Sauromantian Soothsayers: are they there exclusively to feed my evil blood rituals?

[Poopsi]

It seems to me that in general, Sauromantian soothsayers by themselves are fairly useless spellcasters. With one astral dot they cannot cast any of the nicer astral combat spells. They cannot even cast starfires, for chrissake. The one thing they can do is cast communion. On the other hand, we have Witch kings, which have access to blood magic. However, they are p¡ss poor at it out of the box, which means that the blood spells you can cast will cost an absurd ammount of fatigue, so you need a communion. Problem is, witch kings are expensive: it´s bad enough to have to pay 300 for an unit and have it sit around hunting blood slaves, if besides that you have to buy eight of them to be able to have one cast blood combat spells reliably, it´s a sorry deal. Specially considering that sabbaths, unlike communions, which cost just fatigue, need blood slaves to be fueled. So you´d need to spend six slaves just to set it up. Ok, blood slaves are cheap, but that´s just a waste, and if you are deep in enemy territory, replenishing your stock might be harder.
On the other hand, if you use soothsayers instead of witch kings, setting up the sabbath costs you only one blood slave, a much more reasonable price: if you bring with you 30 blood slaves, you´d not need to restock for around six turns, if you spent every battle one slave setting up the sabbath, and four in attack spells.
This is the only useful role I see for them, really. I do the same with midgardian volvas, but at least, with two astral dots, they can do more parallel things.

As a side note: is there some alternative to this in regards to blood magic? The spells are too expensive for them to be used without a communion, and sabbaths are too expensive to be worked reliably, imho..

[Peter Ebbesen]

With the caveat that I have never, ever, tried playing Sauromatia, I do not see how S1 can be considered useless for other purposes than communion so long as the commander chassis is not prohibitively expensive for spamming purposes. All it takes is a single Banner of the Northern Star (or the spell itself, though S1s cannot cast or forge them natively) to turn a bunch of S1 mages into S2s. That's not bad.

As for communion, you don't need the witch kings to make sensible communions - S1 mages are perfectly capable of bootstrapping themselves. Using some of them as masters and some as slaves in their own private communion and have a master cast Power of the Spheres (as well as the Northern Light from spell or banner) and the other usual defensive astral spells, turns a host of S1s into a strong battery of soulslaying astral mages. While it certainly is not the best thing since sliced bread, it definitely has its uses.

Whether any of these two options are really useful for Sauromatia - you tell me. As stated, I have not played them, so there might be reasons not use them, but at least they are options that any nation with recruitable S1 astral mages should keep in mind, even if they end up dismissing them for practical purposes.

[Wrana]

In addition, S1 is enough to cast Arcane Probing. And that is your Astral income...

[sector24]

Entrails don't divine themselves. They need your help!

Astral 1 is very nice to have to prevent Mind Hunting, cast Body Ethereal and Luck, etc. They may not be your best mage, but they are not useless.

[Poopsi]

I was wondering, can I use a big number slave soothsayers in a mostly-slave communion to boost their astral paths and hopefully cast nifty stuff?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Sure you can, Poopsie.

Four slaves opens for soul slay time (opposition, control, battle fortune...))... though of course it is better to use more slaves (and more masters) to reduce fatigue costs and make it harder to resist the spammed soul slays.

Eight slaves will get your S1 masters to S4 (enslave mind, vortex of returning, doom, will of the fates)

Sixteen slaves, Northern Light + Power of the Spheres, and two boosters, and everything purely astral up to and including master enslave is within reach - not bad for somebody starting at S1.... Actually, I have never tried to go for master enslave starting on a S1 chassis since it is so much better using one of higher level and use all equipment slots for penetration, but unless I've missed something obvious it should work.

[K]

Soothsayers make fine researchers since they prevent bad events, are very cheap, and they can be recruited at any castle without needing a lab or temple.

As for magic, they synergise well as Body Ethereal and Luck casters for hydras assuming you put a Poison Ring or something on them.

But yes, they do seem designed to be Communion slaves. Witch Kings get W/D/B/N, so you can Communion up for the big magics in those magicks, but a few boosters/boost spells and a Communion can get you the interesting Astral magics like Will of the Fates.

[Poopsi]

But it´s an interesting reversal: make the slaves communion into being able to cast the niftier astral spells, and have one or two witch king "masters" casting reinvirgoration to keep the slave´s spellcasting operative...

I want to try this one out.

[Wrana]

Yes, good idea. There was Baalz' guide on communions somewhere. This goes under his category of "reverse communion", I believe. He also mentions that as individual buffs affect all slaves, you can use Light of a Northern Star and Power of the Spheres to make all slaves S3. Then you can spam whatever you want with them, reinvigorating periodically. I would probably prefer Enaries for such a communion, but you can just take your cheap researchers and make a fighting force of them at any moment.

[Poopsi]

Yes, I read it while trying to find ways to make blood magic practical. It was either a sabbath, which is expensive, a massive empowerment, which is even more expensive, or the communion-sabbath blend. Then I read his guide, and got the idea of not leaving the slaves just as sitting ducks.

I´m having problems, through. First, they have an annoying tendence not to stay still without spellcasting. Or follow my mind burner script. (I know they can cast it, because at one event I did see one cast a communion master spell spontaneously, which means he did get the path increase).
In fact, not only do they spend valuable fatigue, but they tend to blink around. Into hydra´s poison clouds, particularily.

I´m suffering some attrition (or rather, a lot of attrition) due to this.

And what´s worse, a lucky magic arrow (as in the spell of "Suddenly, an arrow came from the sky aimed at X´s heart) and killed Kirke/Circe, who was vital with her affliction healing ability

No matter. I can still achieve my military objetives. I´ll just need to sacrifice more virgins to do it....MWAHAHAHAHAHA... (I love blood magic)