The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Currently playing in a game where R'lyeh Mind Lords & Aboleths are teleporting into my Atlantian provinces, scripted with, Body Etheral, Personal Luck, Quicken Self, Astral Shield, Breath of Winter, Attack Closet.

With this a single Aboleth or Mind Lord can defeat 25 - 30 Atlantian PD, 9 times out of ten.

Okay, fair enough, so I send out a few mages to boost the PD a little and hopefully kill a few more of the MInd Lords & Aboleths. I equip a lvl 5 water mage with 3W gems and script Summon Water, Winter Ward, Water Ward, Friendly Currents, Water Strike, cast spells.

My mage absolutely refuses to follow his script, resulting in the battle being lost. Obviously the AI is classing the single Mind Lord/Aboleth as no threat, when of course it is.

Isn't this a clear case of scripting being fatally flawed?

I believe in the future perhaps Dom 4, you should have a option of switching the AI scripting off/on. So when off it follows your spell script exactly, when on works as it presently does.

I know this as been discussed many times, but as its so annoying I thought it deserved a rehash...grrrrr....gives all the new players a chance to growl at the AI scripting as well.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

The other side of the coin here, is that if you selected 'AI scripting off' for a big army, the enemy could drop 'call of the winds' on you and your mages would waste tons of gems. Then if the army is attacked in the same turn, it might be left vulnerable - I believe that's what used to happen in Doms2.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

At least you would have a choice by being able to switch it on or off and the enemy would not know wether it was on or off.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

That seems like a nice choice to have. And with the possibility that you might screw up I think it just adds to the game.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

It sounds like a good idea but I dont know if Kristoffer would go for it.

"Your god tells you to do xxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx but in battle you decide to do it abit differently"
makes more sense thematically than
"Your god tells you to do absolutely nothing in combat"

You could make a stronger case for
"Your god tells you to do xxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx and even though it seems stupid during the battle you do it anyway because you are more afraid of angering your god than the idea of dying".

Actually, the strongest case of all would be to examine the game log and see where you feel the logic failed. The mage goes thru a huge list of spells rating them. Maybe the rating could be tweaked in a way that will work (for all nations)

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Why does it have to be god telling them what to do? Why can't the scripting just represent the mage deciding something?

This is a gameplay deal, not much to do with 'realism' or 'thematics'.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

And what does it mean to follow the script exactly. Should the mage cast attack spells with nothing in range? Blessings when everyone is already blessed (or no sacred units present)? Mind duel with no enemy astral mages? Etc, etc.

Better (though more developer work) would be to improve the "Is this enemy force worth wasting gems on?" logic. That seems to be where most of the problems lie.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

I don't think people have a problem with the casting AI deviating if the scripted stuff isn't possible (they might, but it's certainly a lesser problem). It's more that the AI has spells scripted that are possible and entirely sensible, but decides to do its own thing anyway and gets killed.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

The only cases of the AI deviating that I know of come down to either not possible or gem use.
Not possible is usually not in range.

The gem use is a real problem, but I still think the better solution is to improve the "enemy strength" algorithm.

I don't like the AI scripting on/off idea.
In the original example, you could just teleport in a cheap mage with hold/hold/retreat to burn his gems if he has scripting off, followed by the Mind Lord who will slaughter them because they have no gems left. If he leaves scripting on, they don't follow the script for the cheap mage or the Aboleth and die anyway.

It just means you have to work a little hard to exploit the problem. It doesn't fix it.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Yeah, another example I ran afoul of in another game was the AI deciding not to "waste" blood slaves casting hell bind heart as I had scripted...after all it's just one guy they were fighting! >:/

What's especially messed up in the fight Bob's talking about is after disregarding his orders to cast friendly currents, the AI decided to go ahead and spend the gems summoning sharks. Talk about adding insult to injury. Well, at least there was a funny stalemate where the Mage of the Deep kept my frost immune (from breath of winter) aboleth permanently encased in ice while the breath of winter caused him to be surrounded by passed out militia and the only damage being dealt was "holy avenger" being triggered on the (passed out) mother of the deep by breath of winter.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

The AI appears to deviate even if the spell is possible and you have the gems to power it if it decides the spell isn't a good idea. I don't have an example of this to hand, but numerous people have reported it.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Hmm I use hellbind heart quite abit against one unit and havent had a problem. Maybe the mage was set too far back on the battlefield? (I dont remember the range settings on that)

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Both mages were set all the way forward, enemy mage was scripted to hold X5 (it was an agreed up trade).

