communion (?)
 

Newbie question: I have seen mentioned in some posts how a communion of mages can perform impressive feats on the battlefield. Unfortunately, I have no idea exactly what this is, how it works, what it does, pros and cons, when it should best be used, etc.

Would anybody know if there is a something of a guide available somewhere that explains the basics that could help me get started? (I did a brief search but couldn't find anything)

thanks in advance

Re: communion (?)
 

The Astral spells Communion Master and Communion Slave. (Also Blood spells Sabbath Master and Slave and the Crystal Matrix items.)

Communion Slaves don't act themselves, but boost the Masters path levels and take his fatigue. They also share any spells he casts on himself, which allows some interesting tactics.

Unlike normal spellcasting, where a caster goes unconscious and stops casting fatigue hits 100, Communion Masters will keep casting after the slaves fall asleep and will often drain them to death (they start taking damage after 200 fatigue).

2 slaves gives a +1 boost to all paths the Master has
every time you double the slaves, you get another +1

Re: communion (?)
 

Is there a thread that competently addresses all the issues associated with communion casting? I'm interested in trying it, but it seems very complex.

Jazzepi

Re: communion (?)
 

Its really not that complicated.

You just need a collection of astral mages. Those you script to cast Communion Slave will be the slaves (Pythium communicants do this automatically). Those that script Communion Master will be a master.

Every Master will have magic paths boosted according to the formula thejeff laid out above. You can have as many Masters as you see fit. But each spell a Master casts will have its fatigue spread across himself and each slave. So if you have 4 slaves and a master casts a 100 fatigue spell, then he will get 20 fatigue, as will each slave.

Points to note about communions:
-Buffs on a Master will also buff all the slaves (Summon Earthpower for the reinvig is great here)
-Since communions require a good deal of mages, they are sometimes vulnerable to being broken when key mages are killed.
-Some attack spells exploit the Master/Slave connection. I think Soul Slay or Magic Duel... cant recall.

Re: communion (?)
 

Communion Master / Phoenix Pyre. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: communion (?)
 

Dont forget air shield/twist fate there, without it theres a good chance of your slaves blowing up in your face.

Re: communion (?)
 

A couple more points:

1) Communion slaves *do* act by themselves if they come in the battle sequence before any communion masters have cast a spell that round. The combat sequence is deterministic, so if you're clever you can do things like have your slaves casting spells while your masters come at the end casting self buffs (which effect all the slaves). If your slaves can cast things which reinvigorate themselves (like drain life) this can be a never ending fountain of nastiness as the master casts big spells and the slaves reinvig themselves.

2) A big risk of communions is that the masters don't consider the fatigue of the slaves when they're casting. This means you can quite easily have your slaves killed by a master spamming completely useless stuff at routing enemies. Nothing quite so frustrating as loosing half your mages winning an easy fight. Consequently communions are usually best for big decisive battles.

3) The buffs conferred on communion slaves remain even if the master leaves the battlefield. This means another use of a communion is to get buffs on SC/thugs who couldn't otherwise get them. Giving a slave matrix to somebody tough, then having a couple master mages cast invulnerability, blood vengence, mistfrom etc. can make for an awesomely powerful SC with very little cost. It's particularly wicked for things which can't usually wear too many items (tarasques, Wyrms, etc).

4) Communion slaves take (significantly) more fatigue when the master casts spells which the slaves don't have the right paths for. Putting the cheapest mages as slaves is not always the best choice.

Re: communion (?)
 

This then brings back my question of having a mage be both a slave & master at the same time. If the order is: #1-7Slaves, #8Slave/Master, #9Master. Then #8 could still cast as a master and be a slave for #9 (& maybe himself too?), right?

In another thread someone mentioned a slave commune unit (with no magic paths) takes less fatigue then 1astral mages. If that's true wouldn't a cheap non-mage with a slave matrix take less fatigue than most typical slave mages (like a 1 astral mage)?

