Understanding Communion
 

So I've been loving MA Ermor lately and I'm trying to understand how the communion spell works, since it appears to be one of the keys of their power. I'm a little lost in understanding the relationship between communion masters and communion slaves, since the game stats don't change on the caster (but the master was able to cast a Holy 4 spell while still only showing holy 3) and I'm mostly casting 0 fat spells so I can't trace the damage. Are all slaves shared between all masters, or are they divided up between them? If I have 4 masters and 8 slaves, does each master get +3 to all paths or just +1?

Post Irrelevant Aside - IIRC I'm playing dominion 6, sloth 1, order/growth 3, drain 2, death 9, earth 4 sleeping master liche. Death goes well with my natural tendencies and boosts the Vestals a bit, while Earth is there to help my communions. Make sense? I love the Shadow Vestals, but I usually have about 60 Longdead Horsemen / 10 Shadow Vestals, so I didn't want to go too heavy bless. And does anyone really use the basic troops with Ermor unless they are already dominating, or need gladiators on emergency defense?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Okay, I played MA Ermor before and looked into this at some length (you're right, communion is really helpful for them). My conclusion is it's super-confusing, and in fact I was intending to do a writeup at some point of how it works, although there's another couple of posts in the forum with good explanations.

With, say, 4 masters and 8 slaves, all their levels are increased by 3, and you can think of the slaves as having their levels raised _in all paths_ (not just the ones they have). Then the fatigue it costs them depends on their own level in the spell in question.

As an example, imagine one of your communion masters is a Sorceress (A2S2), and casts Fog Warriors (A5, 300 fatigue). With the communion, she becomes A5, so the fatigue cost for her is 300/9 (her + 8 slaves) = 30-odd. So she's fine.

The slaves are effectively A3. Fog warriors is therefore two levels higher than they can cast, so they pay triple fatigue. So they take 3*300/9 = 100 fatigue.

This is an example of where communion isn't very helpful, but generally it's brilliant. Another feature of communion is that if one of the masters casts a self-affecting spell, it also affects all the slaves (but not the other masters). So, getting one master to cast Power of the Spheres makes your communion _much_ more efficient.

Hope that's helpful.

I've got some questions I don't know the answer to though, I wonder if anyone else does.

1) Can people join a communion at all different times? (I think they can).

2) If a communion gets a buff (e.g. power of the spheres), and then another mage joins in the following turn as a slave, does he get the buff? (I'm guessing not)

3) If a _bad_ one-person-only spell is cast on a master, does it affect all the slaves too? e.g. can you soul slay the whole lot in one go?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Communion is weird.

In the Faerun PBEM, I gave my prophet and a MotW a crystal matrix each, and four MotW a slave matrix. The boosted MotW seemed to work fine, but the prophet bizarrely gained ultra quickness, casting holy avenger thrice a turn.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

So - what are the gem implications for the above spellcasting example? The Sorceress would pay 0, and each slave would pay 1, for 8 gems loss? (if they had gems, that is?)

Re: Understanding Communion
 

The Sorceress would pay the 3 gems necessary to cast the spell. Probably no more, though I've never quite figured out the "using gems to reduce fatigue" AI.

The slaves would/could use no gems.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Yep, I agree with thejeff there. Although it would cost the slaves 100 fatigue, that just means 100 fatigue, whereas 100 fatigue in spell descriptions is code for "100 fatigue and a gem".

And actually, although I said that's an example where communion's not very good, actually I think I lied - if you had no air boosters, that might be the only way you could cast a battle-winning Fog Warriors, although I think 4 slaves would do at a pinch.

With 4 slaves the sorceress would become level 4. She'd then spend 1 gem to become level 5 for the turn, and 3 for the spell - so she'd spend her maximum of 4 gems for the turn. She'd take 300 fatigue, but since you can never take more than 200 fatigue from a single spell (an important rule that I don't think is explicit in the manual), she wouldn't die.

The slaves on the other hand would only be level 2, three levels too low, so the spell would be quadruple cost, giving each one 4*300/5 = 240 fatigue. So here's another question - would that just count as 200 fatigue, or would they die?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

What spells do you use communion for that the slaves cant just cast themselves?

Nice writeup, though they pay 3x their own encumbrance too in this example.

Sure, since communion master (or slave) is a self-buff for the duration of the battle.

The guess is right since the buff goes to each slave, not the communion itself

Someone told me no, and it seems true. Death of all slaves usually only happens when some happy master decides to throw blade wind at fleeing guys almost off the screen when slaves are at 200 fatigue.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Um, sadly I can't remember actually (it was a while ago) but I remember being very pleased with it. Soul slay is one option with massed thaumaturgs, though they're a bit expensive to just use as S1 casters. Maybe crazy skellispam? Or if you have quite a few thaumaturgs, using 4 as slaves would make nether darts more efficient (+1 penetration from +2 levels, some extra darts, plus very low fatigue). Hmm, I'm not sure about that one, it's marginal. Things like Darkness become castable by people who couldn't otherwise cast them, that's good. I have a feeling I had some other cunning plans though, but sadly I can't remember...

