Managing Communions - the sombre challenge.

[Maerlande]

Well,

Turns out for all my use of communions I still fail often. I recently had battle that left me in a sombre mood. 100 of my slaves were killed in round one by a very succesful Rain of Stones. This was on attack, therefore my opponent effectively used his first turn advantage for initiative.

Any suggestions?

Maer

[rdonj]

100 slaves? Ouch. I think that would leave anyone feeling sombre. The only suggestion I could make would be to send some remote summons at him first, to encourage them to throw the rains of stones at something less important to you. If you're lucky he may even cause himself some casualties. Of course many people may think this is a very lame solution, but don't let that stop you. It's not like it will get you banned from games or anything, right?

[13lackGu4rd]

in order to get away from your sombre mood make slave collars and matrix(es) for the master(s) in order to cast turn1 protection spells. that would only work on defense, but than attacking into a rain of stones offensively would put you in a sombre mood for various other reasons...

[Verjigorm]

Communion slaves (Pythian) and Blood slaves are quite fragile and are frequently the target of big AoE since you can easily nullify a big communion with such a spell while leaving your own, presumably more well-armored, units only lightly scratched.

Generally, when you have a solid communion protecting the members of that communion with some basic armor is usually a good idea. It costs a few gems, but I mean, how many gems are you spending on that one SC right?

Here are some nice items for communicants (this doesn't work for blood slaves--they always die and, therefore, one should never rely on blood magic as a primary tactic as it will fail you once your opponent figures it out). There's no way to protect a bevy of Sabbath Slaves, don't bother. Keep them in your lab for ritual magic. Taking them into combat is dangerous and you should only expect to be able to use them for 1 turn. After that, they're likely to be dead from AoE if your opponent is aware of what you are doing. As a surprise attack you're probably ok, though.

You want Cheap and Effective for equipping communicants. 1 item each, preferably of 5 gem cost and preferably a "cheap" gem which means what... Air gems! Fortunately, air magic has that going for it:

Light Weight Scale Mail (Ax5): Probably the cheapest thing you can put on them. Unfortunately, has 1 encumbrance.
Weightless Scale Mail (Ax10): 0-enc version of above
Shambler Skin Armor (Wx5): Delicious water breathing bonus
Rainbow Armor (Ax5 Nx5): If you can make it these are the bomb with Reinvig +3 and MR+3

Shroud of the Battle Saint (Sx5): IMO, this is the king of mage armors since you can commute your bless effect with it and it's only 5 gems. Unfortunately those gems are astral pearls, but hey... If you have an E4N4 bless you're golden or even just one of the above. A4 gravy is also nifty.

Robe of Shadows (Sx10): I would usually go for the Shroud instead unless you have a 3-path rainbow tender with no significant bless and a lot of extra pearls.

[Maerlande]

Verjigorm:

Let me see if I understand you correctly. You are suggesting I spend 500 gems protecting 100 communion slaves? This is a very sombreing thought.

Perhaps you misread my post? 100 communion slaves. To counter my opponents Cyclops tart costing 12 death and 15 nature? The economics of your analysis desert me.

[Peter Ebbesen]

You say that your opponent's Cyclops Tartarian costs him 12 death gems and 15 nature.

If this is the case, there is no way you need 100 communion slaves to stop him as that is a Cyclops without equipment (and we are ignoring all the "bad" Tartarians he has received, which raises the actual average cost of fielding a strong deployable Tartarian like the air-earth Cyclops).

More to the point, you didn't note in your first post that your problem was merely stopping an air-earth Cyclops, just that you had problems facing rain of stones hitting a 100-man strong communion, something that Verjigorm helpfully answered.

So we have two possibilities:
1) Your problem is how to kill a Tartarian who casts rain of stones and you have used a really bad approach; Your real problem in this case is not how to manage communions, it is how to kill Tartarians. Change your strategy.