Re: communion (?)
 

Slave matrixes only work if the unit is a mage, as far as I know Pythiums communicants (the unit you mention) are the only special case that can join a communion with no magic paths.

Dunno about being both master & slave, my gut tells me it wouldn't work but I've never tested it. I'm guessing casting master cancels the slave effect and vice versa.

Re: communion (?)
 

If Pythium slave communes take less fatigue with no magic paths then wouldn't having slaves with different paths from the master also be better for less fatigue... as in a master casting earth spells and having the slaves with only say 1 astral and no earth (rather than 1 or 2 earth)?

I don't know either, but IIRC in another thread KO said Solar Brilliance was the only spell he recalled that cancelled another (Darkness).

Re: communion (?)
 

I think Pythium communicants are a special case. You can test it, but I wouldn't assume other no magic (or different path) slaves get less fatigue.

Can anyone confirm that slaves act if their turn comes before the masters? I've never noticed this. I would expect to see slaves casting fairly frequently, until they fall asleep at least. But I don't use communions often.
There are known weirdnesses with quickness.

This could be nicely exploitable with an SC. Allowing him to self buff, as well as get buffs from the master.

Re: communion (?)
 

This is what originally made me start thinking of a slave/master. I had what looked to be slaves casting (I assigned some cheap fatigue spell after slave commune), but when someone else said slaves couldn't I assumed that meant the AI skipped my slave script on some of them assuming it was not necessary for that fight. Now I'm more inclined to believe Baalz is right on slaves being able to cast depending on the order.

Re: communion (?)
 

Slaves cannot act at all. I dont know if Baalz is doing something special but I've used Communions a lot and I have never once seen a Slave do anything but stand there? Can you back this up with solid proof Baalz? What you are saying goes against everything I know of communions.

No, you cannot be both Slave and Master. Only one or the other. I dont know what will happen if you cast both spells in sequence.

Re: communion (?)
 

Slaves casting spells happened to me too, in the first game I actually used communions. At the time it didn't strike me as weird, and when I learned more about communions I assumed it had to do with the turn order, as Baalz describes it here, though I'm not quite sure that that was the cause. (I am certain they were actually slaves though)

Re: communion (?)
 

I don't usually use communions - I think they're usually more trouble then they're worth - but the few times I have, I'm pretty sure that I've seen slaves acting on their own. In Dom2 at least, I _know_ it happened - I had a bunch of quickened slaves charge the enemy. As far as slaves getting fatigue, they get a proportion equal to 1/# of members of communion, but of the totaly they woud've got if they cast the spell themselves. E.g. Earth wind is cat by an E10 cyclops with a matrix and two slaves with earth 3. the slaves get 1/3 of the base fatigue for bw (40 IIRC) And the cyclops gets 1/3 of the hugely reduced amount an E10 mage gets when casting Blade wind. If the communicants have no/not enough magic (to cast the spell) I assume the progression is reversed. Would make Master Enslave a scary prospect for the communicant, if its possible to get more than 200 fatigue from a communion masters spell. Fatigue from spell mages cast is capped at 200. Is that true for other members of a communion casting spells too? IDK, but I sort of think its also capped.

As to being a slave AND a master, astral mages with bad/unusual research and no scripts sometimes cast both, which might indicate it working, but they also sometimes use communions in the arena, so they might just be being stupid.

Re: communion (?)
 

Seems strange. If slaves cast any spell whatsoever after having become slaves it is a bug.

The point is that they lend their power to their master and let him use them as magical batteries.

Re: communion (?)
 

thanks for clarifying how it's supposed to work. Any such clarification forthcoming on the master and slave issue? That is, can a mage be both at once?

Re: communion (?)
 

I think there is known weirdness with quickened communion slaves. Could that be where this impression comes from?

And I've definitely seen indy blood mages without slaves cast both Sabbath Master and Slave. Don't know what the results were since they didn't have any other spells to cast.

