my mages cast crap spells?
 

what's with the summon lesser fire elemental spam? I am playing as EA Abysia in a SP game vs a mix of mighty and impossible AIs, and I back up my armies with 4-5 annointed of rhuax stacked wtih fire gems. I researched to evocation 9, and was fairly satisfied with my mages' ability to wreck an army. I then researched into conjuration to allow my mages to pheonix fire and cast fire storm, or flame storm. However as soon as I researched conjuration all they do is quickly blow all their gems chain summoning lesser fire elementals. I can't imagine why I'd ever want to spend a gem on a lesser fire elemental instead of a fire storm, especially when my armies are immune to fire! In most battles I'd rather they cast the free spells such as falling fires, fire pillar, fire cloud, then summon lesser fire elemental.
My question is am I screwed? Can I get them to stop without scripting out spells for them? I can only script so many spells anyway. Do I have to resort to forgoing firestorm and flamestorm by not giving my commanders fire gems?

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Are you sure the battles they were in would be considered big enough for them to use battlefield spells? That could have stopped them. If that is the problem give the gems to non-mages until your going into a big battle where they will cast the desired spells.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I get tired of scripting mages - that kind of micromanagement doesn't really appeal much to me (which is fine, since I play SP) and I get what you're talking about. If you research nothing but evocation they're fine, but sometimes when you teach them a new spell that's actually pretty bad, they just go nuts casting that instead.

I think a very simple way to solve the problem (far more simple than allowing us control over AI 'weight' on different spells) would be to allow us to 'ban' or 'forget' certain researched spells - to toggle them on or off. That way you can restrict your unscripted mages to stuff that might actually be useful.

Good idea?

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Sombre, you know you can store spell scripts in hotkeys, right? Point at a commanders script space in the army setup screen. Press Ctrl-<number key> to store it. Then point at another commanders script line and press a number key to deploy that script. In this way you can script many mages quickly.

Same thing works for regular commanders and troop formations, as well.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I know that, but it's still annoying because the script that would actually be useful varies according to the mages having gems, the situation you're in and the spells you have researched. So in effect the hotkeys don't really reduce the micro for me that much.

This is just personal preference - I can't be bothered tweaking the scripts of tens of different mages all over the map, hotkeys or not. I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me and being able to disable spells you never want cast (such as sabbath slave or whatever) would help people like me out. The AI also sometimes decides it doesn't want to cast what you scripted, so this would help even those who enjoy using scripts extensively.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Even if the battle was too small to cast battlefield spells, the weaker summon spell still costs the same amount of fire gems. My point is shouldn't the casting scale with the cost of the spell instead of the power? If I'm fighting a small battle I'd still rather cast an expensive powerful spell then an expensive weak spell!

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I'd love to be able to just check/uncheck a spell from a list to make it available to battlefield mages. Don't think we need to go so far as personal rankings, but maybe (ick, even more micro).

I'd also like a toggle per mage in the army setup screen to determine max # of useable gems per combat. Possibly just a set of 5 radio buttons, leave blank for none, click 1 button for max use of 1 gem per combat, 2, 3, etc. Bloody annoying to give 30 gems to a good mage and have them gone in 2 battles.

Have a script command for Self buff, army buff, offensive. For instance, I hate scripting mages as well..but then they waste the first 3 turns and 60 fatigue buffing themselves when they aren't even gonna get scratched.

I'd like it to be set up so it can be like no self buffs, 2 army buffs, then offensive for the rest of the battle using a max of 3 gems. (from an "approved" list maybe).

Is it me or do the AI mages seem to do better at spell selection?

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Those are good ideas and I'd love to see them in the game, but I think it's best to push something very simple to the Devs.

I don't know how hard it would be for them to add a toggle function to researched battlefield spells (I can't think it's that hard, all you have to do is flag the spell as not researched when it's 'off'), but I do know it would /drastically/ lessen the need for scripting, for the less hardcore players.

I'd turn iron will, body ethereal, barkskin, raise skeleton and numerous other spells off in a lot of my games if I could and for a few turns it might be good to turn off stuff like falling fires, thunder strike etc to avoid friendly fire casualties, only to turn them back on when approaching stiffer opposition.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I haven't noticed them being particularly good at spell selection, but it's probable that the strategic AI scripts mages (it has a high tolerance for micromanagement http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif), which means that if you leave your mages unscripted it will be "better" for the first five rounds.

