Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

With that said, a small communion works just as well.

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

communions are more expensive to teleport.

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

That depends on the size of the communion and how often they need to teleport, given the cost of the boosters.

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

I was counting in mage turns. :P

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

Well, if you get some lucky MR roles against enemy mages in the army, I suppose your Mage turns could pay for themselves in Mage turns

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

I would think that the master enslave effect is so much bigger than the random 2 or four additional mages. I, however was not serious. Knai had a point.

One problem with communions is that they take one additional turn. Unless you use a crystal matrix. But then you miss the additional +2 penetration. And you need a lot bigger communion to get the same penetration value.

Edit:
And you know, *snigger* penetration matters.

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

Well, you can skip crystal coin instead, then 4 communion slaves+3s druid are enough. :)

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

But then you hardly save gems. (10 gems for the matrix, + 3 * 2 gems for communion teleport = 16 gems, the coin is 20).

Edit, and the slaves also need to be s3, or they cannot teleport. Not a lot of nations have 3 spare s3 mages

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

S3s'll also die. With 4 slaves, each will get 200 base fatigue, but it's a S8 spell, and the slaves will be absorbing fatigue at 3+1(LotNS)+1(PotS)+2(communion)=7. Unless you hand out boosters to each of the slaves, you'll need S4 slaves and waste a turn casting PotS to keep the slaves, and nobody has enough S4s to use as slaves. Better idea just to use expendable S1s, expecting them to die, but that's not really cheaper than just shelling out for the boosters, nor can it teleport.

Really, with Master Enslave, you can either go gigantic communion to soak up the fatigue from repeated casts, or use single casters taking advantage of the fact that a caster cannot drive himself over 200 fatigue. Small communions just don't work.

Re: Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts
 

I think, Banner of the Northen Star i mentioned earlier helps too.