Re: Patch 3.23
 

Smiting assassins are great.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Verified. My prophet/onmyo-ji cast power of the spheres, then refused to cast the teach sign.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

I don't know what a "reverse communion" is, but crystal/slave matrices trigger the same flags on units like the respective communion or sabbath spells would.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Reverse communions are where you have all the master(s) at the very bottom of the command list. All they do is cast magic path buff spells that the slaves get for free. Sometimes you even cast stuff like astral shield, body ethereal, personal luck, etc, to make the mages good against troops. Good being a relative term.

But, that's the idea. You just abuse the fact that the slaves get the master's self-buffs cast on them for free.

Jazzepi

Re: Patch 3.23
 

One example of reverse communion I've seen used quite early in a game (needs Evocation 5 and Blood 2 IIRC). Totally destroyed my SC pretender and elites + prophet he had along.

You need access to cheap blood and astral mages. Take four S1 mages and a B1 mage, the B1 mage need to cast his spell after the astral mages (ie to be lowest in the selection screen).

Script the blood mage to Sabbath Master, Hell Power, Reinvigoration x 3. Script the astral mage to Communion Slave, Twist Fate, Astral Geysir x 3.

You'll have each turn a chance a horror spawns. Actually, it seemed to be pretty guaranteed at least one spawned, as there were five hell-power buffed mages present. However, your mages only have 1st level horror mark, while there are *loads* of 2nd level horror marked opponents... And even if the horror would attack your mage, he has twist fate to negate the first attack. All the while Reinvigoration keeps your fatigue at zero for all your mages.

My Pretender survived that battle. But he didn't live long, as he had about umpteenth level horror mark on him (not only from the geysir, but also from the horros attacking him many times :( ), and the doom horror was lurking behind the corner... It was evil.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Ouch, nasty trick.

Reverse communion is pretty easy to use. The only thing you have to remember is to keep the master from casting spells before slaves. The master can be last in order, or can retreat, or you can give him a bow and script him for Fire after he's buffed the slaves.
I used it to make a host of my C'tis Shamans receive Power of the Spheres, and I also cast Light of the Northern Star. The Soul Slays didn't do as much as I had hoped, but they were just my researchers.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Hence the great utility of Slann communion masters who can go dormant in battle, a state in which they can no longer cast spells.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Now we can't cast the spell "Connect Yama-no-Kami" in moutain terrain.A bug?

Re: Patch 3.23
 

eastsnow, are you sure that it is mountain terrain and not "border mountains", which have the mountain graphic but really function more like plains?

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Archaeolept,you are right.But in this random map all the mountains are border mountains,:(

Re: Patch 3.23
 

yes, I hate random maps that have no real mountains.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

This is for 3.23b patch- I was just playing LA Jomon in SP and it has repeatedly crashed to desktop between turns when it is generating turn 1 or 2 of one of the battles. I have tried to let it run and changed my orders that turn too to see if this would change the outcome but to no avail. Is there a solution to this problem or is there a known cause? I'm wondering if it's a seduction battle or a void battle but I really have no idea.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Edit: Running on Mac OSX btw

Re: Patch 3.23
 

There were two or three separate bugs, some of them intertwined. Forging certain items could crash to desktop and the seduction issue was apparently another. I don't know what exactly caused it, but Johan fixed it immediately upon getting game files where it manifested. On testing, the 3.23b worked perfectly, so there shouldn't be any more problems of this sort.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

i.e., if you want help or to help, provide turn files and/or log messages.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

My concern with using a Matrix is that the Matrix 'casts' the spell before combat actually starts, and therefore a Master Matrix (without Slave Matrices) would automatically have to be cast before the Communion Slave spells, and thus a reverse communion wouldn't work at all.

Is this correct, or is my understanding of reverse communioning at fault?

Re: Patch 3.23
 

I think your understanding is at fault there. In a particular round, the slaves can't take any action if a master has already cast a spell. The matrix only affects the first round (or more likely the zeroth round), and in that round it doesn't make any difference because there are no slaves yet anyway.

Re: Patch 3.23
 

Ah, okay, llama, thanks. As you can tell, the only reverse communions I've done have been by accident. Thank you for this.