Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

As Abysia, I've got fire mages. Normally I just script phoenix power and let them do their thing. This has worked just fine, with falling fires and fireballs and the occasional hail mary flare. But now that they're engaging Agartha, I'm noticing that all they seem to want to do is cast Rage on Umbrals.

As big, scary monsters, Umbrals sure make an excellent target... for Incinerate. But instead, Rage. Line up 7 mages, and watch them cast Rage 7 times a turn. I've seen many rounds of this now, and I've never seen any effect.

I notice that the spell description for Hyrophobia, which sounds like the mass version of Rage, says only living units are affected. Rage itself doesn't specify, but I've sure never seen it work on an Umbral.

So is an Umbral an invalid target for Rage? If so, is the casting a bug?

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

They are probably passing their MR check. It's just a poor choice of spell, the combat AI does that sometimes.

You could use CBM, where rage requires a F gem and no longer gets an MR check.

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

I don't know if I believe that. I'm talking about watching about 30 casts of Rage in a row (from lvl 3 and 4 mages) bounce off of a single Umbral. By comparison, I took my very first Scorpion Man into combat last turn, where he raced ahead of his unit. It took a lvl 1 enemy mage (using death gems) exactly two casts to disintegrate him, despite my poor scorpion man's magic res showing 18. These Umbrals were 16 or 17.

And what about Hydrophobia? Isn't it the same effect? That doesn't isn't supposed to work on undead. Does Rage really work on undead units?

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

Take a look at the debug output from the battle then, and see what's happening.

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

I'm also quite convinced that this is not an mr issue in all cases (while it's totally possible mathematically). Try to use farstrike against single lightly armored enemies (a lone slinger for example). There's a big chance you don't deal damage on a hit.

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

I am curious as to how the AI chooses its spells when it is disregarding scripting.

Recently I had a friendly neighbor suicide some militia an event gave him to kill them off. I had 3 diseased warlocks in the province, with slaves, scripted to "blood heal" then stay behind troops. The idea being to heal them back to full and keep them blood hunting for another 10 turns, in which I would blood heal them again, doing my best to retain utility out of diseased hunters untill they get eventually feeble-minded. Each was at HP < 40%

Instead of blood healing, they spammed "body ethereal" on their own blood slaves. and after they were all ethereal, they cast luck.

Is it possible that with old age, comes senile behavior? These warlocks are sacrificing themselves to buff their slaves!

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

What you've never wanted to get lucky with an ethereal virgin?

HI-OH!

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

AI can be really stupid when deciding what to cast or on whom and often you can do nothing about it. Recently I tested my vampire queen with no lightning protection against a bunch of vanjarls. They were all scripted to cast resist lightning, spells. Instead of spamming the vamp queen with lightning spells in 90% of situations they cast banishment on her 26 MR.

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

Blood heal takes slaves. The AI probably decided the militia weren't worth wasting gems on. Body Ethereal and Luck may have been all they could cast with any effect.

Re: Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals
 

What many people don't understand about the AI is that it's quite depressed.
Whenever preparing a battle you must plan ahead and take away any opportunities to commit suicide or kill their friends from your mages.

Planning to use lightning damage? Do not have ironskin researched. Or cast it yourself followed by lightning resistance and a lightning resistance ring.
Enemy has fire mages? Let your nature mages lead the charge instead of casting mass protection.
Now, the AI has not yet figured out how to kill itself with a sword, so SCs are fine.