Mages and scripted spells
 

Hi gentlemen,

I'm trying an EA game with T'ien C'hi. Some heroes joined pretty soon in the battle, and amongst them the Immortal Ho Hsien-Ku (A2 N3). I scripted Ho Hsien-Ku with False Fetters (requires A2 and no gems). Nevertheless, during the battle, HSK never casts this spell but prefers other ones like Air Shield (and that's a real spoil as Air Shield comes with the bless...), Howl (pretty wolves, almost useless against my actual opponent Helheim...) and so on, making her of little use. Moreover, she consumes her nature gems and that's not what I want right now.

So, my question is : why doesn't HSK follows the scripted orders ????? (PS : of course, I have unlocked False Fetters with the required amount of research).

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

First - are the enemy actually within range of false fetters?

Second - Don't give her nature gems if you don't want them used.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Yeah, the AI burns through gems like crazy. I'd probably be in favour of completely removing the 'spend a gem to reduce fatigue' mechanic for Dom4 just to reduce micromanagement in equipping battlemages

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

1 - Range : nice shot ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif I guess this is the explanation. AMOF, I don't have any idea about how far are "15 in range" since the grid is bugged on my computer (some graphic device pbm for sure...) : when I enabled the grid, the screen turns to a full plain gray display... OK then, I'll try to "false fetter" putting the mage closer to the front line

2 - Gems : you're right indeed. The point is : HSK generates nature gems herself.

Thanks for the clue !
H. the newbie http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Ah, makes the gems eh? That's a different story. If you script a spell that can't be cast for whatever reason the AI picks one instead, based on its own 'relatively' smart criteria.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

And when you script a mage, you should always remember there is a chance the mage AI will think it is smarter than you and it will cast spells that are not what you scripted, even if you are in range and even if you have enough gems.

When it is happening it can be highly annoying, as this AI behaviour can then led your army into a defeat if you were counting on a specific spell to save a situation.

I wish there was an option somewhere in dom3 to force really a mage AI to follow exactly its script.

Having an AI sometime overriding its order can be nice in a roleplay point of view, but when it happens when you really need a specific spell to be cast at a specific time and situation, that is just an fun breaker.

But when the AI do exactly what it is ordered to , your army can really sometime do wonders in a desesperate battle.
In my last game my besieged army routed a way bigger army thanks to the casters using the spells i scripted them to do.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

I approve of the AI going off script, but it certainly can be annoying sometimes. I recently had a mage lose me a battle by perversly cast Doom instead of Will of the Fates.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Ouch.

Or was it an s3 mage?

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Same happened to me with MA Caelum.

I had a high seraph scripted to cast fog warriors and then stay behind troops. He had enough gems to cast the spell, but he chose to cast wind guide instead. My mammoths got chopped by a vanheim army instead of trampling them all to death in mist form.

Since fog warriors has no range (battlefield wide), I really didn't expect the AI to go wrong there. And other high seraphs did the same thing. So my game is pretty much good for the bin - I really need fog warriors and the AI keeps overruling the script.

Is there any way to force the AI to do what it is told ? It really kills the game at times otherwise.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Yrkoon - your mage was A4 with 4 air gems, right?

I have never had a mage fail to cast Fog Warriors in a sufficiently large battle. But I used to miscalculate that you could cast it with an A3 mage - which you can't.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Llama, he was A3 with 5 air gems.

Why couldn't he cast fog warriors ? It's an A5 spell costing 3 gems, so A3 + 2 gems = A5. With 5 gems, he should have had enough. What am I missing ?

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

You can only use as many gems as your path level.

And only one more than the spell costs to boost your level.

So an A4 mage can use 4 gems, 3 for the cost and one to boost his level to 5 to cast it.

An A3 mage can only use 3 gems, which is enough for the cost but not to boost his level, and could only boost his level by one to A4 anyway.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Yep, the key point is that you can never boost your level by more than 1 by using gems. This caught me _countless_ times before I realised what was going on.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Oh right, that explains a lot.

For some reason I thought a mage could use as many gems as he had levels in a paths (so double his level at most), and then on top of that spend the gems necessary for the spell itself.

