Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven´t really noticed that yet. But if it is so, perhaps the Indies could be added some tactical scripting?

Re: Dissapointed
 

The spellbook idea, or any sort of implementation that would allow control of what spells are allowed to be cast would be great.

Also just a chime in on what Jonas said earlier. Every forum I visit is full of people that submit bugs which are really just mistakes or misunderstanding on the their part. In almost all cases I am aware of, in order to fix a bug the developer must be able to replicate it.

Just my 2 cents.

Dissapointed
 

This game could be so good, and it really had me intruiged for the 2-3 weeks I have had the demo. It is so intricate and clever. But I think two things are keeping me from buying it (well besides the price). What do you think?

First, they put so much effort into developing this amazing magic system (and item system), but when it comes to battles where they are implemented, the automated AI just ruins it. Sure you can say "cast specific spell" up to five times, and although that is not always a good idea (since you dont know exactly what will be going on), it helps -- but then the computer takes over and you get your super duper pretender casting the same ridiculous (non-stacking!) spells on himself over and over until he drops from fatigue instead of doing anything different. It's a shame, because the magic system just looks so good.

And maybe this is different in the full Version, but I have had a number of bizarre bugs where my commanders will just dissapear. I don't mean die, or get discovered, or unable to retreat to a friendly province -- they are just gone without a message.

I dont see any clues about upcoming patches or even indicating that there are things that need addressing on illwinter.com or here -- that is too bad also. Or is the full Version so different?

Re: Dissapointed
 

Overall, the AI is very impressive, considering the huge amount of complexity in the game!

Suggested improvement for blood mages: Don't be so eager to kill all the blood slaves without a good reason. I have a Mictlani Prophet who is scripted to cast Smite five times. If we have blood slaves, though, he kills off all the slaves during the battle casting things which may be helpful, but I'd rather keep the blood slaves, especially when Smite is available for zero cost.

Similarly, conserving gems should be a factor.

I have seen multi-casting self-defense spells, but only rarely. One cause of stupid spellcasting is when the caster doesn't have many choices (low research). I'd suggest the AI should value resting higher than casting ineffective spells.

I think the body count for fire flies and stone shards is extremely low, and mostly friendly casualties rather than enemies. Missile & spell fire should be a bit less dispersed, and of course, the friendly fire risk needs to be weighed about 100 times more important than it currently is - killing your own men should be very very rare, rather than currently very common.

Probably the spellcasting AI should consider desperation - that is, compare the strength of both sides, and whether the spellcaster himself is currently at risk, and above all, whether the spell would risk own casualties, and then decide whether it makes sense to risk own units, or use gems or blood slaves, or even fatigue. (When the enemy is running away, it's probably a really bad time to massacre blood slaves to fling a badly-aimed magma bolt, etc.)

PvK

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As far as I know you are the first person complaining about the computer casting the same non stackable spell on himself over and over again, so I am a little curious what spell he was casting.

On your second part, under what circmustances did this transpire? Was it commanders dissappearing after a battle? Or when they were home researching?

Re: Dissapointed
 

One thing I would like to see is that if a blood mage has slaves, and is near 100 fatigue, that they would be more likely to cast reinvigoration. This should be made even more likely if the mage is a sabbath master/slave and the slaves/masters have high fatigue levels. Of course, this might make the spell too useful, but as it stands, the mages seem to ignore it if not scripted, and fatigue themselves casting an extra summon imp instead of imp/reinvig/imp/reinvig, etc.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Agree. The Mages should think twice before they waste my valuable gems.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Disagree. Heavy losses due to friendly fire are rare in my games, and in the few cases when they do happen, they are plausible.

Re: Dissapointed
 

A cast (no gems) command would be nice also, although the spell list elimination option other people suggested would probably fix that too.

It's a big annoyance for me when I have a weak fire mage with a huge bunch of archers, script him to cast flaming arrows and then a few other spells and during long battles he runs over his script finds he has an inventory full of fire gems and begins gleefully using them all on spells that have little or no impact. Then of course next fight starts, he has none left and the army power is halved immediately.

Re: Dissapointed
 

Well, the concept behind the battles (besides making PbEM games possible) is that you really do have no control over what an army or a commander does while "in the field". Sure, you can tell him ahead of time what you'd like him to do, as well as his troops, but when the chaos ensues, all hell breaks loose and things don't always go as planned. Think of it this way...in a real war, the Commander-in-Chief (U.S. President) doesn't micromanage the commanders and troops on the battlefield.

I do agree with one thing though:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's nothing more annoying than fielding a powerful spellcaster with your army, only to see him sit way behind the troops casting things like "flame shield", "air shield", "bark skin", etc... on himself rather than casting offensive spells. I once saw a caster cast "flame shield" on himself throughout the entire battle. This could definitely use some work, IMO.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">These are just a few of what some others had written, so I cant be the first one.

I remember "Barksking" "Strength of Gaia" "Blessing" and a few other being cast over and over on myself despite lots of other nice choices.

And my commanders dissapeared after a battle -- watched the battle, waiting for them to die, but no, they survived nicely.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Please send me your Version of the EXE, then! At first I thought to offer you money for it, but then I thought it would be more persuasive to threaten you with casting a special Version of Vengeance of the Dead, which summons the ghosts of everyone killed by friendly fire - thousands of them, including many great heroes.

Just kidding. Except I really have lost heroes, very many troops, and have seen too many battles where the archers killed more of their own than of the enemy.