Re: communion (?)
 

I'm not sure, but I suspect he is (or should be) rendered useless when he becomes a slave, as slaves are not supposed to cast anything.

Re: communion (?)
 

No, slaves can act on their own. The only thing is that if any one communion (sabbath etc.) master casts a spell in a combat turn, then they have to perform the "cast spell" action aswell, lending their support to the communion master, and can't act themself. But if all communion masters are somehow occupied, engaging in melee combat or already left the battlefield for example, then the slaves act as normal mages in a battle.

Take care that, as has been noted before, the actual fatigue that a unit gets is determined by the magic paths and levels he has as if he'd cast the spell himself (and then divide by number of slaves+master), while the communion master takes considerably less fatigue because he might be magically more powerful than the slaves. This is extra bad if the slaves don't have the actual levels required to cast the spell.

Re: communion (?)
 

Well, perhaps it's a bug, but it's easy to reproduce. The way I first noticed it I was playing EA Ermor and my slaves happened to come in order before the master. One master (Augur Elder) and four slaves (Augurs), so it was pretty noticeable when (after the master cast phoenix power) 5 fireballs were being launched each turn. After I noticed it it's pretty easy to make happen on purpose, and it definitely is caused by the slaves coming in order before the master (the ones that come after any master casts something don't do anything). I'm guessing perhaps the logic is supposed to be that the slaves are free to act if the master doesn't cast anything that turn?

Note, I haven't actually confirmed it with any other types of mages, I assumed it works the same.

Re: communion (?)
 

That's cetainly interesting... What exactly determines the order of units in battle? Is it random? Based on unit numbers?

Re: communion (?)
 

Army placement grid determines order of units. Top to bottom.

Re: communion (?)
 

I just tried sticking a Slave Matrix on an SC. Here are a couple of results:

1.) As before, there's no result if the SC has no magic paths. He shares no fatigue and is not affected by single-target spells.

2.) If the SC has no levels at all in a path required by the spell, he still takes a lot of fatigue damage. My D3 Wraith Lord went from ~48 fatigue to 88 fatigue when my pretender, a Communion Master, cast Invulnerability. That's x4 fatigue for being 3 path levels under. (I couldn't tell exactly how much fatigue he started out with because he had 48 fatigue before, and then Soul Vortex drain + my pretender's Invulnerability happened basically simultaneously.) I highly recommend a few other communion slaves to share fatigue and raise effective path levels.

3.) If you *do* have three or four communion slaves, a lot of nice options open up. Fire shield, astral shield, personal luck, personal regeneration, strength of Gaia, quicken self... and you can get all this casting done in the first couple of rounds. I can't think of a nicer way to buff an SC.

4.) Make sure you have some kind of reinvigoration for your SC. I like Soul Vortex + chaff bodyguards, but a magic item would work too.

All in all, it's an interesting tactic that's pretty cheap on the magic items. It also scales well with multiple SCs, since each and every slave gets the same buffs (and shares fatigue). You could have a whole army of super-buffed SCs this way for a minimal investment in earth gems and pearls, which is great for nations with thuggable commanders with magic and earth/astral mages. Unfortunately I'm not sure how common that combination is. Niefelheim lacks earth, Helheim lacks astral, EA Agartha lacks astral, LA Agartha lacks thuggable (mage) commanders... there's a lot of nations I haven't really gotten familiar with.

Still, there's always summons. For LA Agartha, my current fave, I'm thinking Wraith Lords with Ironskin (or Invulnerability), Soul Vortex, Fire Shield, Personal Luck, Astral Shield.

-Max

P.S. And in MP, I guess there's always trading. I think we can all guess how much fun Niefelheim would have with Gygjas and Niefel Jarls if somebody would just forge them a few slave matrices, right?

Re: communion (?)
 

