Communicant units
 

Is it possible to copystat the Pythium Communicant commander and make a non-commander unit out of it, maintaining its ability to act as a communion slave for mages? Of course, it wouldn't have any magical paths and would rack up fatigue like crazy, and it would probably have to be pretty ridiculously expensive to be anything approaching fair. But, would it work?

Re: Communicant units
 

I´m pretty sure it won´t work. I think the communicant autocasts communion slave in the beginning of battle, which is only possible for commanders.

Re: Communicant units
 

No, I think it wouldn't work. But if you want easily massed communicants, you could just have a summon spell for them.

Re: Communicant units
 

Actually you CAN make a non commander unit out of the Communicant. The Communion Slave ability is not a #onebattlespell type ability, it is directly tied to the unit number.

So basically you can overwrite the Communicant with your unit name, stats, sprites etc maintaining the same unit number. The downside is that the unit will not count as a communion slave in a communion, but the cool thing is, the unit will receive any self casted buff the communion masters cast just like a communion slave in a reverse communion.

It makes for a really cool unique unit. I overwrote the communicant with a sliver unit that gains abilities from specialized slivers that autocast communion master at the start of battle. It turned out pretty cool :).

Re: Communicant units
 

That's actually EXACTLY what I wanted. Having that many slaves would make the master too powerful, but what I wanted was a method to buff an army of weak little things. Fantastic!

Re: Communicant units
 

Great :).

Here is how i did it:

#selectmonster 538
#spr1 "./sliver/sliver1.tga"
#spr2 "./sliver/sliver2.tga"
#name "Sliver"
#descr "Slivers are insectoid mesomorphs that live in huge hive colonies. Their precise origins are unknown. Ruled by the Sliver Queens, Slivers are feral, territorial and vicious. Slivers are able to feed off the enchantments cast by their leaders."
#hp 9
#size 1
#ressize 1
#prot 9
#mor 15
#mr 11
#enc 2
#str 8
#att 11
#def 12
#prec 8
#mapmove 2
#ap 9
#gcost 0
#rcost 0
#weapon 33
#nametype 117
#incunrest 1
#heal
#holy
#darkvision 100
#supplybonus -2
#itemslots 12288
#maxage 625
#end

Re: Communicant units
 

Oh, I'll use this as an opportunity to ask about the individual mod tags in that. I get most of them, but some don't make sense to me.

What's ressize as opposed to size?

Also, which itemslot does each number imply?

Re: Communicant units
 

These are documented in the mod manual (in the docs folder of your game directory) but basically, ressize applies a multiplier to the number of resources required to recruit, and itemslot is a bitmask.