It depends, I guess, on how much attention you pay, which units you use, etc., but I've seen way to many cases of friendly fire (mainly from archers rather than spells, though).

PvK

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Amen. One tip is to have someone like a scout or non-fire mage carry a gem supply, and only give one to the guy who is supposed to cast Fire Arrows.

Sadly, with blood slaves, I think casters can go kill each other's slaves (? not sure). I guess I could give them to scouts and have the scouts hide out with the blood slaves during battle! (I just need to be sure to use gay or eunich scouts for that... hmm - new random event idea: if ( Leader.IsMale() && Leader.HasBloodSlaves() ) ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

PvK

Re: Dissapointed
 

Speaking of Breath of Winter, my Pretender just killed his Prophet, mystic, and three battle wounded infantry with this spell. Maybe they should be smart enough to move out of the area of effect.
I will now disperse all casters to avoid killing other casters. They will now be very exposed to rear attacks without their mutual support. I already leave archers unsupported (no troops to their front) to minimize friendly fire. I have much better results with javelins, rather than crossbows.

Aikamun

Re: Dissapointed
 

The AI spends gems to stay conscious (increased skill reduces fatigue). At most other times it is rather restrictive.

Re: Dissapointed
 

There is no resting. Only unconscious units regain fatigue.

* Edit: Answer to PvK on mages that should rest. *

[ January 28, 2004, 16:03: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then resting should be added to the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Please send me your Version of the EXE, then! At first I thought to offer you money for it, but then I thought it would be more persuasive to threaten you with casting a special Version of Vengeance of the Dead, which summons the ghosts of everyone killed by friendly fire - thousands of them, including many great heroes.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Lol. I know it does happen. I once lost 2 out of 3 Wyverns (my strongest units at that point) to my own Longbows. However, it was my fault! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

If you pay very close attention to the battle setup (as you should), you can mimimize ff losses. I like that the game forces you to do that.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dispersing Leaders is good policy, and should be (=>realism; area effect spells).

Re: Dissapointed
 

Heh. The most eye-rolling friendly fire I've had was once in Dom I where a "friendly" air mage of mine, which had in his script "Thunder Ward / Wrathful Skies", forgot the first part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif !
In Dom II, I once sent a druid to his death single-handedly attacking an enemy stronghold as punishment for casting protection on one of my Abysian warlocks and thus killing him.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then resting should be added to the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On this I agree. A nap is cheaper than a Gem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Dissapointed
 

BTW forgetting his spelllist is a far too common habit of my abyssia mage.. wich is quite a problem as my army is my mages.... ( 6 of them, with a W9/E4/A4/F1 pretender if you see what I mean http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

As my Prophet start his list by a Divine Blessing ( and BTW always cast Last after even the puniest mage.. strange for my better wizard ... ) that quicken everyone he immediatly alter his listing by casting another divine spell then every mages cast at random from their book....

Seems to be entirely related to the quicken effect and the fact that yo ucan choose only 1 spell by turn and not 2...

Hopefully I can clena the problem by only having evoc and thauma researched... But you understand why I would love to be able to restrain the book of my mages. By round 3 I am out of list... but usually Indies are on the run already...

Re: Dissapointed
 

I think the AI command of spell casting works very well. Of course there are battles where I scream at a mage for casting an inapprorpiate spell, but in fact minimizing these can be mastered by unit setup and spell scripting.

My first experiences with spell casting were like those of the original poster watching mages cast a whole series of self-buffs. However, this is easy to avoid if one picks the top spells to cast and scripts them.

Say you have a level 4 fire mage: Flame arrows, phoenix power, falling fires, falling fires, falling fires. The mage will be unconscious before getting through this list, and the battle likely over before he can cast many fire shields.

Also, I treat my mages and gems like my son with cookies - if I want him to eat one cookie, I only give him one.

That said, two options would be really nice:

1. Some sort of option at the end of the 5 spell scripting that ordered continued spell casting without the use of gems.

2. (more complicated and less important) A mater list of spells you don't want any of your mages every casting (e.g., I hate Beserk - it always seems to land of other mages who charge and fight to the death).

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I definitely agree ! This would be so helpful!

Right now I don't give any of my death mages the death gems because I fear they may cast that Summon Lammashatas spell.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then resting should be added to the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is no napping on the battlefields. There was a time in dom 1 beta when units not in combat recovered fatigue, it was removed because it didn't work out very well, it didn't 'stack' in a good way with certain spells and effects.

Re: Dissapointed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hate to beat on this poor, abused, dying horse but can you go into a bit more detail on this? It doesn't make much sense that having at least some fatigue recovery by idle, yet conscious, mages would fail to work well in the system. An example or two of what you found during testing might help us to understand the issue better and get us to shut up about it all the sooner (so you can deal with other issues). Or some of the brighter players around here might come up with a solution that wasn't thought of the first time around. Hey, it can happen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Dissapointed
 

Well it was 4 or 5 years or so ago it was removed, it had to do with fatigue effects from spells heat auras etc. and how they balanced or did not balance with the various fatigue systems, so I do not remember the specifics, meaning you'll have to trust us on this issue. Frankly I at least don't think there is any problem with the current system to begin with and introducing fatigue recovery could result in new unforseen problems as well as the old problems with balancing fatigue effects, and even if you were to convince me, and more importantly Kristoffer, that changing the system again were a good idea your chances of convincing JK to implement this at this stage are less than miniscule. So you'll have to make do with what you have.