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Specifically, I think the spell research (F5) screen would be a good place to do this. Perhaps clicking on a researched spell greys it out again. This will prevent it from showing up in your list of ritual spells to cast if it's a ritual/global (makes it easier to hunt for the ones you want) and will prevent it from showing up in the tactical scripting AI list if it's a battlefield spell, as well as prevent it from being cast.

Edit: I can think of a potential complication, actually. Once you turn a spell off, how do you turn it back ON? The game would need to maintain a separate list of spells that are "really" researched, either because the right school level has been researched (Evoc-6) or because map commands started your nation out with that spell. What you'd do is keep the existing code for telling which spells are researched, but also maintain a separate, monotonically-increasing list of "really researched" spells. Every time a spell becomes available you add it to both lists; when someone grays out a spell you remove it from the "researched" list, when they click on an unresearched spell it adds it back into the "researched" list if and only if it's in the "really researched" list. That way the battlefield AI can keep its existing code for checking the "researched list," etc. I'm not sure how changes to the research lists would be encoded in .trn and .h files, though. It might be nontrivial.

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Yes in terms of multiplayer it's rather more complex because different people will have 'banned' or 'greyed out' different spells. The game would have to keep track of all of them, although it isn't like that would be any more complicated than anything the game currently keeps track of.

This isn't the sort of feature that can just be stuck into the game, unlike new units and spells and alterations to message text. On the other hand, it can't actually be /that/ complicated can it? I mean to the people who made the game from scratch. It's not like we're asking for a major altertion to the GUI or to the way the game works.

Currently the game checks your research level against the level of the spell and says yes you can cast it or no you can't (ignoring other costs for the moment). All spells are simply given a required level, there's no 'I've been researched' flag. But you can restrict spells to nations and via modding (every turn) you can do it on the fly, provided the mod is loaded from the start. That means it's currently entirely possible to alter a spell so it's no longer available to cast (by resticting it to a non existing nation). The complication here is that different people will want different restricted lists and the AI will want nothing restricted at all. But again, that doesn't seem like something too hard for the coder(s) who made Dom3.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I think Sombre's idea is very good. (Happens to be I thought so since it occurred to me back before Dominions II ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) I think it's been suggested to IW before, but it wouldn't hurt to re-suggest it.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

You'll never get them to start a battle with phoenix power(+1 fire), fire storm(Battlefield enchantment) without scripting. So that's one guy to script at least.

And no, giving mages way more gems than they need for the scripted spells rarely works.. need to hand out a few gems each important battle to the flame storm casters. Maybe the fire storm caster spends the whole battle unconsious so he cant waste gems?

You could make just one hotkey with phoenix power, flame storm, flame storm, falling fires, falling fires, and give it to all your mages to save time.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

One point:

I doubt the game keeps track of what spells are researched. That's needless data, it can be recreated in an eyeblink from the list of what research levels have been reached.

I do agree the AI goes nuts with buffing. SP, I was trying to take down the last few LA Ryleh provinces. Sending armies against them just resulted in them being routed for no gain at all. I had gems to burn, I empowered/wished my pretender to all 10's and over 500 hp and sent him in. Routed, zero kills?!?! I view the battle--he spends ages buffing himself and then starts summoning garbage, none of which makes it through the enemy spells. At no point does either side ever cast a spell or take a swing at the other (except the summons)!

Every attempt to script him to do something useful failed until I finally simply told him to attack without casting any buffs first. He still routed after 50 turns but managed to accomplish something first. I never did kill any of the powerful units but I did manage to kill a few prophets and then my dominion could push through and kill him that way.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

The way I read it, that means there must be a "I've been researched" flag. That is, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the #startspell map command, which flags a spell as researched at the start of the game. So the tactical AI must be checking an explicit list of researched spells and not just school/level constraints, and that explicit list must be on a player-by-player basis.

Reportedly #startspell is broken at the moment, though.

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I was thinking #startspell probably just removes the check for level or somehow moves the required level to 0. I suppose that's similar to a 'researched' flag.

But no, I wasn't actually talking about startspell. When I say 'modding' I mean .dm commands, not map modding - if you create a mod and load it up at the start you can alter the requirements of spells whenever you want. But you do this only by changing their required level etc.

