Guide: Guide to communions

[Stavis_L]

Hrm...makes me wonder -

1) If you pick up feeblemind affliction, does it drop you out of any communions you may be in at the time?

2) If you have Life After Death/Ankh active, do you remain in the communion after converting to soulless form? I'd think this would be similar to whatever happens for mages w/secondshapes, but I've never tried...

[Baalz]

Interesting idea, but keep in mind that's not gonna kick in until you get to 200 fatigue which is a pretty dangerous place to be. Works as a last ditch thing though.

Re: feeblemind I don't know for sure, but I'd be very surprised if it dropped you out of an existing communion. Pythium's communicants for instance are in a communion with no magic paths so presumably magic paths are not directly tied to communions.

[aaminoff]

Alternatives to armor in protecting your communions:

Suppose you are on defense. You know your opponent is going to Stone Rain (aka Communion Bane) their first turn. How do you protect your communion? Putting armor on your mages has been mentioned, but I suspect most nations can recruit cheap communionable mages faster than they can forge armor for them. My thought would be, have a crystal matrix on a mage at the end of the ID list (the bottom of the commanders listing), and have them cast Stoneskin or Barkskin or something like that the first turn. The slaves above that crystal-matrix-enabled buffer have all cast CSlave already, so they should be part of the communion when the buff gets cast, so they will get it. You still need armor on the other masters though.

Suppose you are on offence, same problem. If all the slaves have slave matrices and a master has a crystal matrix and an amulet of barkskin, will the barkskin get auto-cast before the beginning of combat and affect all the slaves? In fact if I read the discussions of Crystal Shields etc. in the thread above, it sounds like in this case you don't even need to worry about the order of the slaves/masters. The only disadvantage to this plan is that slave matrices are expensive, it may be cheaper just to forge armor.

If the enemy throws Earthquake against your communion, I'm not sure what to do. Same trick, but use Boots of Quickness, to buff Defense? Does that even work that way?

[ano]

I'm almost sure that barkskin amulet will not give barkskin to the whole communion because it is just an effect the item gives and not the "auto-cast" spell. In fact, only items that autocast self-buff spells will affect the whole communion when worn by the master with matrix and all slaves have matrixes too. The two items that come to mind are Crystal Shield and Copper Plate

[rdonj]

On the other hand, there's nothing saying that you can't have a master at the bottom of the list carrying a crystal matrix and cast bark/stone/ironskin/invulnerability the first turn. That would work just as well.

[ano]

That would work just as well.

Not when you're on offense. The only thing I know that CAN protect your mages from Stonerain and such on offense is the Sword of Aurgelmer (and partly the Ankh). And that really makes these items splendid and very important to have. When I have to choose what to forge - Sword of Aurgelmer or Boots of the Planes, I will always choose the first one. And I will prefer the Ankh to the Pain Sickle if I have to choose among them.

[rdonj]

Yeah, that only works for defense. I was saying for defense because he specifically mentioned being on the defensive. On the offensive, options are definitely limited.

[Squirrelloid]

You don't attack with massive communions, you trick your opponent into attacking your massive communion.

(Well, if you're absolutely certain your opponent cannot nail you with RoS or the like on turn 1, by all means do attack with your communion. But attacking blind with a communion is a recipe for disaster!

[Psycho]

Or cast some ghost riders and some such to make the opponent waste gems first. Or teleport a SC, buff him 5 turns and retreat him for the same purpose.

[RadicalTurnip]

I have one question I haven't seen addressed...I've read through all 14 pages, but not since coming up with this question.

The situation was this: it was late-game and I had an enemies pretender and a few angels fly (or maybe teleport?) on top of one of my castles. The pretender was summoning hoards of elementals (I don't remember the spell, but he was F9 W9, and got like 10 Fire elementals in one casting, and then 10 water elementals).

I had 5 vampires (I was Ulm, but these were the 3D 3B ones that everyone can summon, not the 2D 2B Ulmish ones) that I had a perfect idea for, so I gave one of them the blood tome, a RoS, and the blood Chest-piece (the non-unique one) and a runesmasher and 30 slaves, scripted to communion master, Hellbind, Hellbind, Reinvigoration, Hellbind, Spells. I gave the other 4 vamps crystal matricies and scrpited them to summon skelly hoards. I then stuck some faeries (Or whatever the unit you get with Fairy Queen's Court is) and some Air Elementals that one of my Elemental uniques was summoning to keep them occupied while hellbind did its job.

My question is this: does it matter that my slaves were B3 casters for the purpose of increasing his effective level of casting? Could have I just as easily thrown in some of my (now useless, I've finished researching) 1S Sages to do the job just as well (They couldn't summon undead, and they would take slightly more fatigue, I know)?