Thank you for the clarification thejeff

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Yes, I thought the same. I have a feeling the manual is wrong on this point, hence the widespread confusion. I can't remember any more, but I did read the manual carefully when I first got the game.

A side-effect of the same point is that you can't use more than one gem to reduce fatigue either (as fatigue is reduced by gaining a temporary level). Therefore the maximum number of gems a spell can use is (gem cost of spell) + 1. I'm almost certain the manual is confused on this point.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Maybe it would be worth including this in Edi's FAQ ?

If it is such a confusing matter, I am sure lots of people would find some explanations useful

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

I know for a fact in the manual it states that you can use as many gems in casting a spell as you have in the path of the spell.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

You cannot use more gems in casting a spell than you have in the path of the spell.
You also cannot use more than one more than the gem cost of the spell.
I'd have to check the manual, but I believe it is confusing but not actually wrong.
There was a discussion here a while back that hashed this out. I went into that with the impression that you could use one gem to boost your level to be able to cast the spell, then more to reduce fatigue. I think the manual discusses all of these in separate places, leading to much of the confusion.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

I don't think this is in the manual, but I think it was mentioned before that mages will not kill themselves if casting the spell would kill them (due to fatigue).

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Casting a spell cannot kill a mage. If he's conscious and meets the requirements,
the mage will cast the spell, and even if his fatigue should rise over 200, it will not.
Furthermore, a mage will use more than one gem over what the spell requires.
The only limiting factor as far as I can tell is the magic path level.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Now I'm all confused again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

thejeff has it right.

Gem usage:
- Minimum: Gem cost of spell
- Maximum: Gem cost of spell + 1
- Another maximum: Mage's level

Fatigue cannot rise above 200 from spellcasting. A mage cannot damage himself from excess fatigue. Hence very high fatigue costs only really reflect the number of gems required for casting.

Some consequences:
(Required facts:
Imaginary Spell A is A5 and needs 1 A gem
Fog Warriors is A5 and needs 3 A gems
Shimmering Fields is A6 and needs 2 A gems
Imaginary Spell B is A9 and needs 9 A gems)

An A3 mage cannot cast Fog Warriors, as his level cannot be boosted enough. He cannot even cast Imaginary Spell A - there is no way an A3 mage can cast an A5 spell.

An A4 mage can cast Fog Warriors and will need 4 gems (3 for spell + 1 to boost level)

An A4 mage cannot cast Shimmering Fields.

An A5 mage can cast Shimmering Fields with 3 air gems.

An A6 mage can cast Shimmering Fields using either 2 or 3 gems. Using 2 he will get 200 fatigue. Using 3 he will count as a level 7 and will only get 100 fatigue.

An A9 mage can cast Imaginary Spell B. Although the fatigue is listed as 900, he will only take 200 fatigue.

I am reasonably sure of all this. Hope that is helpful.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

Very high fatigue cost also affects how high you need to boost your level to drop the resulting fatigue down below 200.
Imaginary Spell B is probably too extreme, but an A7, 7 gem spell cast by an A10 pretender with 3 boosters= A13 and an extra gem for A14 would be 87 fatigue, so it is possible even for very high gem cost spells.

More commonly it also affects how quickly communion slaves used to cast the big spells die. They are not limited to 200 fatigue.

Also, I'm not sure, but I believe the AI will use an extra gem to reduce fatigue, even if it doesn't get reduced below 200. An A10 mage casting Imaginary spell B would use 10 gems and take 300 fatigue capped to 200.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

A mage will use more than 1 more than the gem cost to cast a spell, but not to increase caster level.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

No. A mage can only use one gem more than the gem cost. This increases his level by one for either fatigue reduction or to be able to cast the spell.

He can only do this if his level in the path is at least the total number of gems he wants to use.

Your version was prevailing opinion for quite awhile. I certainly thought so, but it was dis-proven in a long thread a few months ago.
If you can produce a counter-example, I'd love to see it.

Re: Mages and scripted spells
 

> A mage can only use one gem more than the gem cost. This increases his level by one for either fatigue reduction or to be able to cast the spell.

He will use this one gem to increase his lvl. Incresed lvl increases the power of the spell and reduces fatigue as if the mage was one lvl higher.