posted 05-04-00 12:50 ET (US)
Hi all,
I've been experimenting with how to appease the gods and get those juicy major blessings. I now know how to manipulate divine favor so I get a major blessing (almost) every time, and I can get a single minor blessing even without a festival square! Want to learn how?
First, let me present the degrees of divine favor, from highest to lowest, and the population to shrine ratio required to achieve that rating (given for a local deity; double the shrine count for patron deity):
benevolent
approving
sympathetic
congenial ---------- less than 300
amiable ------------- 300 to 350
apathetic ---------- 350 to 408
displeased --------- 408 to 490
resentful ----------- 490 to 522
angry --------------- 522 to 625
furious -------------- 625 to I'm not sure
enraged ------------ Don't go there!
In other words, if you want to keep the a particular local god amiable towards you, you want at least one shrine for every 350 people.
Two things modify this table; the time since the last festival, and the population of your city.
A festival increases a god's favor by three ranks (e.g. from amiable to approving), but this effect wears off at the rate of one rank per year. (More or less: If the god is displeased or worse, the rate is one rank in the first 11 months and per 10 months thereafter; if the god is happy, it is once in the first 13 months, and per 10 months thereafter.)
If your population is 400 or below, the gods will be apathetic towards you. No matter how many or how few shrines, temples, or festivals you have, they will be apathetic.
With 400 to 450 people you can change their mood one place either direction; i.e. from amiable to displeased. With 450 to 500 you can move them two places, and so on until you get the full range of divine emotions with 650 or more people. When a god's mood reaches a high (or low) at least two steps away from apathetic, you start to accumulate ankhs (or lightning bolts!).
At the beginning of the scenario the game thinks that a festival has just been celebrated for all the gods. You won't notice this because your population is too low for the gods to be other than apathetic. But if you get your population high enough fast enough, and have enough shrines, you can curry enough divine favor to get a minor blessing near the end of that first year, even without a festival square.
The game tends to give more minor blessings than major blessings. There's a critical time about a year after a festival when the game will try to give you a blessing; if the god's favor is benevolent or approving, (or even sympathetic) and you have a few little ankhs, you'll get a spontaneous minor blessing instead of a bigger one a few months later.
What you need to do to avoid this is set up a little stub of road with an architect's post and some shrines. Counting the shrines on this road, you should reach "congenial" favor- without them, your appeasement level should be apathetic (or worse). If you have just had a blessing, you want to disconnect enough shrines to make your favor drop (a shrine more than 2 squares away from a road square doesn't count towards the city total). Let it drop to apathetic; don't wait too long, or the lack of architect coverage will make them collapse! Also, you don't need to accumulate lightning bolts- apathetic is low enough.
When the favor has dropped to apathetic, rebuild the road and let your favor start to accumulate. The game is unwilling to grant a spontaneous blessing more than a year or so after a festival, so if the favor doesn't reach minor blessing status until 16 or 17 months have passed, you are safe; the little blue ankhs won't be wasted. When you have four blue ankhs and the god is at least sympathetic, call a common festival. If you are too hasty, you might get a minor blessing anyway. If your favor didn't climb fast enough you might end up with a benevolent favor rating and five blue ankhs, and no blessing; no problem, just hold another one and it will be along within four or five months of the second festival.
It is very difficult to get more than one major blessing from a god in a given two year period. With a little practice you should be able to get two every five years, though. And if you are juggling two or three gods, you'll be maxing out on festivals anyway.
Enjoy!
--Jimhotep
