Communion Help
 

I'm pretty clueless with this one. How does Communion work and also how can I script them effectively? I know it raises your paths for your masters but how do you make them cast spells they normally can't in battle?

Re: Communion Help
 

simply script them to cast spells slightly above their regular level, works with with those s1 ryleh mages if its what your thinking. also if the master buffs himself (with reinvig/etheral ect) the slaves gain benifit, so you can actually make effective thugs out of it with the master doing an etheral+luck+buff from something like mistform

Re: Communion Help
 

At certain numbers of communion slaves (i believe its 2, 4, 8, etc) every communion master will gain +1 in all paths already present. As for scripting, just make sure the Masters all cast Communion Master first and the slaves all cast Communion Slave first. After that just script normally except that you can now select grayed out spells under the assumption that your mage will be communed by the time he casts them. It is similar to how you script when using extra gems or booster spells (phoenix pyre, power of the spheres, etc).

Re: Communion Help
 

Alright, thanks guys. Just a few more questions since I can't find them anywhere in the manual. For your mages to cast battle spells that requires gems, do I give them to the mages themselves or will they siphon it from the lab? Also, does Priests' fanaticism and divine blessing effect non sacred units?

Re: Communion Help
 

You must give gems to each mage (and yes, it's rather painful to manage).
Blessings are useful only for sacred units, but Sermon of Courage and Fanaticism help all troops that have "normal" morale (ie not at 50+) to resist retreat/routing.

Re: Communion Help
 

One thing that has not been mentioned is that without the relief spell or a high slave to master ratio, it is very possible to kill the slaves through fatigue in a long battle. As for scripting the slaves, probably the best script to keep communicants safe from wandering on to the front lines is (hold)(hold)(hold)(hold)(hold) Stay behind troops.

Oh, and even troops with only 30 morale don't route from squad or unit damage.

Re: Communion Help
 

Thanks, last question ... what is the channel everyone is at?

Re: Communion Help
 

once you join the server, by typing "/server irc.gamesurge.net", join the channel #dominions, by typing "/join #dominions".

see you there!

On gems
 

One thing you can do to make sure your mages don't blow all their gems summoning elementals (which they will, if the battle outruns their scripts) is to give a scout several battles' worth of gems for your commanders and have him sneak along with them, then resupply them every turn. Which, yes, is a micromanagement hassle and something I hope they manage to fix in DIII. (Just a checkbox item that says, "Don't use gems unless scripted" (and "don't fire missiles into close-combat situations" and and) would be nice...)

Re: On gems
 

I don't think the AI can handle the "Don't fire into close combat situations". As is anyway, and from what I have gathered the AI isn't going to be radically improved.

It would be nice though, I had to stop using clockwork horrors in any stack that had archers...I was one battle away from punching my monitor. If you've ever done that before, you would know that the monitor never loses.

Question: How often do you supply gems to your mages? I have a hard time doing this, as gems are so valuable, seems like a waste to use them on anything but critical battles. And unless you stop and build labs in every zone, there is no easy way to do that. Granted there are some awesome spells, but when you can get a one troll/Two Vine Ogres for one gem...or a nifty item for a couple more it seems like a waste. Unless the spell will dramatically alter the course of the battle. But how many spells will do that?

Thats actually a good question: What spells do you see as worth its weight (read: Cost) in gems? What spells do you script with a gem cost regularly?