How about all blight regions got a region lord with the daimon faith. They don't need to convert fast, they just slowly take over all the blighted regions and "bleed" their followers into the border regions. Even with their still weak preaching skill (equal to roughly a decend priest) they can just wait and hope for the best.
Unless they are given 100% follower count to begin with, no. If you have a region with 0 followers, you can build a lvl 3 temple and have the lord follow your faith and the region will never get followers. Priests are needed to kick start the process. If they are given 100% following, then perhaps, but I think population in these regions is too low for that. Unless netherworld regions suck up PC realm migrants perhaps.
In addition I think we can trust Tom far enough to expect that basic balancing such as would be necessary for this is being thought of, can we? If I would be working hard to make the game enjoyable for the rest of us I think I'd prefer comments along the 'I am curious / excited about / can't wait to see how this will affect...' line instead of glum 'this can't work....' statements. Balancing something complex will likely not be /perfect/ right away but surely it would be far better than outright stupid. Give the man a chance, he is still working on a game for free after /how/ many years? Managing to keep it interesting for hundreds of players for /how/ many years? Lets try to keep him /somewhat/ motivated....pretty please?
It's not that I distrust Tom. What I'm saying is that Daimon Worship popped up in the last two invasions, and failed miserably in both of them because it had no special powers and relied on players to actually develop and lead it. If given a fair battle ground with common player religions, it will fail again, as it will be way too vulnerable.
Considering that this time the religion comes first, and not much later as it did the last two times, I figure that the plan isn't to let it fail miserably while being unable to ever gather significant size.
However, any advantage that allows it to grow rapidly enough to compete with existing faiths will surely also allow it to utterly dominate the other faiths. Which will either discourage other religions from even bothering, or will incite more people to become priests in order to counter it. However, I really don't think forcing people to become priests would be a good idea, if that's what they wanted they'd be priests already. However, if we are to rely on priests for a significant portion of the coming invasion's struggles, then we must consider that we will be relying on a very tiny percentage of the player base. All those who can't or don't want to become priests, whatever the reason, would find themselves excluded.
I don't mean to say that anyone is stupid and that those in charge can't think of anything, I just want to warn that putting too much of a focus on religion for the invasion could be very risky as far as gameplay/enjoyability goes, as without any special advantages it'd be hard to prevent the NPC faith from being wiped off while on the other hand it wouldn't really need that many advantages to utterly dominate the other existing religions.
My intent wasn't to criticize in advance, but rather to provide things to consider to favor the development of the best invasion possible, as many aspects of the invasions are basically impossible to change once things are in motion. For a lot of various people complained about various things during the past invasions. Obviously, no invasion can please everyone, but a number of almost unanimous complaints were over things that could have been avoided easily.
Personally, I think this will be the end of BT. I just hope to go down in a blaze of memorable glory.
Maybe, we'll see. One of my characters will certainly be exploiting this situation to that effect. The other will probably be arguing hard against any kind of cease fire. It should be interesting to see how it pans out.
The gods challenge us with another invasion when the Enweili are doing poorly in their wars? Truly, this is a sign that the gods favor the Enweili! We have failed them, but they have forgiven us!