Even if startspell works, does it function on a player by player basis? If it does, that would seem to bode well for getting this put in a patch. I really think allowing us to grey out our spell lists would be a serious improvement to magic in the game and, to an extent, reduce micromanagement.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

The documentation says #startspell is #startspell <player> "Spell name", so yes. Unfortunately the spell goes away on turn 2 and never comes back, so maybe managing spells has changed under the hood since Dom3 and made this harder. (Maybe it is just checking researched school levels now.)

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I agree with Sombre, the idea is very easy to implement and it is very good. Unfortunately, as PvK said, it has been around for years and IW don't seem intertested. A little more push ...

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Sometimes I don't understand the tactical AI's choices at all. For instance, I was attacking Solaris' indy province of Knights of the Chalice + Flagellants with a couple of Sauromancers and Shamans and some chaff. The Sauromancers were scripted to cast <Communion Master, Storm of Thorns, SoT, SoT, SoT>. Come battle time, the knights charge my lines, my mages cast Communion Master and then, when the knights are seven squares away, cast Storm of Thorns as scripted... at the flagellants 18 squares away! I was relying on SoT for its stopping power, and it's not like there was any danger of friendly fire. Totally baffling to me. It turned out all right, and in fact on the fourth round of battle my mages took some time out from shelling flagellants to tie up some knights, but there are times when I don't understand my mages at all. I'd have them executed for incompetence but there's no disband command... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, I bet the AI was optimizing for damage output. Since Knights have high Prot, they hardly take any *damage* from the vines, so the flagellants look like a better target. I suppose next time I expect a situation like this I should script Tangle Vines instead even though it has a much smaller AoE.

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

I think the biggest problem with Dominions 3 is the distinct inability to easily manage the troops.

What we need is...

1. A better system for handling mage scripts. A single set of 9 hotkeys is isn't very useful especially when you can't readily see what is stored in them without over writing some commander's commands. I'd like to see a graphical interface where you could drag and drop premade scripts into commanders. It would be great if you could create a library of them and give them names, taking them from game to game. People could exchange script libraries and such, or post juicy ones they really liked.

2. Longer scripting buffers, with the option to end in a "always cast this spell" mode. I'd say something like 20 actions instead of the 7-8 that are allowed now.

3. The ability to turn off the casting AI on individual leaders. I find this so irritating when my mages completely ignore what I want them to cast.

4. A better army setup screen. There needs to be a way to toggle between individual unit displays, and big stacks of them. It would also be nice to be able to use the mouse in this respect, to drag and drop after using a box to highlight instead of being forced to select the units then click on the commander. But really the thing that's desperately needed is a compressed unit view where you can drag hundreds or even thousands of chaff troops around at a time.

5. You should be able to limit mages on which spells they can cast in general without specifying. A little box that pops up and allows you to check or uncheck individual types of spells. A good example would be that the box has a selection for Buffs, Offensive, Defensive, Self-Buffs (making a distinction between buffs that improve troops and just the caster). Obviously the details would be a little complicated, but I think it'd be extremely useful.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Playing devil's advocate here, motivated by the phrase "biggest problem": All of those ideas sound nice. At the same time, to a certain extent the art of war is about learning what works and what doesn't within the constraints you have, and as long as I can figure out WHY things work the way they do (Storm of Thorns optimizes for damage) I can still optimize. Stupid mages are one thing. Stupid, random and uncontrollable mages would be something entirely different. (You could still optimize, but it would be along the lines of "don't research the conjuration tree if you want to be able to cast Fire Storm." No fun.) I don't think the UI is a problem as it stands.

But, yeah. #2 and #5 would be especially great, and I could see how #4 would help some people a lot. Maybe we could agree that the combat UI is the area most urgently needing attention? (Well, that and disbanding units.) Although I'm all pumped about automatic site searching working properly in the next patch. Yay for Johan!

-Max

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

Did you try to cast 5 buffs and then attack? Was there already too many summons in play then?

Something that looks fun in the theory at least is to cast Foul Vapors, Shark attack, invulnerability, soul vortex, summon earth power (or fire shield or personal luck or personal regeneration), then attack.

Re: my mages cast crap spells?
 

It's been long enough I don't remember what all I tried. What I do recall was that if I scripted any spells the AI did it's own thing and utterly ignored the script.

I had enough good items I didn't have that much use for buffing, anyway. The force I was facing couldn't get past my regeneration even unbuffed.