The pythian prescription

[MaxWilson]

Still, as far as communions go, isn't it pretty simple to say "toss in a few communicants, 2 boosts your level by +1, 4 boosts by +2, etc., and they also share fatigue"? At least with communicants you don't need to learn the (semi-) arcane formulas for adjusting slave fatigue based on effective path level.

-Max

[thejeff]

Sure it's easy to say, but harder to arrange so they don't all die of exhaustion.

How many masters are safe? What's useful to cast through a communion?

I'd assume that kind of communion isn't really useful to spam evocations, since you won't have enough masters, but would be used to cast battlefield spells above the master's level. Which means communicants aren't that useful early on.

It's not at all obvious how to make communions useful as opposed to just doing one because that's what Pythium does.


(But I've rarely played with Pythium, so take all of that with a large grain of salt.)

[LDiCesare]

The proposed settings are interesting to play with all these concepts. The map is almost empty and you get 4 times as much money as you usually get. So it's quite affordable to play with communions or thugs and SCs until you get some right.

One thing I like to do with Pythium is bring some theurgs/arch theurgs, like say 10 of them, one casts communion master then power of the spheres and hold or retreat, the rest casts slave, hold, enslave mind. If one of them carries a banner of the Northern Star it's even better, and astral gems and +penetration items are welcome.

[JimMorrison]

LDiCesare said:
The proposed settings are interesting to play with all these concepts. The map is almost empty and you get 4 times as much money as you usually get. So it's quite affordable to play with communions or thugs and SCs until you get some right.

One thing I like to do with Pythium is bring some theurgs/arch theurgs, like say 10 of them, one casts communion master then power of the spheres and hold or retreat, the rest casts slave, hold, enslave mind. If one of them carries a banner of the Northern Star it's even better, and astral gems and +penetration items are welcome.

If your "master" just has a ranged weapon, he can be set to fire after casting, and not need to run away while letting the others cast.

[thejeff]

Or if your "master" is last in order he can continue to cast.

[LDiCesare]

thejeff said:
Or if your "master" is last in order he can continue to cast.

Yes, but that one's cheesy as masters and slaves are not supposed to be able to cast spells together. I'm not sure whether slaves are supposed to be able to cast spells at all, but I believe they are.

[Sombre]

I hate using communions because of the order thing - where the slaves can or cannot cast spells based on unit ID order. That just makes it far too complex.

[SsSam]

Yes. I do agree the communion section could be fleshed out.

My goal was to race new players straight to a large slice of the province pie, equip them with an SC chasis that could keep that slice of land safe and then point them in the direction of fun things to try.

At that point, hopefully they see how quickly you can grow into a huge empire( which is something I'm still not sure how to do without an SC pretender or something like they Hydra's in my playbook) and they'll feel comfortable enough to start playing around with the different magic paths.

From that point of view, Pythia's magic diversity is an asset for new players, because they've got a playground of things to try. It certainly isn't the most efficient path, but then that's a different goal.