Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I know this has been brought up before, i apologize, but i need to vent just a little, its been driving me mad in my latest games, and i hope by bringing it up again it might get fixed.

playing tien chi, a handful of fire mages are equiped with my very limited fire gem supply to cast flaming arrows for my archers, followed by some combat spells. unfortunately they are ignoring my scripts, despite being fully capable, and quite often they are killing themselves.

frequently it seems the AI deems the enemy too weak to justify the casting of the flaming arrow spell, sometimes i win the battle, more often than not i loose because the AI can't fully appreciate that the bulk of my infantry are arrow catchers which require a vast superiority of numbers to win without fire support. even if i win however, i have now suffered far more losses than i should have and my advance has drastically slowed if not stopped entirely.

while the AI refuses to waste gems on flamming arrows, it seems to have no problem wasting them on fire elementals. most of whom get nowhere near the front lines before the battle is over. oh but thats not the best part. usually the fire elementals rush up to the rear of my troops and begin setting them all on fire and killing them, but lately for some strange reason the elementals make no effort to advance towards the battle, instead they sit right next to all my commanders and mages, killing or crippling them. Even if i live, i have now depleted my gem supply, so i won't be able to cast properly next time.

even when the AI is not wasting my gems on fire elementals, it seems intent on exhausting my mages with pointless spells. if you can't cast fireball one would intuitively guess that an offensive combat spell would be the best substitute, or possibly moving closer to the battle so you can cast it, or at worst, resting. instead the AI decides the best thing to do is exhaust my mage on completely worthless spells. casting strength of giants on a mage in the rear is silly. if there are no enemy archers, and you are in the back, arrow fend is a waste too. watching my mages ,as ermor ,cast flaming arrows after the last javelin has been thrown...
They exhaust themselves without inflicting any damage on the enemy, resulting in the battle being lost, and then they are too tired to run away, and die where they lay.

i just lost a battle, because a mage cast breath of winter on himself, killing most of the surrounding commanders, before he himself and what was left of my leaders, ran away. The enemy was no where near him, and he made no effort to advance on them. why did he cast it? There is no common sense here.
its bad enough going into a battle with an aura of fire/cold/poison/etc unit where you can try, futily, to place him away from those who lack resistance(only to watch them all ball up anyway(speaking of which, why is it when my elephants run away, no matter why they are, all my commanders immediately try to run into their path, another time perhaps...) atleast in that situation, you have some control with initial placement, orders, and hey, you put the guys in the same army. but mages doing this crap on their own is intolerable.

I know a few of the tricks, if there are more i;d love to hear them...

keep most of your gems on a well protected commander or a scout so your mage only has enough to cast the spell in question. ofcourse A) if you are attacked multiiple times in a single turn you are out of luck, and B) as if there isn't enough micromanagement in this game already.

spread out your commanders, so that when(not if) something goes wrong they aren't all massacred. but A) once their scripts end they have a very nasty tendency to ball up anyway, and b) spreading them out leaves them weak and vunerable for a rear assault by cavalry or flyers. there is strength in numbers, shared body gaurds, etc.

equip your mages with fire/whatever resistence items. works if you got the gems to spare, good luck outfitting everyone, thats alot of wasted turns and gems forging, and good luck accounting for every possible situation your mages can come up with, and even then, all your slots are taken up defending yourself against the stupidity of your own troops, instead of supplying bonuses or powers. and your non commanders are still barbeque. while your mages wont be dead from their own spells, they aren't doing their job and winning the battle, so at best, you will suffer extra losses, and at worst, loose the battle and possibly your fatigued mages.

seriously, just too simple check boxes would be nice.
1)follow the script irregardless of the AI's oppinions
2)don't use gems for non scripted spells

it would be nice if, after the 5 script entries, instead of 'cast spells', you could specifiy, 'cast buffs', 'cast summons', 'cast offensive spells'. etc.

actually, speaking of the follow script irregardless, it would be nice if that option were extended to all troops. i am noticing an alarming trend where my archers stop firing in mass to run into the enemy. often taking 2-3 turns to cover the distance. plenty of arrows, entire divisions so its not an injury, and i know they can hurt the guys they are/were shooting at.

there are alot of flaws in this game i can overlook, but when i can't win a battle despite all my preparations because the AI thinks it knows better. thats just not something i can't tolerate. its too aggrevating. I'd say its gotten worse with the last patch but i play rather sporadically. And obviously fire mages are just the worst for me right now, but clearly the problem i whine about concerns the AI as a whole.

Its a fun game... you know, when it doesn't make me want to run my fist through my monitor.

i've said my piece, feel free to delete.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Move your mages nearer the front?

Some of the Evocation artillery you'd probably want to default to if the AI declines to cast your script will have short(ish) range. If you're too far back, they can't hit anything, so they'll cast self-buffs or summon elementals. Although to be honest, mages summoning elementals when they have spare gems is one of those little frustrations that's hard to avoid.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Well here's my take on it.

Logic 1: All I need to win is flaming arrows.
Logic 2: Often my mages are blowing gems, and hurting actively hurting my prospects.

If both of those are true,

How about... flaming arrows, retreat.

modify as necessary for windguide, boosters or desired level of repetition. Flameing arrows, flaming arrows, retreat.

or communion master flaming arrows, RoR.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

That still won't make them cast flaming arrows, which he apparently needs them to, or the battle is much harder than it should be.

