what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

I just watched a battle and painstakingly transcribed every spell cast by my mages, and what their fatigue was after each turn. I have several questions:

1. Why did the Communion Slaves not cast any spells?
2. Why did the Communion Master go out of script on turn 5?
3. Why did a couple of the slaves change their minds and cast a couple of spells at the end of the battle (turn 18).
4. Why does the fatigue get distributed unevenly?
5. Why does the fatigue get distributed differently when the Communion Master casts a spell on one turn than when he casts the same spell on the next turn (turns 6 & 7, turns 9 & 10 & 11, turns 14 & 15, turns 16 & 17)?
6. Why does the Communion Master cast worse spells like Banishment or Solar Rays instead of better spells like Holy Pyre?
7. Why do my mages sometimes recover as much as 8 fatigue per turn? (4 is due to Summon Earthpower)

Here was the script:

Enforca: Communion Master, Power of the Spheres, Summon Earthpower, Phoenix Power, Immolation, spells
Metase: Communion Slave, Body Ethereal, Luck, Rage, Blink, spells
Clarbune: Communion Slave, Luck, Body Ethereal, Curse of the Stones, Blink, spells
Bphlah: Communion Slave, Body Ethereal, Luck, Rage, Blink, spells

Actual behavior: Enforca cast 1. Communion Master, 2. Power of the Spheres, 3. Summon Earthpower, 4. Phoenix Power, 5. Summon Fire Elemental, 6. Banishment, 7. Banishment, 8. Luck, 9. Banishment, 10. Banishment, 11. Banishment, 12. Iron Will, 13. Holy Pyre, 14. Solar Rays, 15. Solar Rays, 16. Body Ethereal, 17. Body Ethereal, 18. none, 19. Luck

The other mages cast Communion Slave, then did nothing until turn 18 (the same turn that Enforca did nothing) when Metase cast Body Ethereal and Bplhah cast Mind Burn.

Here are the fatigue levels of each mage after each turn. The fatigue caused by my opponent's Rigor Mortis is included in parenthesis, when applicable.

<pre>
turn
| mage ->
v Enforce Metase Clarbune Bphlah
1 19 19 19 3
2 31 41 52 9
3 37 (37) 69 (77) 58 (70) 33 (29) ???
4 41 (50) 79 (75) 74 (70) 31 (41)
5 69 (70) 84 (80) 89 (85) 50 (54)
6 72 82 87 62
7 68 78 83 58
8 72 82 87 60
9 80 89 107 64
10 78 87 100 68
11 86 100 104 72
12 86 112 99 84
13 85 104 98 84
14 85 99 98 79
15 86 99 109 77
16 87 102 119 75
17 88 103 115 73
18 ? 118 ? 72
19 98 113 101 70
</pre>

One theory as to why Enforca didn't cast Immolation is that he didn't want to hurt the three White Knight bodyguards. Another is that he thought casting Immolation would hurt the Communion Slaves, not realizing that they had fire immunity fro.... Oh. I see that they only had 50% resistance from Phoenix Power. Maybe next time I'll do Phoenix Power, Fire Resistance, Immolation. So I guess the explanation to question #2 is Enforca was smarter than I was and knew not to cast Immolation.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Well, I can answer these. Communion slaves are not supposed to cast spells, period. But they do in rare cases and no one is sure why http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif . The final spell on the script might have been skiped if it was out of range. As for the AI mixing in weaker spells, the AI uses a random factor, so you can count on it trying almost everything in a long battle.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

I see a very simple pattern in the comminion slave castings: on turn 18, Enforfe fatiues out, thus not casting anything, and freeing the slaves for a turn as there is no free master.

Also, the extra fatigue removal is probably just the 5 you get for free for being above fatigue 100.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

&gt; Well, I can answer the these. Communion slaves are not supposed to cast spells, period.

Oh. Darn. Well, that kind of takes some of the fun out of it ...

Thanks for the answers! I gained 8 fatigue back when I was less than 100, but maybe I just mis-transcribed the numbers or something...

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Immolation is a 0-range spell (it affects a small area around the caster). So a better theory would probably be there were no valid targets within range (?).

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Oh, I'm confused. I thought that Immolation was a "self-enchantment" that would give the caster a 7-area aura of firey death for the remainder of the battle. Where did I get that idea? Oh well.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Nice job pulling all of that information together Zooko. Most of us (myself included) would have just asked "Hey, why did this happen?" rather than gathering together so much data to look at.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Thanks!

Oh wait -- no mage ever gained more than 4 fatigue back unless they were over 100. The most any gained back while &lt; 100 was 4. The most gained back while &gt;= 100 was 8.

So it sounds like you can get a bonus of up to 4 fatigue back when you are over 100.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

Probably got that idea from Master of Magic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I seem to remember casting Immolation on those killer knights.

Re: what the heck are my Communion Slaves doing?
 

I dont want to be nitpicky, but on page 15 of the dom2 manual, section 6.2.8, reads: "At 100 points, a unit falls unconcious. Unconcious units recover..."
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif