communion (?)

[Baalz]

Well, perhaps it's a bug, but it's easy to reproduce. The way I first noticed it I was playing EA Ermor and my slaves happened to come in order before the master. One master (Augur Elder) and four slaves (Augurs), so it was pretty noticeable when (after the master cast phoenix power) 5 fireballs were being launched each turn. After I noticed it it's pretty easy to make happen on purpose, and it definitely is caused by the slaves coming in order before the master (the ones that come after any master casts something don't do anything). I'm guessing perhaps the logic is supposed to be that the slaves are free to act if the master doesn't cast anything that turn?

Note, I haven't actually confirmed it with any other types of mages, I assumed it works the same.

[Frostmourne27]

That's cetainly interesting... What exactly determines the order of units in battle? Is it random? Based on unit numbers?

[Saulot]

Army placement grid determines order of units. Top to bottom.

[MaxWilson]

I just tried sticking a Slave Matrix on an SC. Here are a couple of results:

1.) As before, there's no result if the SC has no magic paths. He shares no fatigue and is not affected by single-target spells.

2.) If the SC has no levels at all in a path required by the spell, he still takes a lot of fatigue damage. My D3 Wraith Lord went from ~48 fatigue to 88 fatigue when my pretender, a Communion Master, cast Invulnerability. That's x4 fatigue for being 3 path levels under. (I couldn't tell exactly how much fatigue he started out with because he had 48 fatigue before, and then Soul Vortex drain + my pretender's Invulnerability happened basically simultaneously.) I highly recommend a few other communion slaves to share fatigue and raise effective path levels.

3.) If you *do* have three or four communion slaves, a lot of nice options open up. Fire shield, astral shield, personal luck, personal regeneration, strength of Gaia, quicken self... and you can get all this casting done in the first couple of rounds. I can't think of a nicer way to buff an SC.

4.) Make sure you have some kind of reinvigoration for your SC. I like Soul Vortex + chaff bodyguards, but a magic item would work too.

All in all, it's an interesting tactic that's pretty cheap on the magic items. It also scales well with multiple SCs, since each and every slave gets the same buffs (and shares fatigue). You could have a whole army of super-buffed SCs this way for a minimal investment in earth gems and pearls, which is great for nations with thuggable commanders with magic and earth/astral mages. Unfortunately I'm not sure how common that combination is. Niefelheim lacks earth, Helheim lacks astral, EA Agartha lacks astral, LA Agartha lacks thuggable (mage) commanders... there's a lot of nations I haven't really gotten familiar with.

Still, there's always summons. For LA Agartha, my current fave, I'm thinking Wraith Lords with Ironskin (or Invulnerability), Soul Vortex, Fire Shield, Personal Luck, Astral Shield.

-Max

P.S. And in MP, I guess there's always trading. I think we can all guess how much fun Niefelheim would have with Gygjas and Niefel Jarls if somebody would just forge them a few slave matrices, right?

[PyroStock]

It turns out I have an old saved game during a turn where I have the following 2 battles that can be replayed:
1>Sages who are slaves with a master that casts after them. Here you can clearly see the slaves casting Star Fires (again I was still experimenting and didn't want anything to exhaust them too bad). The master never enters melee, flees/leaves or dies either.

2>Sages who are slaves with a master that casts before them. Here none of the slaves cast anything after Slave Communion.

Both sets of slaves have the same scripts. I think I read that attachments weren't working, but as Baalz said this is fairly easy to reproduce yourself and there are already plenty of posts in the thread to confirm it anyways.

[Chaafii]

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]

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.