communion (?)

[lch]

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...)

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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?

[thejeff]

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.

[MaxWilson]

IndyPendant said:
*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?

Not "clearly superior," but it's something useful for Ktonian Necromancers with an astral random to do during battle, sometimes, to let me cast e.g. Plague or Rigor Mortis without booster items. (Plague is particularly good because it's useful to cast it multiple times.) Unless I'd rather have them be Nether Darting or Magma Erupting. One thing about communion slaves is that they can be grouped out of the way toward the back of the battlefield, and yet still contribute to firepower.

I also like the idea of communions of thugs and SCs, although I haven't used that in a real game yet. I'm planning on spamming Attendants of the Oracles with slave collars and enchanted with Phoenix Pyre, Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Fire Shield, Soul Vortex, and an E9 blessing. I usually have more forts than gold anyway so it shouldn't be hard to build the Attendants, and they're one of LA Agartha's few commanders with 2 mapmove. And of course I can always toss a Wraith Lord into the mix, with a bit more research.

-Max

Edit: I don't see how anyone could be dropping a dozen spells a turn for 10 turns straight. Since communion slaves take encumbrance from each spell cast, that's 36 to 60 fatigue a turn (depending upon how old the slaves are) for 10 turns, before counting any spell fatigue. Reinvigoration is hardly going to dent that, and pretty soon they should be dying off.

It also seems like an evil situation into which to deploy Rigor Mortis.

[MaxWilson]

lch said:

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