Re: Tourmaline - Mod Nations Game (Playing)
 

Yeah, prolonged BoT would have been pretty painful, since my manifests only have maxage 50. If it had been up only two turns more, my manifests would have started dropping like flies and my research (+thug communioning) with it.

My one regret is not using thug communions more. I only put one up against Itza in the last turn, but it kinda backfired when the first turn "Arcane Domination" got some critical masters, losing me many critical buffs (like Soul Vortex, some elemental resistances and the absolutely critical "Use the Leylines"). They might not be the most powerful things to do with manifests, but are the most awesome.

Valerius might recall some of my early attemps when I forgot to double-check the scripts, leaving me with some masters without "retreat" orders, making the thugged manifests just stand there after getting blinked by "Use the Leylines".

Re: Tourmaline - Mod Nations Game (Playing)
 

I used a thug communion once against the ai in a singleplayer game. I had 25 or so of them go up against 300 various t'ien ch'i troops, including a decent number of chariots. Only lost 3 :) But I didn't retreat the masters. Do you have to retreat masters in order for them to work properly, or is giving them attack orders good enough? I had a number of them who stood around casting spells for some reason even though they were all scripted to attack at the end of their scripts. If so that might explain it....

Alugran manifest thug communions are certainly fun though, when you're not fighting against the most powerul astral nation to have ever existed :P