Re: Artificial stupidity
 

No, he doesn't have breath of winter by default. He has a chill aura that causes fatigue and can freeze opponents. Breath of winter is a completely separate effect.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Move him closer to the front and move your mages closer to the back.
OR
Place him on one side of the battlefield and place your mages on the exact opposite side of the battlefield.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

A mage does not move over to other mages ... in fact he doesn't even know about them. He moved over behind the rearmost squad, as he was ordered to do!

Never, I mean NEVER set a mage to "stay behind troops" !!

A commander set to "stay behind troops" will move to the rear of the rearmost non-fleeing, non-bodyguard squad and stay there until the squad flees - but nothing more. No matter if he's a mage or a priest or has spellcasting ability from an item, he wouldn't cast any spells.(or would attack an enemy unit in melee, unless attacked himself)

But you want your mages to cast spells. Therefore their script should read:
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast [spell XY]" OR "attack -" if you want him to move up to the front line
"cast [spell XY]"
"cast spells"

Be careful to choose your spells XY in such a way that the mage will be able to cast them.

If you want your mage to attack after buffing up, make sure there's a way for him to reach enemy forces. "attack nearest" might be a bad idea after 4 rounds of spellcasting - you troops will be engaged already as "hold and attack" has them on the move on the 3rd turn. With troops engaged and squads fanning out he won't be able to find his way around them and get stuck in their rear.
Therefore, use "attack nearest" only on turn 3 but not later, or place your troops and mage/pretender in such a way that there's a clear path for him towards the enemy. If he needs 3 or 4 turns to buff up, better set him to the side and use "attack rearmost" or "attack archers"... . Just make sure he's strong enough or assign him some bodyguards.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Atlantian kings are great thugs, add on some decent equipment and they can all do nice buffs: all can do quickness+BoW, earth can do summon earthpower+invunerability, nature gets regen, fire gets fireshield, air gets mistform and mirror image, astral gets quite alot,death causes extra fear and i guess blood could cast blood vengance although ive never seen a blood king)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I have seen blood kings.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I thought they existed, just a sort of myth for me.

For equipping kings give non earth kings decent armour (i suggest either dragonscale for 18 prot and only a small defence reduction) or marble armour for alot of prot), a wraithsword(or hellsword if you must), preferably a horror helm or some other helm (maybe starshine), lucky pendant and then any extras you want like reinvig boots/regen ring or something. In non cb give then a bloodthorn and a charcoal/vine/accursed shield, this will give them fireshield/very easy to hit enemies/super high defence.

The best thugs imo are earth and astral kings, all they need is a wraithsword/blood thorn+shield, some reasonable armour for the astral and maybe a horror helm and they can run through small/medium sized armies. When fully tooled they can do great things (quickness+BoW+30 prot/astral and luck along with good equipment is amazing) and make great (and recruitable!) thugs until you get golems (i suggest you empower an earth king to summon them) and tartarians (i always have a d6 pretender where possible then just give him a skull staff and let him mass produce them while he/a vine king GoR's them)

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

They definitely DO cast on 'stay behind troops.'

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

No.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

I script mages to (cast specific spell)x5, stay behind troops all the time. They don't stop casting spells until they run out of fatigue.

Re: Artificial stupidity
 

Just tested - I stand corrected.

This must have been changed somewhere along the development path - I vaguely remember testing this some (long) time ago and mages behind troops moved but didn't cast then.

However, if you don't want your water mage to move up to the nearest, rearmost squad, simply set him to "cast spells", and he'll stay put.