More questions about communion and relief...

[Tuidjy]

> What are sensible ratios of masters, slaves and relief casters?

In my opinion it very much depends on whether you have other casters and troops.
I do not use more than a relief caster except if I have scripted extremely
powerful spells of the 'Master Enslave' kind. As a matter of fact, that is the
only time I use communion, even with Pythium.

> is it plain stupid to have 4 masters, 10 slaves and 2 relief casters (of
> which one is also a communion master)

Not if you have no troops or if you are expecting a short fight. If you have
a lot of troops, especially archers, and the fight Lasts a long time, your
slaves will be wiped out.

> Will a relief caster occasionally cast more than the 5 scripted relief-spells?

Yes, if the AI judges it necessary.

> How can I encourage this?

What I do relies on my assumption that the AI takes into account how tired your
whole army is, as opposed to just your casters. So, I make sure that if I have
an army, it gets tired. So, avoid missile units, use clockwork horrors, and
high encumberance units. If sounds crazy, but when I play C'tis I love to do
so in cold provinces. Everyone gets tired quickly, and the relief casters
go wild. I think that someone else suggested to use casters that have few if
any paths beyond nature. This is very good advice.

> What happens if the relief caster is also a communion master?

I avoid this... not because of testing, but because of my intuition, which has
been wrong before. Please let us know how it goes.

> Do communion masters judge the strength of the enemy in a different way?

I have not noticed that.

> Where do you place the slaves?[/b]

Usually I keep them right in front of the masters, but I usually play Pythium
or C'tis, whose mages are on the fragile side. On the other hand, in a battle
against my girlfriend's Vanheim, I realized that a wall of matrix'd vanherses
with assorted buffs is simply impregnable. I think that upwards of 300 troops
including 50 or so devils that started on her side broke on her vans with no
visible effect.

> Are there still buggy items around whose powers transfers from masters to
> slaves in the presence of master/slave matrices?

I think it is still here. I was in 2.14 for sure.

[Chazar]

The battle has happened, and I learned the following:

• Communions Slaves seem to be able to cast spell as usual, at least if they cast "Communion Slave" before any master does: The slaves benefitted from their master's spells (Mistform, Astral Shield, etc.), yet all seraphs with slave matrices continued to cast two spells per round (false horrors as scripted, then ghost wolves) and one out of three lizard shamen (the independent ones, but seem identical to the Ctis shamen) was also casting twice per round (quickness gained from communion master). The two other lizard shamen were standing by idle on the flanks and did nothing (scripting was identical for all: communion slave, curse, healing lights, healing lights, healing lights). The only difference I could see was that they casted the communion slave at the end of the first round, while their active brother was standing in the middle and casted at the beginning. He forfeited his script because there were no wounded units and casted buffs like body ethereal (which was later casted by a master). All three lizard shamen were placed inside of a dozen of Caelian Blizzard Warriors (Archers).
• CopperPlate & MasterMatrix yields charged body icon to all SlaveMatrix holders. Likewise, the animation of Storm from Staff of Storms is displayed at all SlaveMatrix holders as well. So this bug is not yet fixed in V2.14 (the game runs V2.14)
• EDIT: Thanks to ckfnpku for pointing out! I got this one wrong: Body ethereal does not provide the ethereal icon. It is displayed, but body ethereal is an area spell and thus is not transferred. In addition, my stupid mages rather etherealized a vine ogre and a caelian scout instead, which I didnt notice. These mages are so clever!
• Fatigue of the slaves was around 12 at the end of a 4 round battle, but no high-fatigue spells were cast, since the enemy was too weak (25 flagellants and 9 manikins only against strong casters, plenty of archers & strong summons (iron dragon, etc.)). Nothing learned here yet.

Hmm, with the exception of the Last, I'd say that the others smell buggy to me!

[ckfnpku]

Body ethereal is an area spell, not a personal buff, therefore it is not transferred with communion.

[Taqwus]

Don't forget Phoenix Pyre. You might want to try it... once. In a single-player game. Then look for situations in which it might be a useful tactic.