Missionary (Age of Empires III)

For other uses of Missionary, see the disambiguation page.

The Missionary is a healer unit in Age of Empires III.

Overview
It serves as a basic healing unit for civilizations who acquire it by means of cards, though only the Spanish civilization can train them at the church. The unction card (added with The WarChiefs expansion) allows a level 40 Spanish home city to give their missionaries an aura boosting nearby units damage output.

Missionaries are the fastest healing units in the game even without the speed upgrade mission fervor, and one of the fastest land units in the game with the upgrade. They are capable of healing ten hit points per second.

Unction aura effect
With unction missionaries will boost the attack of nearby units, up to a total of +63%. This extra damage is added to the modified stats of the unit, not it's base stats making it exceptionally powerful. The aura will extend to naval vessels controlled by the player but will not affect buildings.

The aura will only affect units directly under the control of the Spanish player, not those of allies (human or AI) nor the missionaries themselves. Units sent to the player by means of team cards will still be boosted.

Number of missionaries nearby and the total bonus.
 * 5%
 * 1) 10%
 * 2) 16%
 * 3) 22%
 * 4) 28%
 * 5) 34%
 * 6) 41%
 * 7) 48%
 * 8) 55%
 * 9) 63%

Usefulness

 * Missionaries greatest defenses are the range of the unction aura, their speed with mission fervor, and the armies line of sight using team inquisition and town watch.
 * Russian allies are especially useful due to the card TEAM Cheap Priests, which reduces the cost of missionaries by 50% (50 wood, 50 coin). This card also reduces their training time by 75% (they train in 10 seconds) allowing the Spanish player to effectively use unction in Skirmish games.
 * Monitors which possess all available building and card upgrades in conjunction with unction are still capable of inflicting 146.6 damage versus a settler in a single long-range attack and 58.6 with a normal attack despite it's 0.2x modifier. If all three acquirable monitors fire simultaneously the maximum attainable damage versus any settler will be 439.8, 21,990 for buildings and 2,199 versus enemy soldiers or docks.
 * Monitors can be used on any map with a puddle of water big enough to hold them, though this relegates them to the position of fixed gun they will inflict good damage and be able to launch a long-range barrage at incoming armies or enemy buildings.
 * To get the most out of a Monitor being used in naval maps, or one being used as a fixed gun, requires TEAM Inquisition and Hot Air Balloons. This will boost your monitors long range LOS to 96 (100 with town watch) when the balloons are used as a spotter for the long-range attack.
 * Unction allows heavy cannons to inflict over 1,000 hitpoints of damage on infantry, 2,000+ damage versus ships (488 versus cavalry and settlers) and overcome it's x0.8 penalty versus artillery. The latter allows them to defeat other artillery quite easily, with exception to the culverin. Culverins will overcome the heavy cannons unction bonus in the Imperial Age (after that upgrade is purchased for them), however prior to this (Industrial Age) they are vulnerable to unction boosted heavy cannons unless the culverins exploit their range advantage effectively.