How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I always wanted to know, how many troops you should attack with to make enemy mages use their scripts. If you attack with single scout, they won't cast scripted battlefield enchantments and other spells that require gems, but it may be really useful to send in a "large enough" suicide group of cheap chaff to see what is awaiting you.
Does anyone know what this "large enough" equals to?

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I dont think anyone knows the formula. It has to do with how dominions internally calculates the strength of the attacking army compared to your own. Off the top of my head I would say something like at least 30% as strong as the force you are attacking?

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

1% makes it enough too. MY mages burned like 40-50 gems last turn against single warlock.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I had an S3 Shadow Seer sneak into an enemy province to provide Mind Hunt cover for an assassin. The Shadow Seer got discovered, and it caused the full scripts to be used, really quite a lot of gems. He had Returning scripted too, but got killed by an Air Elemental before he could cast it.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I've seen Golem SCs and Earth elementals from Earth Attack cause gem blowing battles. I don't think the counter has anything to do with GP cost.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

And I have seen 20 mages totally ignoring script when trying to storm castle with over 10 enemy mages inside. Instead of anything that deals damage they decided to cast body ethereal, luck etc on meatshields, while they were getting poisoned and shot by fort towers.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I just lost over 300 maenads (half of my troops) in a game against an army of about 80 demons because the script was ignored.

I would also probably have won on a standard map but this was a castle defence... I outnumbered them so much that eventually the maenads and other troops would have found the mages that hid behind the ennemy troops.

The script was : cast phantasmal armies (in order to reduce my loss), shoot a few lightning bolt, or buff and then fly to attack rearmost units (hopefully the commanders, but it should have killed enough to break their morale). Since the army in front was "small" the SC neglected using the gems and was therefore stuck for a dozen turns while the castle and ennemy archers shot my maenads until morale broke, and finally buffed (no idea why) then flew to the back and started doing it's job (with over 90 fatigue, this was a suicide, but thankfully, morale broke before it was too late)).

The ennemy force was about 8% of mine in number, and equal in force (with the castle). If we consider HP, the ennemy army had about 30% what my army had (rough estimate). If we consider average defence, attack, hp, he would have the advantage (and by far : this army was chaff mostly).

I'd love to see an AI capable of taking into account more information (like comparing average HP or attack or protection), in order to do a better guess when deciding to use gems or to follow the script...

It would make chaff armies a little stronger (since in a fight between a chaff armies and a "elite" army the chaff woult start using gems) but I don't actually see this as a problem.

Well, in my case, the main mistake was casting such a spell. I won't ever do that again...

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I really had the impression the point at which gems start to be used was lowered several patches back, (I can't remember which one exactly) but since nothing of the kind was mentioned in the patch notes I suppose it could just my imagination.

Generally though, since that point I never had a situation where I wished my mages used gems but didn't. The other way around however... In my last game a large R'lyeh army (~750 chaff, some quality troops, 40+ mage communion, 1 Tartarian SC, and maybe a dozen other assorted mages) blew around 30 gems against 25 Pythium PD. Including a will of the fates on turn 2, and then, unscripted, a second will of the fates to give luck to the legionaires I had master enslaved after the first cast. That was funny... At least the second and third master enslave I had scripted were deemed unnecessary though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I think generally speaking people would rather waste a few gems now and then than have their mages ignore script against a serious threat and get their asses killed.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

But AI also ignores spells that do not need gems. I really see no logic in casting Body Ethereal on wolves instead of for example Soul Slay or Gifts from Heaven.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

I think there is an AI bug against stealthy mages discovered in patrol phase. I've seen 40+ mages with hundreds or troops follow their full round one script to kill a lone bard.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

Maybe, condition is: "if there's a mage in the enemy force"...
Does LA Pythium has mages in defense, Amhazair?

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

That right there was part of the problem. The spellcasting AI prefers to buff something on the first round. Scripting a non-buff spell first is much more likely to be ignored.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

Just checked it. Pythium gets Leo at defense 20.
Seems like mages in enemy force cause executing of gem-demanding scripts.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

capnq, you're probably right, even if that doesn't apply to this battle. And you're probably right for another reason, if I buffed first then casted this spell, the spell would probably have been ignored. And you're also right about casting this spell : it was a mistake I won't ever do again in such a situation.

The problem I had was that the spell was casted as I scripted. If the script was ignored, it would have cast one of the cheap buff spell that cost 20 fatigue and not caused a problem at all... but the script wasn't ignored, the caster just decided not to use the gems for some reason, resulting in 200 fatigue. At least, if it doesn't want to use gems, it should at least ignore the script altogether.

But this example was just another example, maybe after enough examples we will be able to find out why the script ignores or not the scripts or gems...

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

Good catch, and this might very well have something to do with it. It's definitely not the only consideration though.

I have on a couple of occasions used a couple of castings of ghost riders against large opposition armies for the sole purpose of having them use up their gems. Two castings is definitely enough to force gem usage, I haven't yet tried it with only one. Ghost riders don't have any mages, but they do come with a rather scary thug leader.

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

Can you use gems with spells if you can already cast the spell?

Re: How many troops form a \"large enough\" force?
 

You can use one gem to boost your level to either cast the spell or reduce fatigue.

No more gems in total than your level.