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[Kagus]

Isn't there some special trigger now where if there are no more masters on the map, all the slaves automatically rout? That was one of the workarounds implemented to fix one of the workarounds people found.

And yeah, having a bunch of slaves casting big spells and then having a master do something like blood's reinvigoration to wipe all their fatigue away was pretty... Fun. With a capital F U.

I think that might've been back when Quickness let you cast twice during a round, but that might have been a different era. Ahh, the shenanigans people come up with...

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, basically the one way to still pull off a reverse communion is have the master load down with various buff spells particularly chosen to make it so everything that attacks the slaves die before the slaves do.

I always wanted to try a communion with phoenix pyre. I wonder if it'd work.

[Shadowlord]

I'm playing marignon in a game and haven't bothered with communions because it's easier to just have one dude cast light of the northern star, and still have all the mages available to spam stuff.

Clams of pearls help, too, since they can allow casters to self-buff without needing to burn real pearls in every battle.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm playing marignon in a game and haven't bothered with communions because it's easier to just have one dude cast light of the northern star, and still have all the mages available to spam stuff.

Clams of pearls help, too, since they can allow casters to self-buff without needing to burn real pearls in every battle.

Tangentially related, I don't know what update added the feature, but now if an item says it casts or affects the wearer with a spell, you can right-click the spell name for its description. I found out when I randomly got a shield that casts Power of the Spheres at the start of battle.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'm playing marignon in a game and haven't bothered with communions because it's easier to just have one dude cast light of the northern star, and still have all the mages available to spam stuff.

Clams of pearls help, too, since they can allow casters to self-buff without needing to burn real pearls in every battle.

In that situation I might still use a small communion to cast some bigger spells. 1 or 2 masters-4 slaves kind of stuff. No spells spring to mind now but I'm sure there's some. But for massed stellar cascades spam or such I would definitely go with masses of S2's just for their immediate effect. Basically I view communions as fragile, rickety contraptions that might have a huge payoff. Not something I like to rely on in huge numbers.

[PrimusRibbus]

Yeah, basically the one way to still pull off a reverse communion is have the master load down with various buff spells particularly chosen to make it so everything that attacks the slaves die before the slaves do.

I always wanted to try a communion with phoenix pyre. I wonder if it'd work.

It does work. When I was playing LA Ulm I had a stray arrow hit an Illuminated One that was part of a 25 mage communion and blow up my entire army in a chain reaction.

[Kagus]

That sounds amazing. Wish you could save battle replays for later viewing.

[Cruxador]

Also be neat to see if there's a sort of optimal event setup, where you maximize the number of potential good events and minimize the number of poor ones... trim the pool to be in your favor, basically.

No. Please no.

If there's one thing I hate in fun, broad multiplayer games like this, it's optimizing builds. What is the point of having variety of choices, if people start gravitating towards something known to be objectively better?

Having an optimal event setup isn't necessarily better. First of all, it's likely to cost a lot of build points. If it doesn't, and isn't something obvious like "max scales" then that would be a useful tool for the gents at Illwinter (or modders) to add some more events of certain kinds to remedy the balance a bit. However, even when used for competitive play, optimizing one thing doesn't actually mean you're better. Like, it wasn't that long ago in this thread that we were talking about optimizing your bless. You get maximum bless on Mictlan and... it kinda sucks. Because the tradeoff is too much. Maximizing your event scales is likely to be the same: Too much cost for too little benefit, so not likely to be advisable in the majority of cases.

That sounds amazing. Wish you could save battle replays for later viewing.

You can, just keep the turn file handy.

[E. Albright]

Though I want to say there's also something with getting the master to rout off the map? Probably misremembering.

Nope, you're not. If all the masters flee,rout, or die, the slaves are free to cast spells at their leisure. However, their leisure is quite leisurely, particularly since the final master to leave gives them a lovely parting gift of five or ten or I-can't-recall-how-many turns of paralysis...

[Il Palazzo]

I've just teleported an E3 mage with 5 earth gems to cast Earthquake on an unsuspecting army, but he didn't. Any idea why?

[Micro102]

I've just teleported an E3 mage with 5 earth gems to cast Earthquake on an unsuspecting army, but he didn't. Any idea why?

I've found that for some reason lots of mages don't follow the orders you give them. It's really annoying.

[Shadowlord]

I've just teleported an E3 mage with 5 earth gems to cast Earthquake on an unsuspecting army, but he didn't. Any idea why?

Just like attacking in combat, casting spells in battle costs fatigue.  Each spell has a listed fatigue cost which a caster incurs when casting that spell.  For each skill level in the required path that the mage exceeds the minimum, he incurs 1 / (1 + (mage skill – minimum skill) of the listed spell fatigue.  In other words, having an extra skill level means the mage suffers only ½ fatigue, two extra skill levels means he suffers only 1/3 as much, three extra is ¼, and so forth.

Spell casters also incur fatigue equal to their base Encumbrance value + 2x Encumbrance value of any armor worn for each spell cast.  This is not subject to reduction by skill bonuses.  It is harder to make magical gestures in heavy armor.  Everyone knows this from armor class days.

Mages can use magic gems in combat for two purposes:  to temporarily raise their skill level, and to reduce fatigue.  This represents the release of the distilled magical power of the gems themselves.  Because it takes a skilled caster to keep things from getting out of control, a mage can only use as many gems as his current skill level in that path each turn.

By using a magic gem, a caster gains one skill level in that magic path.  This can be used both to allow a mage to cast a spell for which he would not normally have the skill, or to reduce the fatigue of a spell, or both.  However, a mage may never increase his skill level by more than one by using gems, or gain skill in a path in which he or she did not already have at least one skill level.

That would be why.

Edit: The only things I'm not clear on is why he didn't power himself up a level for Curse of Stones (conservative casting?), and why he didn't kill himself casting it. It's an earth-3 3-gem 300 fatigue spell, and he burned 3 gems and had 200 fatigue after, and the same amount of HP as he had before he cast it.

[Il Palazzo]

That would be why.

But that's just it. He should have been be able to use the extra gems to boost himself to E4 and cast Earthquake normally.

[Kagus]

Earthquake requires 3 gems and is 4E. He can only use as many gems as he has levels in that path.

So one gem gets used to boost to 4E, then he'd need at least 3 more gems to just cast the spell. But since he's base 3E, he can't use more than 3 gems a turn.

[E. Albright]

Yup, that. If they'd've scripted Earth Power for turn 1, the EQ would have gone through, assuming the mage could survive the required two rounds of getting shot at or attacked beforehand.