Why astral ?

[BioZork]

Hi i'm pretty new to the game and i'm trying to gather info for improve my gameplay.
I've read lot of guides and i see that Astral magic is always a major element , but i can't find a motivation.... so which spells make Astral a "must have" for every nation?
Thanks

[Aufrichtigkeit]

Communion, as explained here; http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-3-the-awakening/forum/thread/communions-the-battlemage-suicide-pact-explained-a-modern-communion-guide

[Tomsdeli]

astral has some of the uber stuff in it. its been beaten down a few pegs since dom 3 but it still has a few things that make it really strong. overall i cant think of any dom 4 guides like that unless its already a focus of the nation. were you perhaps ready old dom 3 guides?

communions are really good. read that link he posted.
ring of wizardry/socery have drastically went up in price since the last game but they are still increadibly strong boosters.
wish is still a wish. i mean pick most anything in the game and get it. whats not to like.
master enslave. who doesnt want to try and mass brain wash a battlefield to take all your oppents stuff.
massive undead kill spells.
arcane nexus is a game winning global.
mind hunt strats.

the easiest thing to do is just pick a astral nation and play them a bit. i dont play them but they certainly have some major advantages. not one thing i can think of as a must have in dom 4 but certainly not the worst path by any means.

[Lord of the Wizards]

For Kailasa, astral can get you some pretty powerful magical being conjurations. It can also be used to cast body ethereal, personal luck, and twist fate, which is an alright triple-layer of protection.

[Devin]

I kinda like will of the fates over in alteration. It gives luck to all of your troops at once. Sure, it's a little expensive at 4 pearls a cast, but a clam of pearls can supply 2 of them. Massed lobo guards with luck suddenly become kinda hard to chew through. :D

[Lord Tolkien]

A couple things to note about Communions:
1) the removal of reverse communions and buffing communions (slaves can no longer self-cast, and masters all leaving/dying incurs a large fatigue penalty) does nerf Astral (and blood through Sabbaths) from being one of the MUST HAVES late game pathes. However, Communions are still an essential component for casting high end battle-magics and enchantments most of the time. Makes things much easier when you don't have to have an extremely high path in Nature for Mass Regen for instance.

On Astral in general however (in addition to communions).

2) Mindhunts are a powerful remote and can really cripple non-astral nations, when you kit your mindhunters with penetration items (Rune Smasher/Eye of the Void/Spell Focus). If you're Arco, you can also heal your mind hunters, so who cares about feebleminded?

3) Soul Slay/Paralyze/Enslave Mind are powerful anti-thug/SC spells, with penetration (again). I had a prophetized Father Illearth with fully kitted out gear (including a number of artifacts) stolen from me before: was saddening (I also ended up inadvertently summoning the Abomination of Desolation that battle too: it got promptly paralyzed and killed by our communions). Mindburn can even suffice if the thug/SC is magical.

However, Astral has an even better anti-SC spell that's guaranteed, Stellar Cascades (irresistible AN fatigue damage). Horror Marks are also a means to (slowly) put an SC out of commission permanently (because you really need well-kitted out SC to survive assassinations by the Eater of Gods or Slayer of Heroes).

4) High end Astral spells are still fantastically potent. Master Enslave, Solar Brilliance, Will of the Fates, Astral Travel, Wish, and Arcane Nexus are all potentially gamewinning spells.

5) Golems make pretty good trampling thugs, barring the weakness to magic duel.

6) Magic duels.

7) +MR spells. Astral is the best counter to Astral after all (see magic duels).

[commiesocialist]

Originally posted by Devin:

I kinda like will of the fates over in alteration. It gives luck to all of your troops at once. Sure, it's a little expensive at 4 pearls a cast, but a clam of pearls can supply 2 of them. Massed lobo guards with luck suddenly become kinda hard to chew through. :D

And let's not forget "Doom", around the same level and only one pearl to cast. Curses the entire enemy army. It's good if you need to hack through a lot of chaff.

[Dr. G]

I personally really like Gateway and Astral Paths as well. I have been playing with EA R'lyeh on a large map, and I can get whole armies from the capital to about anywhere on the map in just a couple of turns. It can also teleport armies into fortresses to give besiegers a nasty surprise, or abandon a fortress and save the troops!

[Shinuyama]

1. It isn't. Astral is only important for a relative handful of nations.

2. People are talking about strategies from dominions 3 - a different game where the 'lategame', where complex strategies involving Astral magic like master enslave teleportation traps and reverse communion suicide pyre brigades were things that would win you games in the lategame portion of big games (15+ players). It's worth noting that these strategies were largely enabled by two mods - CBM (Competitive Balance Mod) and EDM (Endgame Diversity Mod) that were hugely popular and made lategame summoned units and strategies vastly more powerful and 'epic'.

