Any Man Advice
 

I'm working on a Late Age Man strategy and am wondering if anybody has any advice to share, especially about ways to use their Magister's Arcane. I figure on Wind Guide and Shockwave, but thats about it. Any other ideas?

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Shockwave is not so hot.

Note that Wind Guide is actually "mass aim", so it helps people who cast damaging spells such as thunderstrike hit more often. This is a big deal.

To summarise, this is my recommended research order:
Const 6 (if you can get this far without fighting another player), Alter 4, Ench 6, Conj 3, Thau 1, Evoc 6

The basic (AAES) guys aren't much use in combat - unless an opponent is trying super-combatants, in which case by all means cast lightning bolt until you're blue in the face. They aren't even good communion slaves (since they have a high enc from being old.) Nonetheless, that's probably the best use for them in combat - otherwise, leave them at home to make science. If you cast storm, they can all cast Storm Power and then follow up with some useful spells (see AAAES below.)

AAAES can cast Arrow Fend (ench 6), Thunderstrike and the various ghost spells are probably your best bet for spells to spam.
AAEES can cast Summon Earthpower to get to E3, and then cast blade wind (evoc, against Mictlan) or Destruction (alter, against armored opponents,) or Gifts from Heaven (evoc, against giants).
AAEFS can cast Power of the Spheres (Conj) and then Phoenix Power (Conj) to cast real fire magic, particularly flaming arrows (Ench) which is very nice for your all archer army. Otherwise, you can make them communion masters, and then have them follow the flaming arrows with magma eruption (evoc). Astral fires is also a great spell but I think magma eruption is better.
AAESS can cast several utility spells (anti-magic, ench), or if you give them a 4-man communion they can cast enslave mind (thau) and other sexy astral stuff.

As Man, you probably want to spend most of your gems on combat magic and research items. Your military is pretty competent all around - you can make trolls and things if you have a gem glut but it's seldom really worth the trouble. A few boosting items can be useful - if you make a Communion Matrix, for example, and put it on a mage on the bottom of the batting order, you can get spells like Arrow Fend off on the first turn, which can make a big difference, actually.
Anyway, the spells you want are:
Forge Quills (Const 2)
Legions of Steel (Const 3)
Forge Lightless Lanterns (Const 6)
The various power-boosting spells (Conj 3)
Communion (Thau 1)
Flaming Arrows (Ench 4)
Arrow Fend (Ench 6)
Ghost Wolves (Alter 3)
Destruction (Alter 4)
Curse of Stones (Alter 4)
Wind Guide (Alter 4)
Phantasmal Army (Alter 5)
Phantasmal Army (Alter 6)
Thunder Strike (Evoc 4)
Blade Wind (Evoc 4)
Gifts from Heaven (Evoc 5)
Magma Eruption (Evoc 6)

For the late game, the following spells are really nuts:
Mists of Deception (Ench 8)
Fog Warriors (Alter 7)
Will of the Fates (Alter 8)
Army of Gold (Alter 9)
Master Enslave (Thau 9)

All of this should be cast while driven by a communion. Mater enslave requires a 32 member communion to be practical at all - but it really is a terrific spell.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Couldn't you do it with 16 and an S2 Magister Arcane?

S2
Communion Master(16 slaves, +4S) = S6
Power of the Spheres (1 pearl, +1S) = S7
Light of the Northern Star (1 pearl, +1S, cast by someone else) = S8
Master Enslave (requires S8)

Throw in a couple of item boosters and it should be quite practical with 4-8 communion slaves. Unless, I mean, you've got oodles of communion slaves hanging around anyway.

-Max

Re: Any Man Advice
 

The issue is - do you want the slaves to live? Also, do you want to cast any other spells out of your communion? (answer: yes, you absolutely do, master enslave is great but not THAT great.)

8 Slaves -> Slaves are S4, Fatigue = 800 * 5 / 8 = 500, so instead death.
16 Slaves -> Slaves are S5, Fatigue = 800 * 4 / 16 = 200, so inatant death.
Okay, the actual fatigue the units can survive is:
200 + 9 (hit points) - 25 (for communion slave) - 20 (encumberance * 4 personal cost for master enslave) = 166.
20 Slaves -> 800 * 4 / 20 = 160.

So you can get one off if you have 20 slaves. BUT you can't cast anything else through the communion! This is very bad.

32 Slaves -> Slaves are S6, Fatigue = 800 * 2 / 32 = 50.

So, if you have 32 slaves, you can have two communion masters casting it AT THE SAME TIME. Now we're cooking with gas.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Thanks for the all the useful information Doc, it really is a lot to take in a think about. A couple of questions though. Let me first say when I said shockwave I actually meant thunderstrike.

Do your calculations still hold when taking into 3-Drain domain? I believe that adds 30% to fatigue costs, to say nothing of increased MR to spells such as Master Enslave. And considering the lack of a research penalty for taking 3-Drain, it makes to much sense to pass that by. Sure, not all battles all fought on your domain, but a good portion of them must be.

Can there actually be a time when its useful to reduce the efficacy of archers for Man by casting spells like Mists of Deception or creating Storms? The fact that Man's heavy line infantry comes equiped with crossbows strikes backed by very long ranged archers strikes me as a big advantage for the nation. Cast wind guide and a lot more of those bolts hit. What I find is really helpful is the entire square of Defenders can fight if you set them to fire, as those in the back will shoot while those in the front stab.

Finally, can you clarify how Common Master/Slave distributes fatigue? Does the spell calculate how much fatigue the Master would have acquired had he cast the spell alone and then distribute it among the Slaves, or does it divided the given fatigue up and act like each slave/master cast the spell for that amount of fatigue and reduce it from there?

