Reverse Communion Confusion
 

I'm trying to create a reverse communion with Marveni druids however I'm having trouble. I have two communion masters who cast power of the spheres and earthpower in the second round and then spam bladewind. This works fine, however the eight communion slaved druids are set to start spamming bladewind as well in the third round and then I'm supposed to watch as I rain glorious death on the opposing army of Pangaeans. Instead, the slaves cast sermon of courage and bless which results in my piss poor bare chested troops getting run down by satyrs. Anyone have any idea what they are letting me down?

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

That sounds like it should work.

The slave druids are casting, so it isn't an ordering problem. Are they actually getting the bonuses from PotS and Earthpower? The path boosts & reinvig should be visible.

They could be out of range, but bladewind is pretty long range and if they're at the same distance as the masters that would be ruled out.

Druids should be able to find something more useful than holy spells to cast. They are casting Communion Slave successfully, right?

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

They're definitely getting the bonuses, I looked at em and they've all got 4 earth magic and they're sitting right next to the masters who are launching righteous waves of blades at the enemy, but instead they're casting useless level one holy magic (which is doubly annoying considering they currently have 3 holy and could at least be smiting)

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

I'm not sure what else to suggest.

You could try running it with debug on and seeing if there are any clues in the spell choice section of the debug log.

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

No expert, but the way he described it the Masters cast first which frees the slaves as I understand it.

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

No. If the masters cast first in the round the slaves would not act. They are casting holy spells so that didn't happen.
If the masters cast Communion Master a round before the others cast Communion Slave, then nothing changes, except the slaves join the communion slightly later. As long as they are in when the masters cast PotS & Earthpower, it should work fine. And they are, since he can see that the slaves all have 4E.

As far as I know, there is no way to free the slaves. Once you're in a communion you're in it until you or all the masters leave the field. Even when all the masters are gone, the slaves still retain the buffs.

I'm not sure what's going on here, but it looks to me more like a problem with the spell selection algorithm, not the communion directly.

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

Adam,

1. Did you order the slaves to cast the spells?
2. Are you sure they are in range?
3. Are the masters casting? (slaves do nothing if masters do before them.

However, the most likely reason is this:

The AI will not cast spells that result in excess fatigue.
I suspect you are using communion slaves that do not have astral.

So the fatigue that each individual slave would get is doubled, including the armor encumbrance from the master.

If each individual slave has too much fatigue the AI will deprecate fatigue causing spells.

So if casting bladewind etc would put you over 100, the ai is likely to choose a different spell. Giving them earth gems to cut fatigue may help with the scripting.

There is one other reason, but I forgot what it was. Senior moment.

Also, you should try casting those in alternate order. Summon Earthpower, then Pots.
It gives you one more turn of reinvig.


Oh, right, I remember.

The other possibly likely cause is too many friendly casualties. Even one or two squares of placing will cause number of friendlies to go to high.

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

Can you upload a screenshot of your scripting screen? I think that would help the most. (You can remove all troops and extraneous commanders so we can see some slaves and the masters all in one shot).

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

Or just the turn if it isn't a MP game?

Re: Reverse Communion Confusion
 

Sorry guys, I've already moved on and don't have screenshots- but I'm quite certain the slaves received the bonuses... or at least the one slave I looked at did, and he was just blessing my boar warriors. Also, I had two masters so they got both the earthpower and the POTS on the second round (one was cast by each master). I'm confused by what an "ordering problem" might be. Does it matter what order the communion slave/master is cast? (I understand that the second round gets tricky since the earthpower and pots don't go into effect before some slaves cast, so I just had all the slaves casting farstrike (which didn't work either)). And I can't imagine it was a friendly fire or fatigue issue, as the masters were casting the good stuff and where next to the slaves and fatigue was being split between eight slaves all of whom had the relevant paths (and three spare paths when getting fatigue from the masters). I really appreciate all the thoughtful help however.