And another thing...
 

So, here I am minding my own biz, when these damn hero's decide to take one of my provinces. Since I'm playing Mictlan, and I can cast Hellbind heart from my Heliophagus' (or somthing like that). I figure I'll try it out, since I have never used it and I have a couple near by. I end up getting Fadmargast.

Later now, I am setting up for an attack on another player and notice that Fadmargast was scripted to "Attack Commanders". I'd never seen that command before, and thought I'd check it out. Low and behold, it's not an "option", and unless you leave Fadmargast's original orders intact, it goes away. Huh! Well, that certainly explains the peculiar behavior of some heros going directly after my commanders!

Buhahahaha!!! Guess who gets all my unique items! :-) Can you say Mage Bane? I knew you could.

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I've never seen this in Dominions_2... has anyone else?

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which is that heroe? you could always try an eye of aiming and the feebleminding bow. and use ctrl 1 and his order and try to give it to other commanders ( would rock with ryleh

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OMG! That works! Thank you gods of DominionsII! I never thought to try it! Wow...

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OK...I liked this on one guy, but now I am thinking that if you can copy these orders, then this should be a bug fix. I mean, it wasn't included in the game for a reason. Might be a tad unbalancing to suddenly have the ablitity to nuke all your opponets commanders.

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What about using the CTRL keys to save his battle command... that should allow you to give it to other commanders.

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This is known for quite some time: "Fire/Attack Commanders" was removed from the code early in the development process of Dom2 - yes, a big part of it's code comes from Dom1.

But this option was only removed for the player - the AI still can use this order. This is to make it a little bit more dangerous in battle: While the player can adjust the placement of his troops to (known) enemy threats, the AI cannot. So it at least gets a direct shot at enemy commanders, something a player may achieve (indirectly) with a clever combination of placement and orders.

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beat you to saying it :p

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but when you helbind heart doesn't he come back as a minion not a commander, and stacked in the province, without any orders?? I know enslave mind works that way...

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Enslave mind does, charm and hellbind do not.

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if only i could get a commander scripted like that as man. (tons of charmers with rune smasher+spell focus wipeing out commanders)

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It was Attack Commanders or Fire Commanders, not Cast at Commanders! IIRC, even Dom:PPP had no targeting of spells.

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So, you are saying this loophole has been known for some time and not closed? That seems rather stupid to me... Or did you mean that you and others knew the order existed on a Hell bind heart victim, but didn't tell the programmers? or that everyone knew that they existed for AI's 'and/but not' exploitable by obtaining that hero?

I'm curious to which version is accurrate.

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IW has known about it for some time, my guess is they thought it wasn't a big deal which from my experience it isn't.

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This is the type of thing that can really wreck a fun game if exploited. So, I view it as more of a deal. I am glad I know, and am able to make a house rule for it.

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See Turin's link for fun times.

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I think it was first mentioned here:

http://tinyurl.com/d4k7z

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Interesting! I guess YMMV.

Cheers

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Bring back the attack magic users command! Its always bugged me that mages can cast till they pass out in near-perfect security without bodyguards, equipment or buffs.

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I would prefer changing Attack Rear to actually attack the rearmost more often.

Having archers able to Fire at Mages was too much. Even having Call of the Winds-hawks decimate mages was too much. The only way I would allow mages to be targetable would be by commanders, and even that is WITHOUT taking SCs to account. It would be like more specialized version of Attack Rear, in a similar vein that commander (and only commanders) can Fire Rear.

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In Dom1, archers and Blackhawks only decimated naked mages. A little armor, a couple bodyguards, and the problem was solved. If you wanted to use mages on the battlefield, you needed to put some thought into protecting them. Have you ever seen anyone forge, say, a weightless scale mail in Dom2? My guess would be no, since there is no need for what that item was intended as: a cheap way to give a mage some protection.

One of the reasons that battlefield magic dominates the game to the extent that very hard research has become popular is that mages can't be attacked. Tactics like Skeleton Spam drive me insane. Suppose you expect to face a group of Sauromancers. You have a substantial group of cavalry, so you deploy them on a flank, and order them to attack rear. What will happen? The cavalry will move forward, then madly ride around the battlefield slaughtering the Skeletons which can't really hurt them, until eventually they become exhausted and overwhelmed. Even if their mad spree of bone-smashing happens to bring them near a Sauromancer, will they put a lance through its black heart? No! Troops will attack anything *but* mages, unless there is nothing but mages left on the battlefield.

