[Bat/man]

Blood economy isn't the issue, blood logistics are. Lets say you have a communion of 16 mages, that's 16 slaves just to start up the communion each battle, gets pretty huge after a few battles, and what a ****ing chore to uphold a supply line all the way into enemy territory and painstakingly give every damn slave one(1) blood slave each turn. AND any clever opponent can **** you up by remote attacks to burn that slave in the magic phase so your entire communion falls apart in the real battle because there'll be no slaves to start it.

Well, first, I don't uphold an entire supply line. Usually I just fly (or walk) blood slaves in with stealthy cmdrs. I can't imagine doing what you are describing.

As for:

Jeez, all you have to do to prevent the slaves from doing something stupid is either A: place them out of range from the blood slaves, or B: have a master with with a unit ID so he's placed over the slaves.

Suppose you are in this situation:

S
S
S
S
S
M

Your slaves are spamming battle spells. Suppose however that slave 2 now casts a spell that kills all opponents in range. Slave #3 now will cast any spell on his list - including Sabbath Master. So on any subsequent turn, slave 3 casting will ***k up the scripts of slaves 4,5 and possibly M.

And, it will cast random spells, at random fatigue, causing your fatigue calculations to go to hell. Multiply this by every slave in your communion.


Or here's a real life example. 3 mictlan priests with 11 PD facing - call it 20 undead. No challenge right?

Not necessarily. Since the undead are out of range each priests casts Slave, then Master - and thus is fatigued out of the rest of the combat. The PD takes one casualty - routes - and the fatigued mages are slaughtered.

Third example: I haven't nailed down why this happens. Perhaps its in a drain economy, perhaps its spell casting encumbrance. But sometimes casting blood slave will consume a slave.

Sure, its easy to say move the communion slave away from the blood slaves. But there are times you want and need your mages in proximity (unit buffs, enemy placement).

Teleporting and cloud trapezing communions deep striking enemy territory without having to send scouts across the whole map in advance

Sure, I said there were a few new instances that the new bloodless communions opened up: sudden war, fast reacting communions.

But generally, if you're a blood nation and you're going to send a sabbath, you're going to want to carry blood slaves with you anyway, to cast things like reinvig, leech etc.

Generally speaking this change benefits cross path mages, and penalizes pure blood nations. The cross path mages can establish a bloodless communion. They get the mage path boosts, get to spread the fatigue across cheap mages, and are spared the tedium of ever having to establish a blood economy.

I think this is way more than was intended when llama made the change from 100 to 99 fatigue.

So to sum up:

Reverse communions are much less reliable.
Linebacker communions the same.
Restricted spell paths mages can fatigue out battles easily.
Many minor blood nations got a huge increase by getting half of the benefit (communions) without any of the cost (blood gatherers, hits to the economy).
Minor blood nations got a big power boost vs non blood/ non astral mages. (can do communions without setting up infrastructure or paying a gem cost).

And the list goes on, but the hugest one is probably: Actually USE blood communions as a major part of your strategy without having to be totally ****ing anal.

We agree that communions now take a great deal less thought, and planning. We agree - in the end game, you will consume a great deal fewer slaves, as you can now have communions in every fight, without paying for them.

But I don't think this makes the game more balanced. I think this is a sterling example of an unintended consequence.