how many communion slaves per master?

[Nephelim]

In my brief use of communion slaves, they seemed to only Last one battle... The Master cast enough spells to kill the slaves with fatigue...

Since the opponent was in rout before the slaves dies off, I assume the AI considers them completely expendable?

[Peter Ebbesen]

One good trick to make communion slaves Last longer is to give them reinvigoration somehow. If they are sacred, an earth 4+ blessing might prove useful. Otherwise, boots of the messenger (+4 reinvoration) never go out of fashion, relief is a great relief (and a master with 4+ slaves only needs 1 nature to cast relief, not that you should ever limit yourself to 4 slaves when 8 will do so much better in sharing the fatigue ), and since spells affecting the master affect the slaves, you might even get away with having a master cast earthpower.

[Morbius]

thx alot everybody

so, will the master (when playing pythium) have to cast the spell 'communion master'? the slaves allegedly do so before combat (automatically).
will the master do so when fighting without me telling him what to cast when? i prefer to have my mages run on auto
can 1 slave only aid one master or will all masters use him simultaneously?

and finally, is there any way to keep the slaves from charging into the nearest hostile forces?

thx alot in advance for your help

[ March 26, 2004, 18:11: Message edited by: Morbius ]

[Taqwus]

Unless you use a communion master matrix crystal, a master-to-be must cast Communion Master himself, and he won't necessarily do this unless you script him to do so.
You might consider giving your Communicants explicit 'hold' orders (hold x 5, stay behind troops) unless you're going for the Reusable Exploding Communicants of Doom tactic (!).
I second the suggestion regarding having at least one master have Nature magic and enough support to get to Nature 3, plus the research necessary for Relief, as Relief will reduce fatigue on ALL your units including communicants. Very useful for keeping them from dying due to fatigue, as is Summon Earth Power; Invulnerability is another nice spell for a master to cast.