2) The Tartarian is just part of a force you were facing with a monster communion that made sense in the circumstances (100 man strong communion? Just what were you doing? Even master enslaving can be done very reliably with 32+ S1 communion slaves and PotS+LotNS) and your real issue is how to survive Rain of Stones or other battlefield damage spells that hit in combat round 1 when you are on the attack. Verjigorm has given you a good answer to this - spend the gems necessary on forging armour for each and every communion slave you want to survive (And use Dwarven Hammers to cut the cost down to 3 gems per piece of armour)

If 2) is the case and your gem economy cannot handle creating the items needed, then trying to assemble a 100-man strong communion and using that as an offensive force is really bad strategy on your part and you should come up with another way to deal with your opponent or to get him to use up his gems before your main force hits.

[Verjigorm]

I had assumed that 100 was either hyperbole or a reference to Blood Slaves (which I was leaning towards). Why would you need that many?

1. Fielding 100 communion slaves is 100 castle-turns worth of production. You could have had 100 real mages instead which is a lot more powerful.

2. Nothing requires that many communion slaves, so if you have that many in a single group, you're wasting them and asking to be hit with Rain of Stones.

You should be able to defeat that Tart much more easily than that. In fact, you should be able to defeat several Tartarians with a good communion.

Let's see...

Dust to Dust
Paralyze
Soul Slay
Control the Dead (Great for large communions)
Enslave Mind (for Astral guys)
Charm (Nature guys)
Disintegrate (I've had very powerful SC's with excellent MR die to this spell. It costs only 10 fatigue and can be cast by a 2D mage. Even if he has a 95% chance to resist, if you cast it 30 times....)

There are any number of useful evocations that can kill most anything. Mages are very dangerous to SCs. There are very few SCs that can survive a large-scale mage assault. They're not invincible just very strong. With dudes that have lots of HP, protection, or magic resistance (usually all 3), look for things that ignore these bonuses. Does it have a weakness? Is it vulnerable to fire?

If there's lots of them Undead Mastery and Master Enslave but you need a rather large communion (though 100 is way too many. I think, if you're up against a large force they won't be GoR'ed, so you can probably work with 8 slaves).

When you get to go first cast Arrow Fend (which I think works on ROS) or failing that any basic armor spell like Legions of Steel.

If he's really, really, really nasty.... you can cast Horror Mark on him several times and then Call Horror or Send Horror if you have blood magic.

Marignon has Holy Pyre...

For thugs and SCs:

Herald Lance
Holy Scourge
Flambeau (comes with Holy Pyre so you don't have to melee and can use a more robust commander to attack)
Vision's Foe (Take out his eyes and he'll be useless)
Black Bow of Botulf (Removes his ability to cast spells)

Both of the bows, of course, only temporarily alleviate the situation unless you finish him off quickly. Since your opponent if fielding tarts, he can just drink from the chalice or wait for GoH to fix it.

Also, put penetration items on your communion masters:

Rune Smasher
Void Eye
Spell Focus

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

1. Fielding 100 communion slaves is 100 castle-turns worth of production. You could have had 100 real mages instead which is a lot more powerful.

Yeah, but this is not a good comparison. A communion slave is still useful as a normal mage right (S1 right). And you don't always have enough gold to cast a real mage. Which makes me a bit sombre. But perhaps I don't get it.

[Graeme Dice]

It could also be 100 mystics, to use in a reverse communion, or similar mages.

[chrispedersen]

Peter actually has it right. The problem isn't in the rain of stones (per se) its the Verdun strategy.

Now, sometimes, in late game you have to employ verdun tactics. But 90% of the time you do not.

In the 10% of the time that you do, I have one suggestion for you.

LOTS of troops. By stretching the board out, and putting your bloodslaves on the corners, you can cause them to be outside the area of effect of BF or BE spells. (Never remember which it is).

For the other 90% of the time, I'd advise you to use this motto. Move aggressively, attack defensively.

In otherwords - move to lightly guarded provinces that the opponent will feel compelled to attack you.. And then use that communion's first turn strategically.