I'm sure I'll think of more thoughts later, but thats all for now, thanks a lot.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

man advice, man advice?

after you fight eachother, sit down and share a beer - you have a new friend...

um, never date a best friends ex, without his explicit consent

no man is required to buy a birthday present for another man.

If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever, unless you actually marry her.

When stumbling upon another Man watching a sporting event, you may always ask the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who's playing.

oh wait... you mean the nation....

Re: Any Man Advice
 

On another front for LA Man, don't forget the regular Magisters and the Judges.

Spies are always good, and some of them wind up with useful magic.

The Judges can get both Fire and Death, for Flaming skulls, and the fire ones can then, with Phoenix Power, cast Flaming Arrows.

Both can be built without labs, which is a nice feature.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

If you have more skill than the required path the fatigue cost is lowered. so with skill 9 you only pay half.
32 is too much but it's ok to add penetration wich is BADLY needed.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

LA Man? Make alot of use of longbows and defenders and try to research buffs for defenders quickly(they rock http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif).

I like heavy scales with an awake/dormant SC pretender(usually a prince of death or cyclops) for expansion. My favourite summon for LA Man are by far gargoyles, decent offensive strength and very tough, and they fly!

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Manuk - that's true, and if your skill is 1 *less* than what is required, you pay double.

The communion slaves pay their share of the fatigue as I discuss in my post - 32 is not too much.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

You cannot cast the spell if your skill is less

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Yes you can, if you are a communion slave.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

if you are a slave you don't cast spells.
but if you are a master your skill can be increased so you meet the requirements right?
or there is some hidden mechanism?

Re: Any Man Advice
 

There is a hidden mechanism which I described above.

Say I'm an S4 caster with two S2 communion slaves, and I cast "Will of the Fates" (S4, 400 fatigue.)

I'm boosted to S5, so I pay (400 / 2) / 3 ~= 66 fatigue.

My slaves are boosted to S3, so they each pay (400 * 2) / 3 ~= 266 fatigue, and drop dead.

I'm not sure how spending extra gems works into this - it may or may not reduce the fatigue spent by the slaves.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

So, at least 2 slaves for a 400 fatigue spell so they don't drop dead.
Because it makes no sense to me to have slaves of lvl 5 in any magic.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Thanks for the details. I had kind of wondered how Communion Slave worked in terms of distributing fatigue. However, with 8 slaves, under Light of the Northern Star, with Power of the Spheres, each slave should be at S6, assuming PotS was cast by a Communion Master.

-Max

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Max, that's true, but keep in mind that we're fighting Armageddon here. Your opponent probably has Master Enslave or the like to do to you, so your communion slaves may not *live* to benefit from both spells.

Initiative is key.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Guys, the astral value of a slave is meaningless. Not sure why you are even talking about it. All they do is absorb fatigue from spells that masters casts, they have no impact on any of the spells themselves.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

You've convinced me that you can't do Master Enslave with a 4-man Communion and have any hope of the slaves surviving. That's the main point and I agree.

On the other hand, you *already* have to wait till the second round to cast Master Enslave unless you're using a Crystal Matrix and casting at the end of the first round. Having another astral mage cast PotS and/or LotNS before ME goes off does not require an extra round, merely an extra mage and/or extra Crystal Matrix. If you don't happen to have 32 Communion Slaves available (say you had 32 but 3 of them died), making one of them a <Communion Master/PotS> and another a <Communion Master/LotNS> could save you a lot of fatigue. That's all I'm trying to point out, that those spells shouldn't be overlooked.

-Max

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Ironhawk,

The fatigue of the spell is split amongst master/slaves *before* skill in magic paths is factored in. A 200 fatigue S3 spell distributed amongst a S4 master and three S1 slaves will be 50 fatigue to each of them, adjusted for Astral paths at each mage *individually.*

50 fatigue to the master, but he's got +1 from 3 slaves and it's an S3 spell, so he takes 1/3 of that = 17 fatigue.

50 fatigue to each of the slaves, but they're S1 with a +1 bonus from being in a 3-slave communion so effectively S2. This is one shy of the S3 requirement, so the 50 fatigue allotment is doubled for each of them. Each one takes 100 fatigue.

I'm not entirely sure where encumbrance fits in, whether it's just the master's encumbrance that gets divided up or whether slaves take encumbrance from each spell that a master casts. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter and maybe later I'll check it out.

So you see, the skill of the communion slaves can matter quite a bit.

-Max

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Each communion member takes encumberance individually. The relationship between encumberance and skill level is still not entirely clear.

This is a big deal if you're pythium, because it puts an absolute limit on the number of Enslave Mind spells that your communion masters can spam. No matter how many communion slaves you may field, each slave will take a minimum of X fatigue per spell, where X is their encumberance (4 for a communicant.) Thus, after 50 Enslave Mind spells go off, your communicants start popping, no matter what you do.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

The master's magic skill affects how much fatigue he gets when casting a spell, but does not affect how much fatigue the slaves get. (dunno if added gems are an exception).

The slave's magic skill affects how much fatigue the slave gets when the master casts a spell - whether they drop dead sooner or later.

Re: Any Man Advice
 

Great explanation. I'll add what my testing showed on encumbrance:

The slave's encumbrance is added to the 50, so with enc 4 they'd take 108 fatigue in stead. And opposite, if they had astral skill 20 each one would only take 54/18=3 fatigue. (more realistic example: if the spell cost 20 total, the slave gets 5+4, so only need skill 5 to reduce it to 3. Easier done in big communions).