfH2.

How, exactly, do you get an elephant that level in order to promote it to War Elephant since it can't attack? Run it around the enemy and pray some dumb AI unit decides it can take it? Feed it your own units to force it to level first?

Similarly, is it worth leveling a lightbringer from it's basic str 2 wimpyness in order to promote it later or should I just buy vicars later? Seems like a giant pain since you have to hunt barebones goblins or have bronze weapons, and all the copper is far away on Into the Desert. It looks like you have to make them in mass, feed barbs one or two, and then have yet another clean up the weakened unit.

Elephants don't need to be any particular level or have any special promotions in order to be able to upgrade to War Elephants. Not in normal play, at least - it's possible that Into the Desert has some special requirement of which I'm unaware. If you view the 'pedia entry for Elephant it will indicate to which units it can upgrade, and if you view the entry for War Elephant (assuming upgrading to it is allowed) then it will indicate if there is a level prerequisite for the upgrade. Be aware that a unit with 0 xp is level 1, and at 2 xp can be promoted to level 2.

You do need the tech Horseback Riding (normally) in order to perform the upgrade, as well as quite a bit of gold. If you meet all the requirements except for gold on hand then you should see the upgrade button when the Elephant is selected, but it will be greyed out to indicate the it is currently unavailable.

If you really want to level Lightbringers then your best bet is to park some on a forested hill and let the barbarians attack them. Alternatively you could use them to defend a city with decent defenses (ideally also on a hill). Anything tougher than scouts or warriors will chew through them, though. Feeding them to barbarians is wasteful of precious , and the benefit of a high-xp Lightbringer doesn't make up for that (imo). Personally I use them (sparingly) for the extra sight range, and then upgrade them to priests later since they retain the promotion. If you have the gold to spare then you can alway build a Lightbringer and upgrade it whenever you need a priest, which is equivalent to buying a free promotion for your priests.

The main use of lightbringers isn't to farm EXP, but to start with huge amounts of EXP. With some Altars, Dies Dei, Desert Shrine, Education, and any other experience-boosting abilities, you can get Lightbringers to start with ~17 EXP. These lightbringer can then upgrade along different paths, as long as you have different religions:

Fellowship of Leaves: Disciple of Leaves -> Ranger -> Beastmaster
Octopus Overlords: Zealot -> Stygian Guard -> Eidolon
Ashen Veil: Savant -> Mage -> Archmage/Lich

This allows some unique versions of these units. Down the FoL path, your Rangers/Beastmasters will start with Sentry and a nice chunck of EXP: It is possible to give them March from their Disciple days. Eidolons which upgraded from Stygian Guards retain their Water Walking ability. Instant-Mage/Archmages, of course, are always useful.

Note that all of the above units retain their Potency promotion. Normally Potency for mages is restricted to Arcane leaders, but using the AV loophope Spiritual leaders can get it as well. Melee/Recon units were never designed to get those promotions, but they get them anyway. If done right, it can be veyr powerful.

Perhaps the cash is the problem then, since I had the greyed out button but I couldn't tell why it was greyed out.

Do the Lightbringers receive that exp on creation in a city with all that, then again on promotion? Or is it just a way to spend more cash and less hammers by making them as Lightbringers, then paying to upgrade? Basically, I'm missing why starting from Lightbringer is a good thing instead of starting at whatever flavor of Vicar/Zealot/etc you prefer.

Lightbringers do not get the xp both on creaton and promotion. If you have the spiritual trait though (as Varn does) they will start generating xp while you wait for the tech/religion/whatever you need to upgrade them.

Also, priests upgraded from Lightbringers keep the Sentry promotion.


It used to be that all civs had a Prophet unit (not to be confused with a Great Prophet) which differed from the Lightbringer UU only in that Lightbringers started with Sentry 1. Kael decided a while back that the Prophet unit was not worth keeping, but he did not want to get rid of the Malakim UU.

I have long been of the opinion that Lightbringers should be a Malakim Ecclesiastic or Vicar UU (perhaps with Sentry I and access to Sun magic) rather than a distinct unit.

well and furthermore, you can upgrade to the Tier III unit without passing through the tier II unit :

Fellowship of Leaves: Disciple of Leaves -> Ranger -> Beastmaster
Octopus Overlords: Zealot -> Stygian Guard -> Eidolon
Ashen Veil: Savant -> Mage -> Archmage/Lich
(for OO, the gains are less interesting, as the stygian guards are of the OO religion and are disciple so they gain the altar xp)

thus if you have "esus" lightbringer, you can upgrade him, in a city with temple of leaves and "hunter den", into a ranger that has medic and march as if upgraded from a disciple of leaves, but of the esus religion (with mask ability)!!!

or in a city with a veil temple and mage guild... you gain a potency mage, with medic 1 potentialy with march, without being arcan, nor giving him the ashen veil religion !

total gain of lightbringer :
1) give the potency promotion to arcan units,
2) give march and medic to ranger and arcane units.
3) collecting free experience from some altar (limited to disciple) and giving it to ranger/arcan units (mages in 2 turns... less powerful tha, amurites, but still nice)
4) give a free sentry to all those units
edit : 5)collecting free experience from potentcy.. and using your lightbringers from the early game, highly experienced, to make very powerful rangers /beastmasters/ ?shadows?....mages...
so while it is a nich unit, it is still nice to use it !

edit : MC : I thought potency didn't work on zealot/disciple of leave ... AND lightbringer : they have it but as they don't gain any free xp overtime, having potency doesn't double it... is it true or does it works differently now ?

Potency will boost the free xp for units with the FreeXP tag. That means that Lightbringers and first level disciples will get free xp, but not other units like Ranges.

Calavente said:

edit : MC : I thought potency didn't work on zealot/disciple of leave ... AND lightbringer : they have it but as they don't gain any free xp overtime, having potency doesn't double it... is it true or does it works differently now ?

Click to expand...

Zealots and other Disciple units don't normally gain exp over time but they will if they have Potency. Lightbringers don't gain any before that first 5 gold promotion IIRC. I don't know if Lightbringers are tagged freeXP in the XML but mine don't level up on their own.