It turns out I have an old saved game during a turn where I have the following 2 battles that can be replayed:
1>Sages who are slaves with a master that casts after them. Here you can clearly see the slaves casting Star Fires (again I was still experimenting and didn't want anything to exhaust them too bad). The master never enters melee, flees/leaves or dies either.

2>Sages who are slaves with a master that casts before them. Here none of the slaves cast anything after Slave Communion.

Both sets of slaves have the same scripts. I think I read that attachments weren't working, but as Baalz said this is fairly easy to reproduce yourself and there are already plenty of posts in the thread to confirm it anyways.

Re: communion (?)
 

I did my first attempt at communion and it has left me mightily confused. I'm playing Ulm-Late. I used a 2fire, 2astral, 2blood mage as master and two fortune tellers (2 astral; 1astral + 1nature) as slaves. First turn I cast all the communion spells. The next several turns I had the master cast fireball. Here's what I observed...

1) There was no apparent boost to the master's paths. Usually stats are updated when buffs are applied on the battlefield, but they remained the same on the stats window. Has anyone observed a communion upping the path numbers there?

2) Each time the master cast fireball (2fire; 20 fatigue), his fatigue cost was 7, but it cost each slave 28 fatigue each. I understand there is a penalty because the slaves had no fire ability, but should it really cost 63 fatigue (total) to cast a 20-fatigue spell?

It might be worth noting that the province where the battle took place was +3 Heat, but at the same time, it was +2 Magic.

Can anyone please advise me. I sooooo much want to use the higher level functions of this game, but so far, I'm not seeing where any of them are worth it. In the time, and for the resources, it takes to make a viable SC or an army of mages, I can build several regular armies and decide the fate of the game. I thought maybe communion was one way to make magic a more viable strategy, but my experience would suggest otherwise. I'm hoping it's just my ignorance. Thanks.

Re: communion (?)
 

You don't see the boost, but it's there when they cast spells. Now that we're talking about this, it would be a good idea to have an icon for communions which displays the boost to magic levels, I think. (hint hint, KO...)

Every level over the requirement halves the (base) fatigue cost of a spell. Every level under the requirement doubles the (base) fatigue cost of the spell.

Re: communion (?)
 

Thanks. That helps. So the moral I'm getting out of this is that communion is really only viable with similar magic-path units.

Here's a hypothetical... Let's say you have a master with 2astral and 2fire. At the same time you have two slaves with 2astral each. Let's say you script to the limit with astral spells. I'm curious to know what happens when the script runs out. Is there anything in the AI that would make the master keep casting astral spells or is he just as likely to start casting fire spells and consequently overload his slaves?

Re: communion (?)
 

Nope. The AI is gonna do what it thinks is best, which might be astral spells or might not.

Generally, communions aren't used for everyday run of the mill spells like fireball. They're mostly used for big battlefield enchants, and for buffing your mages quicker.
I don't really use communions myself yet. I just don't see the benefit to it when you could just make a booster or two to buff your paths.

Re: communion (?)
 

Same here, rarely (once) use communion... adds a level of complication and micro that reduces my enjoyment even more than normal micro.

It seems useful for the multi-buffing or huge battlefield spells (master enslave)... but those rarely come about for me. If they do its usually with an empowered, boostered solo guy with the battlefield wide version of soul vortex... now that's fun. Getting to the point where its worth it isn't. Think I've had a couple of SP games where facing 1k armies, that's a fun combo at least in SP.

Re: communion (?)
 

I don't think that's quite right. If you are n levels over you should take 1/(n+1) times normal fatigue, not 1/(2^n) times. Similarly, if you're n levels under you should take n times normal fatigue. I confess, however, that I don't understand why Chaafii's fortune tellers took 28 fatigue instead of 14, not counting encumbrance, since with the +1 boost from two slaves they should have been only one level under. Maybe you don't get the effective boost in paths where you start out with no levels.

-Max

Re: communion (?)
 

