communion (?)

[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

[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.

[Baalz]

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!

[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.

[Baalz]

Nope, the slaves most definitely do not take an encumbrance hit when the master casts a spell. I just double checked that in a game I'm playing, my Augur slaves (4 of them each with an encumbrance of 3) gain two fatigue when the master casts nether darts (neutral magic scales). This is consistent with what I saw in my large communions. I don't remember the actual numbers because I'm recollecting a game from awhile ago, but when I got up a decent sized group of Mystics they just did *not* stop. I think what it is, is the slaves boost the levels of the slaves as well as the masters, so if you've got 16 slaves they each get +4 to their paths, and if your slaves are decent mages to start with (on par with the masters) then a couple masters cast phoenix power, light of the northern star and power of the spheres and suddenly the spells being cast are *well* below the slave's magic capacity and the fatigue is split by 16. They didn't take anywhere near to 60 fatigue each round despite the fact that there were a dozen spells being cast. It also helps that the spells are not super high fatigue, most of the mid range evocation spells are 20-50 fatigue if you're an on-level caster. Heck a 30 fatigue magma eruption divided by 16 is less than 2, so if you're just one level over the path requirements you're down to 1 fatigue. Throw in a little reinvigoration and yeah, you can go well past 10 rounds of laying the smack down - and that magma eruption by an earth-10 mage is certainly some smack being laid (30 damage, aoe 12).

Obviously immensely expensive to line up 30 decent mages, but certainly attainable for decisive battles.

[MaxWilson]

Well, that's a pleasant surprise--I had it in my head that encumbrance was the limiting factor for large communions. Maybe I should look again at communions. It also makes the SC-communion idea even better, since SCs typically want to wear heavy armor with lots of encumbrance.

-Max

[lch]

BigDisAwesome said:
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.

Forging boosters takes lots of gems. Casting with gems does, too, and a fair bit of micromanagement, plus it gives very heavy fatigue. In the later game you tend to have gold in abundance and what you want are gems. S1 mages are usually cheap mages that you flock together for researching. After they are done with that, using them in communions is a *cheap* way to boost your mages' paths. I don't say that you should send them traveling around with your other mages, but in case you do enter combat in a sieged fort, then having a communion might be better than having a bunch of S1 mages that can rarely cast useful spells in battle. Like most things, communions are a trade-off that you may use or not.

Baalz said:
I think what it is, is the slaves boost the levels of the slaves as well as the masters, so if you've got 16 slaves they each get +4 to their paths, and if your slaves are decent mages to start with (on par with the masters) then a couple masters cast phoenix power, light of the northern star and power of the spheres and suddenly the spells being cast are *well* below the slave's magic capacity and the fatigue is split by 16.

Yes, of course, that's the case. If the master decides to cast some powerful spell just because he can barely do it with the magic boost from the communion, then the lower slaves tend to get [censored] by that, of course. I am not sure if the slaves have to be able to cast the spell with their (boosted) magic paths in order for the master to cast it.