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Oh, shadow blast is a good one if you've got the gems. 4 communion slaves can power a lot of shadow blasts (20 in fact I think, which is more than you're ever likely to cast and will absolutely decimate most armies).

Re: Understanding Communion
 

I can tell you from experience they would die. I have killed off loads of communion slaves in my time. Entire rows of 8 going 'pop' as they die.

Communion Master/slave is very powerful and can win you many battles, you just after be careful how to use it.

A good use for MA Ermor is with multiple shadow blasting. Have 8 Thaumaturgs script communion slave, hold, hold, hold, hold, retreat. The retreat order is there to save your slaves from dieing. The masters, grand thaumaturgs, communion master, shadow blast, shadow blast, shadow blast, shadow blast, retreat.

Its a pain having to gather them all up again but at least it increases the chances of them staying alive. Also worth it to win a important/big battle.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

I didn't realise communion slaves would still do things once they were slaved. Will they still do everything except cast spells then? Can you send them into battle?

Ooh ooh, I have another question. Do fatigue-restoring spells affect slaves? I know that Reinvigoration doesn't, because I tested it. How about, say, Drain Life?

Summon Earth Power is a very good spell to cast if you have someone with earth who can be a communion master. I'm pretty sure that works.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Communion slave only act on turns none of the masters cast.

I'm not sure how hold orders play into that.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

The hold orders are just to fill space until the retreat order. Otherwise the AI will have the masters cast raise dead or such until all the slaves are dead and usually well after the battle as been won.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

My understanding is that the slaves don't act while the master is casting.
What I don't know is, once your master retreats, will the slaves hold 4 times before retreating or do the turns they spent not acting count as holds?
Complicated by them probably being unconscious by the end anyway.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

I have used this several times, the slaves retreat. Either at the same time as the master or when there fatigue goes below 100.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

I also think Earth Power will work, however since it reinvigorates at different levels based on the Earth skill of the caster, will the slaves get reinvig at the caster's level, or their own, which would be 0?

Relief obviously will work on the slaves, which could be good, or totally useless if the slaves get so much fatigue in 1 round that they die before it get's a chance to affect them.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

One other neat strategy I came up with quite by accident (accidentally placing my infantry in the rear one fight) is to use your comunion slaves as blockers. This can be very useful because they are effected by everything the communion masters cast to buff themselves. That means if you have a large communion with diverse mages, you can have each master cast one of the following:
body ethereal, personal luck, invulnrability, breath of winter, fire shield, astral shield, mistform, etc. etc. Each master (in the back row) is only moderately buffed, but each slave (in the front) is a fairly indestructable linebacker. Obviously you need some way to cope with arrows before your buffs take effect (chaff works well), but I've actually found this is pretty damn effective because the synergy here is that the higher the slave:master ratio is, the longer the masters can keep casting...while also having more effective linebackers (with fire shield, breath of winter, etc. they even have a bite). Not many deaths from fatigue when you've got a 4:1 ratio...;)

Don\'t forget Phoenix Pyre.
 

Not that I recall Fire being a MA Ermor trait, but more generally...

A communion master casting Phoenix Pyre can have some very *interesting* results. Experiments are left as an exercise to the uninitiated.

Re: Don\'t forget Phoenix Pyre.
 

By "interesting" do you mean ... disasterous? O_o XD

Re: Don\'t forget Phoenix Pyre.
 

Or "highly entertaining", although for whom is circumstantial.

At some point, in some bizarre SP game I'm going to be tempted to do the wildly inefficient and silly task of setting up an immortal communion squad headed by a fire mage, for this very purpose.

This slavery thing is awesome...
 

Okay. So if all the communion slaves receive the bonuses to their paths as well, why don't we initiate communion with a weak mage and then just use the bonus paths from slavery for our real mages.

As in:
Thaumaturge: Communion Master, hold x4, stay behind troops
Grand Thamaturges 1-4: Communion Slaves, whatever spells they like at paths +2.

Or even use regular thaumaturges - heck, you've lost a spellcasting round and a single SDHH mage for the fight to upgrade 4 other SDHH mages to SSSDDDHHHH. That's a swap I'll make any day of the week.

Re: This slavery thing is awesome...
 

That's a very intersting idea. Has anybody tried that?

Re: This slavery thing is awesome...
 

It appears not to work. Thaumaturge slaves in a four slave communion cannot cast Power of the Sepulcher.

Re: This slavery thing is awesome...
 

That's brilliant to the point that, if it works, it's exploitative. Does there need to be a living master on the field for the slaves to get the extra levels? Or can an Acolyte master walk off the field and let 16 Theurgs cast at +4 for the rest of the battle?

If the master needs to be present a Flame helmet could keep him over 100 fatigue so the slaves can get some work done.

Re: This slavery thing is awesome...
 

Ah well, it's kind of good that it doesn't work, if it did it would be an exploit to the point of being a bug, really. I guess the extra levels for the slaves only count with respect the spells the masters cast.

Re: This slavery thing is awesome...
 

Exactly.