Something that might perhaps be done about this is to give troops a better sense of what the real threat is. If a knight in shining armor was 3 squares away from a Skeleton in one direction, and 3 squares from a Sauromancer in another, it would be awfully nice if he'd attack the Sauromancer. I have no idea if this could be done.

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so, if you were a night would you attack
A: the undead warrior with a broadsword
or B: the old lizard man weilding a stick shouting crazy words.

but i think it should be easier to attack mages aswell, just not very easy. and if you have ever faced falshe horror spam + skeleton spam it is far worse than one at a time (especially if he has relief casters) since the horrors can fly and hold you up until he drowns you in a horde of skele spammage death.

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Both are not option i would be happy to meet at night http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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good point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif but me thinkys that the skeleton would be my priority (if i didnt know the lizard man could summon 5 in the time i kill 1 or 2)

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I'd rather not have to go through the massive micromanagement that would cause for the lack of truly effective protection that it would provide.

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thing is if mages could be targetted they would all spend ages buffing themselves (luck, mist form, invunrability ect) even though i buff anyway and scripting them like this would require even more micro manegement

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Not only that, but with a limited script, it makes it very difficult to buff, and cast more than a couple specific offensive spells.

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i can't seem to get cntl-1 to work at all, what screen do you do it in? doesn't seem to work on the overland map, in the army select screen theres no way to select the commander.

sorry its a feature I haven't used in the past and I need more info on how it works (I can't get the quick tip to come up either)

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Do you mean ctrl-1 as in the commander order's save/load functionality? If so, go to the army screen (t) and point at the order scripting for a commander, ie: Quickness, False Horror x4. While pointing at this script, press ctrl-1 to save it. To give those orders to another commander, point at that commander's script and press 1.

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Ask few of my opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif What do you do when you're on offensive later in the game? Opponents tend to open combats with RoS. How do you protect your mages? I find weightless scale mail is pretty good armor for this purpose. Depending on situation and gem availability it may be some other kind of armor (blue/red dragon scale mail or lightining resistant armor).

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thanks, pointing at the commands was what I was missing

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So I guess the "attack big monster" command doesn't work? Are mages automatically "smaller" than anything they summon?

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No. Attack large monster command causes the units to attack the largest creature on the battlefield, as determined by the unit's size attribute. You can check the size of a unit by right-clicking on its hit points.

Edi

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I definitely agree... far too often I've seen units ignore the rear most and just attack the side of whatever is closest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Hopefully Dominions_3 will bring more attack commands.

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Well, units dont ignore thier orders, such as it is. They all try to carry out thier orders to the best of thier ability but there are other complicating factors which make them stray. With Attack Rearmost in particular, there is some kind of hidden check every time a group with this command passes an enemy group in the field. If you succeed in this check, you will move to the next group, etc, until you reach the end. I think it may have something to do with morale? But Im not really sure. Probably the command would be better understood by all if it were just labeled Attempt to Flank or something. In my experience tho Attack large monsters, archers, and fliers all produce more predictable results - perhaps there is no hidden check for them, like there is for "rearmost"?

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AFAIU it's just a basic morale check for each squad(?) the unit passes on its way to the rear. If it passes the check then it keeps going, if not then it engages the unit it is trying to pass.

As you can tell I'm not certain whether it's a check per squad or per unit.

What intrigues me is that lifeless/mindless and other morale-50 units should *always* get to the rear, and I'm not sure they do. Anyone?

CC

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It's not a morale check, and it occurs during the target selection part of the squads turn, where there is a chance of failure to attack the rearmost square for each opponent squad.

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Ok so if it's not a morale check, what is it based on? How is it modified? Presumably an Arch Devil has a better chance of getting past two militia than a light infantry has of getting past a hundred heavy cav?

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I have no idea what it's based on, but I think that the flying creature has an advantage only because it can go directly to it's target in one turn, and will not get blocked.

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Except that in my experience, flyers get distracted and go for the troops in front just as often as cavalry do, which is, imo, totally bogus.