I use communion when I'm EA C'tis. If you've got all these lizard shaman hanging around anyway, and they all have S1N1... communion 6 or 8 of them and and cast Soul Slay or Charm. Generally less effective than letting them research but sometimes fun and/or useful.

-Max

Re: communion (?)
 

This has always been the part I don't understand about communion. In particular for MA Pythium and Marignon. Pythium gets leaders with NO magic paths that auto-cast communion slave at the start of the battle. Yet with the extra fatigue due to low levels of magic, I haven't been able to find this useful--ever--for four reasons:

1) They end up using *more* fatigue than they otherwise would (total) for most spells. Sure, it's spread around multiple leaders--but they slaves often seem to end up using up more fatigue individually than listed for the spell.

2) You have to script so many leaders to communion slave, that's all a castle is producing for an extended period of time. Marignon and Pythium both have far, FAR better leader units to create than hordes of effectively useless communion slaves.

3) Construction can produce a very similar skill-boosting effect, since Fire, Air, Water, and Astral are very easy to boost using items.

4) It's too easy for the Master to out-and-out slaughter his Slaves with unscripted spellcasting. The solution to this seems to be 'don't use Communion except in the big battles'. However, this means that 90% of the time those Slaves you wasted your castle's turns building are serving no purpose whatsoever.

Edit: And, 5) You can achieve the fatigue reduction MUCH easier simply by using extra gems in the spellcasting. (Although I admit I haven't experimented to see how good the A.I. is at managing fatigue this way...)

*shrug* It just...doesn't seem worth it, to me. Can someone point out specific situations where Communion has been/would be a clearly superior strategy?

Re: communion (?)
 

I've had the same problems with Pythium. It seems you should churn out communicants in large numbers, but they're only useful in certain battles and not much cheaper than Theurg Acolytes, who can at least research the rest of the time.

That said there are reports that communicants use less fatigue than would be expected of no magic communion slaves. I'm not sure how much less.

Fire and Air aren't that easy to boost with items. The base items for both require 4 levels to start with. Fire also has a fire/death booster, but I don't think either Marignon or Pythium have access to that.

You can only use 1 gem to boost the level of spell you can cast, and only as many total as you have levels. And the AI is not good at managing gem use in battle. It tends to spend them before you need them. You also need to have someone following along to resupply.

With enough slaves, very high levels can be reached and some of the nastier battlefield spells cast. Or boosts for the ones that grow in area and/or damage. Master enslave is the usual example. There was a thread about it not long ago.

Still I've never really managed to make effective use of communion either. Or had it used against me.

Re: communion (?)
 

Communion is a PITA, but it can also be very powerful. Aside from casting the big spells that are otherwise very difficult, and spreading buffs (as mentioned earlier in this thread) it can also be a *very* effective way to lay out mid level evocation carnage (falling fires, magma eruption, gifts from heaven, etc.) in an essentially never ending cascade of damage. The thing is, you have to realize what a communion is and what it is not. Here's some things that seem to be common mistakes when using communions.

1) You need way more communion slaves than you think. The actual ratio is going to vary a lot depending on your mages and the size of the communion, but to really see the benefits you generally need to be thinking in the realm of double digit numbers of slaves.

2) Dumping the cheapest astral mage you can scrounge up into the slave role will often yield budget-rate results. Obviously there are plenty of situations where doing this makes sense, but also consider putting some decent mages as slaves - it makes a significant difference. It'll often make more sense to put your cheaper mage as the master because he'll still be effective, but much less likely to kill the slave.

3) Because of the extreme expense (particularly in castle-recruiting turns), communions are really most appropriate for large, critical battles, not for your more typical skirmishes. Don't get me wrong, you can certainly wrangle some good use out of 6 person communions, but to really appreciate them you need to see a 30 Mystic Arcoscephale communion drop a dozen gifts from heaven/falling fires/astral fires for 10 turns straight. Trust me, you're used to seeing that type of carnage in the first few rounds but it's quite noticeable when the enemy mages pass out after a couple turns but the onslaught from your side just...doesn't...end!

