newbie questions and comments

[Thufir]

Originally posted by rylen:
How do you keep Communion Slaves alive in Pythium? I'll take 4-8 slaves and 1-3 masters. The slaves are pushing 200 fatigue when the enemy routes and the masters keep casting spells. Result: they're gone or wounded after a single combat.

This happens to me as well and I'd love to hear the answer to this, as well.

I also found as Pythium that my Theurgs would randomly cast communion slave/master in a rather disconcerting fashion. If you always script through turn 5 does this prevent mages from casting c slave/master on their own?

And while we're on the subject of noob questions: I'm often at a loss as to how best to script combat oriented leaders (e.g. Tsien Chi noble or Pythium Serpent Lord), in the opening game. It seems that these leader types should be getting into the fray, but at least in the opening game I find them getting killed (or at least afflicted) altogether too quickly. This seems to be true even if I hold for 5 turns before attacking.

Is it necessary to wait for mid-game (when I can start equipping them with items), before I let these types of leaders into direct attack? Or is there a method to have them be more useful before I can afford to equip them? One thing I have done is to supply them with a cheap bow or misc item (l bow of accuracy or skull talisman), that gives them *something* to do, but it seems like there should be a better option than that...