Sacrifice

[KrazyDocK]

Originally Posted by ivra

Sacrifice level 1 lets you earn level 1-3 units - any level unit can be sacrified but the target that benefit from it must be level 1-3. Upgrade to Sacrifice level 2 to include level 4 units, and to level 3 to include level 5 units.

Hm, This has not been the case in my experience. I have used level 1 sacrifice to increase level 4 stacks like archmages, demonologists, and paladins. The only limiting factor was how many hitpoints I could restore by casting the spell. For example, with 20 int, level 1 sacrifice takes 500 hitpoints and restores 40% of that, or 200 hp. Just enough for a paladin. I think I'll need something like 2 more int to be able to restore royal griffins with their 220 hp.

[ivra]

Originally Posted by KrazyDocK

Hm, This has not been the case in my experience.

I agree. Now that I read about the limit that you must be able to provide enough hit points to create at least one unit, is see that I was wrong. I never managed to use Sacrifice 1 in the beginning of my game on higher units than level 3 and just assumed it was a level limit that was lost in the translation from russian (some of the other spells have incorrect descriptions so I was misled). When I got Sacrifice level 2 I could create all my level 4 units, but not my level 5 units. I could create level 5 units with sacrifice level 3 so my assumption (although wrong) was never contradicted during my game... Thanks for clearing this up I never even tried to use Sacrifice 1 on higher units than level 3 in my game, even when my Int went up...

[Xargon]

Some remarks about Sacrifice:
Maybe you have already tried using magic shield before sacrificing units - while it does halve the damage received, it also halves the health gained by the target unit, so it is not really useful. However, I recently noticed sacrifice does astral damage, and if you use the gift bag, there are items providing resistance to that kind of damage: the ghost armor (20%) and the chaos crown (a whopping 50%). This resistance lowers only the damage received which makes sacrifice pretty overpowered. You get 30% of the damage and 60% back if you have sacrifice lvl3. In my current mage game (having found both items), I can restock half my army from scratch in a single fight (I haven't lost any units since Verona, but it came in handy nonetheless as there were a meagre 6 demonologists to be found in Teana)...
edit: Of course, it is much more effective to have multiple "sacrificial" units and then resurrect them all at once with paladins than to alternately resurrect two stacks to build them up.

(The chaos crown is awesome anyway... 50% astral resistance is great against armageddon casters, and 50% magic resistance is great against a lot of other casters and some creatures as well... if you use only one black dragon or something similar, the gloves of the destroyer will be more valuable, of course)