communion (?)

Chaafii · #1 July 14th, 2007, 10:26 PM

I did my first attempt at communion and it has left me mightily confused. I'm playing Ulm-Late. I used a 2fire, 2astral, 2blood mage as master and two fortune tellers (2 astral; 1astral + 1nature) as slaves. First turn I cast all the communion spells. The next several turns I had the master cast fireball. Here's what I observed...

1) There was no apparent boost to the master's paths. Usually stats are updated when buffs are applied on the battlefield, but they remained the same on the stats window. Has anyone observed a communion upping the path numbers there?

2) Each time the master cast fireball (2fire; 20 fatigue), his fatigue cost was 7, but it cost each slave 28 fatigue each. I understand there is a penalty because the slaves had no fire ability, but should it really cost 63 fatigue (total) to cast a 20-fatigue spell?

It might be worth noting that the province where the battle took place was +3 Heat, but at the same time, it was +2 Magic.

Can anyone please advise me. I sooooo much want to use the higher level functions of this game, but so far, I'm not seeing where any of them are worth it. In the time, and for the resources, it takes to make a viable SC or an army of mages, I can build several regular armies and decide the fate of the game. I thought maybe communion was one way to make magic a more viable strategy, but my experience would suggest otherwise. I'm hoping it's just my ignorance. Thanks.

lch · #2 July 14th, 2007, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Chaafii said:
1) There was no apparent boost to the master's paths. Usually stats are updated when buffs are applied on the battlefield, but they remained the same on the stats window. Has anyone observed a communion upping the path numbers there?

You don't see the boost, but it's there when they cast spells. Now that we're talking about this, it would be a good idea to have an icon for communions which displays the boost to magic levels, I think. (hint hint, KO...)

Quote:

Chaafii said:
2) Each time the master cast fireball (2fire; 20 fatigue), his fatigue cost was 7, but it cost each slave 28 fatigue each. I understand there is a penalty because the slaves had no fire ability, but should it really cost 63 fatigue (total) to cast a 20-fatigue spell?

Every level over the requirement halves the (base) fatigue cost of a spell. Every level under the requirement doubles the (base) fatigue cost of the spell.

Chaafii · #3 July 14th, 2007, 11:56 PM

Thanks. That helps. So the moral I'm getting out of this is that communion is really only viable with similar magic-path units.

Here's a hypothetical... Let's say you have a master with 2astral and 2fire. At the same time you have two slaves with 2astral each. Let's say you script to the limit with astral spells. I'm curious to know what happens when the script runs out. Is there anything in the AI that would make the master keep casting astral spells or is he just as likely to start casting fire spells and consequently overload his slaves?

BigDisAwesome · #4 July 15th, 2007, 12:20 AM

Nope. The AI is gonna do what it thinks is best, which might be astral spells or might not.

Generally, communions aren't used for everyday run of the mill spells like fireball. They're mostly used for big battlefield enchants, and for buffing your mages quicker.
I don't really use communions myself yet. I just don't see the benefit to it when you could just make a booster or two to buff your paths.

jutetrea · #5 July 15th, 2007, 12:31 AM

Same here, rarely (once) use communion... adds a level of complication and micro that reduces my enjoyment even more than normal micro.

It seems useful for the multi-buffing or huge battlefield spells (master enslave)... but those rarely come about for me. If they do its usually with an empowered, boostered solo guy with the battlefield wide version of soul vortex... now that's fun. Getting to the point where its worth it isn't. Think I've had a couple of SP games where facing 1k armies, that's a fun combo at least in SP.

MaxWilson · #6 July 15th, 2007, 02:15 AM

I use communion when I'm EA C'tis. If you've got all these lizard shaman hanging around anyway, and they all have S1N1... communion 6 or 8 of them and and cast Soul Slay or Charm. Generally less effective than letting them research but sometimes fun and/or useful.

-Max

IndyPendant · #7 July 15th, 2007, 12:19 PM

This has always been the part I don't understand about communion. In particular for MA Pythium and Marignon. Pythium gets leaders with NO magic paths that auto-cast communion slave at the start of the battle. Yet with the extra fatigue due to low levels of magic, I haven't been able to find this useful--ever--for four reasons:

1) They end up using *more* fatigue than they otherwise would (total) for most spells. Sure, it's spread around multiple leaders--but they slaves often seem to end up using up more fatigue individually than listed for the spell.

2) You have to script so many leaders to communion slave, that's all a castle is producing for an extended period of time. Marignon and Pythium both have far, FAR better leader units to create than hordes of effectively useless communion slaves.

3) Construction can produce a very similar skill-boosting effect, since Fire, Air, Water, and Astral are very easy to boost using items.

4) It's too easy for the Master to out-and-out slaughter his Slaves with unscripted spellcasting. The solution to this seems to be 'don't use Communion except in the big battles'. However, this means that 90% of the time those Slaves you wasted your castle's turns building are serving no purpose whatsoever.

Edit: And, 5) You can achieve the fatigue reduction MUCH easier simply by using extra gems in the spellcasting. (Although I admit I haven't experimented to see how good the A.I. is at managing fatigue this way...)

*shrug* It just...doesn't seem worth it, to me. Can someone point out specific situations where Communion has been/would be a clearly superior strategy?

MaxWilson · #8 July 15th, 2007, 02:14 AM

Quote:

lch said:

Quote:

Chaafii said:
2) Each time the master cast fireball (2fire; 20 fatigue), his fatigue cost was 7, but it cost each slave 28 fatigue each. I understand there is a penalty because the slaves had no fire ability, but should it really cost 63 fatigue (total) to cast a 20-fatigue spell?

Every level over the requirement halves the (base) fatigue cost of a spell. Every level under the requirement doubles the (base) fatigue cost of the spell.

I don't think that's quite right. If you are n levels over you should take 1/(n+1) times normal fatigue, not 1/(2^n) times. Similarly, if you're n levels under you should take n times normal fatigue. I confess, however, that I don't understand why Chaafii's fortune tellers took 28 fatigue instead of 14, not counting encumbrance, since with the +1 boost from two slaves they should have been only one level under. Maybe you don't get the effective boost in paths where you start out with no levels.

-Max