3. Again from dominions 3 the spell Wish (alteration 9) used to be important (even in dom3 it wasn't important - people thought it was and were wrong) so people would take astral 9 on their pretender to be able to cast it. This is, was, and will *ever be* a waste of points.

4. Currently Astral Magic is a decent battlemagic path, can get you Golems which are decent mages you can gear up and have them cast big astral spells that eat entire battlefields, and if spammed has a few spells that will REALLY mess up people's days (Stellar Cascades, Mind Burn), it also has great antithug magic (Paralyze, Soul Slay, Teleport). It's not the best path, but it's not the worst. I wouldn't rate it super highly though.

[Dembara]

I want to try an Astral nation, any suggestions?
I would prefer to use a land nation though.
Also, I like using blessers, so one with strong sacreds would be preferable.

[commiesocialist]

EA Kailasa/MA Bandar Log/LA Patala sound like they'd be up your alley then. They all have the same excellent sacred summons, and all have fairly good recruitable sacreds as well. Kailasa and Bandar Log get to recruit their sacreds out of every fort too. They also have S mages coming out of their ears. Bandar Log gets the highest Astral caster, but all of them get basic S mages and crystal matrixes so none of them should be lacking when it comes to astral play.

[Lord of the Wizards]

As Kailasa, just be sure to set your monkeys to fire ranged weapons. What looks like an army of chaff is actually a massive ranged force, and monkeys alone can easily lay waste to barbarians and lightly armored troops.

[Shinuyama]

LA Ulm is also a nation that relies on astral spam. Some other nations have astral, but don't rely on it in the same way.

[Cymoric]

I believe MA Pythium gets 5 astral pearls from their home province special buildings, which is about as much as I've seen any nation start with. They also have (admittedly old age) Arch Theurgs who have astral 3 (and priest 3 for mass bless), which is enough to cast Acashic Knowledge as well as Theurg Communicants who automatically cast Communion Slave and are 35g and 1 resource.

Speaking of which as someone who hasn't used all these lategame spells I love Astral because of Akashic Knowledge. It's Conj 6 I believe and reveals ALL magic sites in a province. This will send your gem income through the roof. And as far as I know it's the easiest way to boost your gem income. If you have an astral nation already you have to do less alchemy to get the 25 astral pearls you need for this spell. If you have no astral pearl income getting those pearls can be quite costly. For example Pythium at their starting gem income can cast it every 5 turns. A nation that starts with 4-5 gems that aren't astral could take more than twice that time to amass astral pearls.

Also astral pearls are what everything else is converted to in Alchemy. So if you want to get astrals or get something else from astrals you are only cutting your total number of gems in half through this conversion. If you have to exchange say death gems for nature gems you have to first convert to astrals and then to nature and your gems drop to 1/4 of the starting number. So it's much easier to start or end an alchemy transaction with astral gems.

[commiesocialist]

Acaschic Knowledge is pretty inefficient as far as searching goes, but it can be fun in SP.
Also the Theurg Communicants are pretty bad since A) they can't research when they're out of battle and B) due to how communion fatigue rules work, they take a lot of fatigue and expire fast.

MA Pythium is not a bad nation to play though, astral or otherwise. But they don't really have strong sacreds to play with.

[Shinuyama]

Theurg Communicants are great for what they are designed for - boosting up a single Arch Theurg to cast a single massive spell after which he uses a bow or retreats. This spell is usually Fog Warriors, or Storm. Since they won't die from 1-2 spells, it's ideal. Otherwise, they will die really fast and uselessly, although this is true for Pythium regardless, as the path it wants to spam (Air) no-one has except for the Arch Theurgs, and you're not likely to use those as communion slaves. So they take fatigue of spell x (1+ (level of spell x 0.5)) (*i.e.half again base fatigue for each path they don't have to cast it) x 2 (for not having the path at all) or something, and for example for Thunderstrike that's 480 fatigue split through the communion, so if 8 communicants that's 60 fatigue each from a single cast, so unconscious in 2 rounds, starting to die in 4 rounds, dead in 6, and that's with only a single master.

Pyth can use astral magic, but prefers to communion buffs onto legionnaires and hydras, or better yet, use it's national angels thugged out. Overall it just has poor battle paths in general. Astral is the best of a bunch of bad options for your battlemagic.