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July 15th, 2007, 01:15 PM
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General
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 3,327
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Re: communion (?)
I've had the same problems with Pythium. It seems you should churn out communicants in large numbers, but they're only useful in certain battles and not much cheaper than Theurg Acolytes, who can at least research the rest of the time.
That said there are reports that communicants use less fatigue than would be expected of no magic communion slaves. I'm not sure how much less.
Fire and Air aren't that easy to boost with items. The base items for both require 4 levels to start with. Fire also has a fire/death booster, but I don't think either Marignon or Pythium have access to that.
You can only use 1 gem to boost the level of spell you can cast, and only as many total as you have levels. And the AI is not good at managing gem use in battle. It tends to spend them before you need them. You also need to have someone following along to resupply.
With enough slaves, very high levels can be reached and some of the nastier battlefield spells cast. Or boosts for the ones that grow in area and/or damage. Master enslave is the usual example. There was a thread about it not long ago.
Still I've never really managed to make effective use of communion either. Or had it used against me.
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July 15th, 2007, 02:35 PM
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Major General
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Houston, Texas
Posts: 2,435
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Re: communion (?)
Communion is a PITA, but it can also be very powerful. Aside from casting the big spells that are otherwise very difficult, and spreading buffs (as mentioned earlier in this thread) it can also be a *very* effective way to lay out mid level evocation carnage (falling fires, magma eruption, gifts from heaven, etc.) in an essentially never ending cascade of damage. The thing is, you have to realize what a communion is and what it is not. Here's some things that seem to be common mistakes when using communions.
1) You need way more communion slaves than you think. The actual ratio is going to vary a lot depending on your mages and the size of the communion, but to really see the benefits you generally need to be thinking in the realm of double digit numbers of slaves.
2) Dumping the cheapest astral mage you can scrounge up into the slave role will often yield budget-rate results. Obviously there are plenty of situations where doing this makes sense, but also consider putting some decent mages as slaves - it makes a significant difference. It'll often make more sense to put your cheaper mage as the master because he'll still be effective, but much less likely to kill the slave.
3) Because of the extreme expense (particularly in castle-recruiting turns), communions are really most appropriate for large, critical battles, not for your more typical skirmishes. Don't get me wrong, you can certainly wrangle some good use out of 6 person communions, but to really appreciate them you need to see a 30 Mystic Arcoscephale communion drop a dozen gifts from heaven/falling fires/astral fires for 10 turns straight. Trust me, you're used to seeing that type of carnage in the first few rounds but it's quite noticeable when the enemy mages pass out after a couple turns but the onslaught from your side just...doesn't...end!
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