Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's a generalization. Normal units that become that fatigued will take damage and die rapidly. I've seen some lifeless and undead units easily survive going up to some 800 fatigue totally unscathed and locking up battles in limbo-land until the autokill limit because they couldn't recover in time.

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One gem per skill level actually. An astral 8 mage can cast master enslave with no communicants by spending enough extra astral pearls.

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you sure?

IIRC troops will take a few points of damage every time a 200 fatigue unit is fatigued again. A 7 gem spell will only increase fatigue to 200.

[ February 11, 2004, 15:31: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually it's 6 slaves for + 3, 8 slaves for +4. It's every two slaves you get +1 extra.

What is IIRC?

[ February 11, 2004, 15:33: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually it's 6 slaves for + 3, 8 slaves for +4. It's every two slaves you get +1 extra.

What is IIRC? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nope, Argi, according to page 113 of the game manual, PhilD is correct.

If I Remember Correctly = IIRC.

[ February 11, 2004, 15:36: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are actually three ways of taking less fatigue than printed in the spell description:

* having a higher magic level than required: for each additional level, the fatigue is divided (so if you cast a spell requiring Death 4, and you are Death 6, the spell fatigue will divided by 3 [1 base, +2 bonus levels]

* spending a gem to "power" the spell will let you cast it as if you were 1 level higher - both for reaching the required level, and to take less fatigue. I think it's limited to 1 gem for each spell.

* if you have a Communion [Sabbath (Blood) or Communion (Astral)]: each time a Master casts a spell, the fatigue is divided evenly among himself and all the Slaves. The number of Slaves also determines a bonus to all paths that each Master gets (2 Slaves: +1; 4 Slaves: +2; 8 Slaves: +3, etc.), but while this will decrease the fatigue for the master, most of the time the Slaves will be low-level and will take their full part of the fatigue.

So, imagine you want to cast Master Enslave, the highest Fatigue level spell in the game (800, Astral 8). If you have an Astral 6 Master and 4 Astral 1 Slaves, the Master is effectively Astral 8, so if he casts the spell with "only" 8 gems (the minimum), each of the 5 participants will take 160 (800/5) fatigue (plus encunbrance). They will all pass out, and if another Master starts casting as well, the Slaves are quite likely to go over 200 Fatigue and start dying.

Now, if you have the same Astral 6 Master, plus 8 Slaves, and the Master spends 9 gems (1 additional), he will be Astral 10 for the casting, so, while each Slave will take 800/9=89 Fatigue, he will only take (800/3)/9=30 Fatigue (as a result, he could go on casting spells... potentially killing the Slaves...) </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wait wait wait ! You mean that every slave takes fatigue as if he was himself casting the spell ?
I understood that the fatigue was calculated for the casting mage (incl "extra levels" for communion), then divided.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif
In your case the total fatigue is 89*8+30 = 742, not much less than the base 800, and more than if the mage alone cast it (he will get 400). In this case he wouldn't be able to cast it, but the reasoning still stands for less fatiguing spells...

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm pretty sure that's what I saw explained somewhere. The slaves will take fatigue based on their own level (not augmented if they don't have the required level, fortunately).

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Basically, the Communion lets you cast more powerful spells, AND spread the fatigue around for high-fatigue spells. The more slaves, the better, especially if your slaves have some reinvigoration (which is why having a Master cast some reinvigoration is a good idea, or should be).

Keep in mind, though, that I have very little experience playing with communions. You're the one playing Pythium in a MP game...

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One gem per skill level actually. An astral 8 mage can cast master enslave with no communicants by spending enough extra astral pearls. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Only the first gem (above the required gem cost if any) increases power of the spell. The others only reduce fatigue.

As an example, suppose an Anathemant Dragon (Fire-3) wishes to cast Heat from Hell (Ench 6 Fire 4, fatigue 200-, magic gems required 2). He must spend at least 3 gems to cast it at all (two for the required gem cost, and one more because he is not normally powerful enough to cast it). If he spends only 3 gems, he pays the full 200 fatigue plus his encumbrance, passing out and probably taking damage.

If he spends 4 gems, the spell takes effect at only 4 levels of power, but he now pays only 100 encumbrance because his level *for fatigue purposes only* is 5. Spending 5 gems will reduce his fatigue to 67. He cannot spend 6 gems - the maximum is 2 (required gem cost) + 3 (the Anathemant's power in fire).

Now suppose Asmodeus the Moloch, with Fire 8, wants to cast the same spell. He must spend a minimum of 2 gems, which will give him a fatigue of 40 (200 / 1 + 4 extra levels). One extra gem (three total) would raise the spell's effective power to level 9 and reduce his fatigue to 33 (200 / 1+5), two extra gems would still be power level 9 but fatigue would decrease to 28, etc. He could spend up to 8 extra gems (for a total of 10), which would raise his power level to 9 but his fatigue reduction level to 16, making his fatigue 200/(1+12) or about 15 (plus encumbrance).

If an Astral 9 Monolith casts Master Enslave (Astral 8, 800- fatigue, 8 gems required), spending the maximum possible total gems of 17, it would cast the spell at effective power level 10 (fatigue reduction level 18) and pay a fatigue cost of 800/(1+10)=73. Of course, after you cast Master Enslave it's not very likely that you will need to do much else. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

Morale loss isn't figured on a per-unit basis. Instead, each unit has either broken or it hasn't. When enough units in a squad have broken, the squads routs.

It would be interesting to have a measure of how close a unit's squad is to retreat, but it has been stated that the morale code is a bit messy, so I doubt there will be any extensions added on to it any time soon.

Re: Battle: coloured lines under unit icon
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Indeed. I'd like to be able to see just how well a unit's Cause Fear effects are working in combat. As it presently is, I have no way of knowing whether the fear effects are making a significant contribution to routs.

Speaking of fear, is there an improved (that is, harder to make) morale roll for Cause Fear +5 than for +0, or is the difference just in area of effect?

TIA.