Re: communion (?)
 

Not "clearly superior," but it's something useful for Ktonian Necromancers with an astral random to do during battle, sometimes, to let me cast e.g. Plague or Rigor Mortis without booster items. (Plague is particularly good because it's useful to cast it multiple times.) Unless I'd rather have them be Nether Darting or Magma Erupting. One thing about communion slaves is that they can be grouped out of the way toward the back of the battlefield, and yet still contribute to firepower.

I also like the idea of communions of thugs and SCs, although I haven't used that in a real game yet. I'm planning on spamming Attendants of the Oracles with slave collars and enchanted with Phoenix Pyre, Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Fire Shield, Soul Vortex, and an E9 blessing. I usually have more forts than gold anyway so it shouldn't be hard to build the Attendants, and they're one of LA Agartha's few commanders with 2 mapmove. And of course I can always toss a Wraith Lord into the mix, with a bit more research.

-Max

Edit: I don't see how anyone could be dropping a dozen spells a turn for 10 turns straight. Since communion slaves take encumbrance from each spell cast, that's 36 to 60 fatigue a turn (depending upon how old the slaves are) for 10 turns, before counting any spell fatigue. Reinvigoration is hardly going to dent that, and pretty soon they should be dying off.

It also seems like an evil situation into which to deploy Rigor Mortis. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: communion (?)
 

Nope, the slaves most definitely do not take an encumbrance hit when the master casts a spell. I just double checked that in a game I'm playing, my Augur slaves (4 of them each with an encumbrance of 3) gain two fatigue when the master casts nether darts (neutral magic scales). This is consistent with what I saw in my large communions. I don't remember the actual numbers because I'm recollecting a game from awhile ago, but when I got up a decent sized group of Mystics they just did *not* stop. I think what it is, is the slaves boost the levels of the slaves as well as the masters, so if you've got 16 slaves they each get +4 to their paths, and if your slaves are decent mages to start with (on par with the masters) then a couple masters cast phoenix power, light of the northern star and power of the spheres and suddenly the spells being cast are *well* below the slave's magic capacity and the fatigue is split by 16. They didn't take anywhere near to 60 fatigue each round despite the fact that there were a dozen spells being cast. It also helps that the spells are not super high fatigue, most of the mid range evocation spells are 20-50 fatigue if you're an on-level caster. Heck a 30 fatigue magma eruption divided by 16 is less than 2, so if you're just one level over the path requirements you're down to 1 fatigue. Throw in a little reinvigoration and yeah, you can go well past 10 rounds of laying the smack down - and that magma eruption by an earth-10 mage is certainly some smack being laid (30 damage, aoe 12).

Obviously immensely expensive to line up 30 decent mages, but certainly attainable for decisive battles.

Re: communion (?)
 

Well, that's a pleasant surprise--I had it in my head that encumbrance was the limiting factor for large communions. Maybe I should look again at communions. It also makes the SC-communion idea even better, since SCs typically want to wear heavy armor with lots of encumbrance.

-Max

Re: communion (?)
 

Forging boosters takes lots of gems. Casting with gems does, too, and a fair bit of micromanagement, plus it gives very heavy fatigue. In the later game you tend to have gold in abundance and what you want are gems. S1 mages are usually cheap mages that you flock together for researching. After they are done with that, using them in communions is a *cheap* way to boost your mages' paths. I don't say that you should send them traveling around with your other mages, but in case you do enter combat in a sieged fort, then having a communion might be better than having a bunch of S1 mages that can rarely cast useful spells in battle. Like most things, communions are a trade-off that you may use or not.

Yes, of course, that's the case. If the master decides to cast some powerful spell just because he can barely do it with the magic boost from the communion, then the lower slaves tend to get [censored] by that, of course. I am not sure if the slaves have to be able to cast the spell with their (boosted) magic paths in order for the master to cast it.