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Of course, thematically it makes sense that sometimes mages would make a mistake. They don't know that a lone enemy is actually loaded with magic items or whatever. When they have heavy weight of numbers on their side, it makes sense that sometimes the mages would make the wrong decision

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

This is probably going to sound weird, but how about if the game processed the combats multiple times? The first time through the combat would be run using gems and executing retreat orders. If the battle is easily won (less than 10% casualties and no commander deaths) the battle would be rerun without the use of gems or the execution of retreat orders. If the gem-comservation run results in a large swing in the outcome (more than the 10% casualty threshold or commander death) the results would be discarded, otherwise they would be used.

By only rerunning battles that are lopsided to begin with this method wouldn't be giving any "second chances" to land/avoid a lucky blow. The results of a battle will never be changed using this method, only the resources that go into winning it.

This gets rid of the need for the AI to have to perfectly assess the strength of the opposition with a complex formula that will inevitably have holes in it and lets it see what actually happens. It's a bit unthematic that mages can never be surpried by a small force with big guns, but eliminating the frustration of dealing with the AI's flaws seems like a very worthwhile tradeoff to me. I'm sick of seeing my mages flee in terror from a scout that my PD caught when I have an uncastled lab, or the mage I have around to buff an SC and split flee from a pack of overgrown birds, leaving his SC buddy around to die when the real army gets there later in the turn.

Single-target charm-type spells should always be cast as scripted though, since getting a unit is even better than not losing one, and since they single-target there is no chance of overkill.

It might up the turn processing time a bit, but since only lopsided battles will be rerun (which generally process fairly quickly, with the exception of SCs taking down armies) I don't think it would be a major resource-hog.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

I have had the opposite problem before.

I was Atalntis and was prepared for a big attack against vanheim. Vanheim teleports in 2 SC's. (one might have beena golem.) The mages waste all their gems on those two opponents. In the same turn vanhim atatcks with his big army. Of course since my mages have no gems, i get slaughtered.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Maybe it should be tied to the dominion? So for example, if Dominion is 1 the mage would think "Ok, maybe the god exists, but what he knows about the combat? I'm not spending gems on that Rain of Stones he has divined to cast - our Tartarian army should take care of that lone hawk". With dominion 10 it would be different story: "That lone hawk doesn't seem to be too dangerous to us, but what do I, mere mortal, know - God must have his divine plans - Rain of Stones it is!"

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Dom3 behaviour is rather sensible (in most cases). But strangely, I think now that I liked Dom2 system more. In Dom2, finding a good script was a real challenge. When you knew that when you storm the fortress you have to fend off magic attack first, then attempt to break the siege and only after you would be storming, it was an interesting task of managing to get the critical spells cast in the final battle and it led to many very interesting methods of gem preservation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

Scripting is driving me mad at the moment, I scripted attack one turn, this was to get in range of the incoming Aboleths/Mind Lords. So my mage casts fire shield...surely it should obey the attack one turn order without question?

Btw the mage died as a result of disobeying my script...ahh that will teach him!

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

The AI seems to love fire shield. More often than not it throws out my scripts and chooses that.

Re: The fatal flaws of scripting mages...
 

On the other side of the following-the-script coin, I recently cast infernal disease on a province. The commander (a Prince of Death) was scripted to cast Darkness, which he did right away. Bump fatigue to ~130. Flying demon assassin jumps over and whacks the PoD in the head until it dies.

Should a mage cast Darkness when the entire opposing army (of one) is composed of Demons? Especially when the mage will pass out from the strain?

Actually, I don't know 100% for sure about the scripting. It's more of an uninformed guess. But if the AI chose to cast Darkness in that situation, it's even worse.

Edit: I'm still such a noob! Sorry for anyone who read this and came away with some misinformation. The Prince of Death is not immortal. I've removed my comment above which said that.