Retreating mages like that is also going to seriously slow his advance.

If the fire elementals are causing problems, they could be removed from the game via a mod. Not ideal, but people don't use summon lesser elemental that much anyway.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I think part of his problem is that the mages aren't casting flaming arrows despite being scripted to cast it. I can't think of any way to *force* them to do so.

Placing them closer will stop them from summoning elementals, at least for awhile. But they'll either blow their gems on other things or start summoning elementals once the enemy has retreated out of their range (when those elementals will do absolutely no good).

It certainly isn't hard to imagine more sensible mage AI. But without direct access to the code none of us can do anything about that except whine.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Are you loading up your F mages with a ton of gems?

It's usually better to equip with just enough to cast flaming arrows once, and keep the remainder on scouts/non-F commanders.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Even though it sounds odd, you could try having less men on your side of the battlefield. As the AI is not casting flaming arrows as at the start of the battle, it is judging you have enough troops to win without needing to expend any gems. And is then only using gems later, after you have lost some troops, as all of a sudden the AI decides you do need to use gems to win, and so burns them on Fire Elementals.

So you can try to convince the AI that your army does need to use gems to win, say by maybe leaving out 10-20% of your troops, as then the AI should be more likely to use gems on round 1 of the battle, and hence will then follow your scripts instead of ignoring them.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Hehe, your post is hilarious romis. I've seen all of those things happen. You do seem to know some of the solutions though, and all the posts here are right, and will help.

Flaming arrows can be notoriously hard to cast correctly though. It seems like the mages just become show-offs when you give them fire gems. "Flaming arrows... bah! Behold... walking fire!" I've played MA Marigon a few times, which is quite dependent on the spell, and I eventually got to a point where I could usually cast if effectively.

You definitely just give the mage only as many gems as he needs for the cast. Hopefully you can use a mage that can cast it without needing to boost his level. An extra gem for level boosting will often make him do his Merlin impersonation instead of just doing the job. Moving him up a bit may help, but most of all, just use it on large armies. Trying to use it on smaller armies will almost always make the mage decide it's not needed. And often times, I find they will eventually cast it, but not where you have it scripted. They'll do a couple other things they think are more important first, then cast it.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Oh, one other thing.
If *all* your archers are moving into fire range they almost never cast it.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I wonder if that's the key. If the effectiveness check for Flaming Arrows is "Archers in range this turn", not just "Archers", that could be a reason people have trouble casting it.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

That's worth testing.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I also think I remember hearing a good while back that mage "line of sight" is important, meaning the actual 'shape' of the battlefield might matter? That if your mage is behind a dip, and can't "see" the enemy, he might not cast? I'd be surprised if the game engine was that sophisticated, but who knows, and that's what I recall hearing, at least.

If true, I guess the moral is, have your Flaming Arrows caster further forward.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

No, line of sight doesn't matter.

Gandalf Parker posted several times about how his archers seemed to fire better when put on the flanks and suggested it was due to LOS, but this is not the case.

LOS is one of those things that we're 99.9% sure isn't in the game. There's always that last element of doubt with dom3 though.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

They are usually placed just outside of archer fire, but still generally able to hit the enemies front lines on the first turn or at worst, before the script reached the combat spells, if they bothered to follow the script. when the front lines are destroyed and i am chasing down the stubborn archers and commanders in the back, i can see it, but its long before then usually.
i am sure its got something to do with taking into account additional fatigue from drain, and hot/cold scales, the computers evaluation of the two forces, and any number of other variables too numerous for me to figure out.


thats a thought, but the nice thing about tien chi is range 35 composite bowmen, and i like to keep them relatively clost to the front so they can fire archers, or just be a little more accurate. So in my case atleast it shouldnt be the issue.
I should clarify, when my archers charge the 2-3 turns into battle, im either fighting slow moving units(not far away units) or they are already engaged with my infantry. This behavior is done so randomly that i cannot believe it is the AI unwilling to fire into my owns ranks. i've seen them decimate entire divisions of my troops in one battle to kill a single enemy unit, then charge rather than fire on hundreds of advancing militia.

stupid me, i probably should have said Early Age Tien chi, although i don't recall it making much of a difference in their case, atleast in regards to their archers.



here is probably where i should have said EA tien chi, but like an idiot, i didn't.

The fireballs, falling fires, etc that the mages casts after the flaming arrows, can often affect the battle significantly still you have given me something to consider... if i could communion slave the idiot after the flaming arrows, he might not get the falling fires, but whoever he slaved to would be a little more effective and maybe cut my losses...

I appreciate the suggestion, and its one i'm aware of, but to be honest if this is the only work around, i'll play someone other than tien chi(although its not like you can really get away from it).
As much as there is to do, and as few tools as there are to help you do it, i far too often overlook a step as it is. I'm sure you all know what i mean. priests preaching to high dominions, running out of commanders for shuttling reinforcements. forgeting to rehire mercs, if you use them. forgeting to reorganize troops after a battle or after you have split a large army, or just after you have employed a specific tactic. trying to remember all the places to recruit from. revieiwing site searches. reissueing mage commands because 'monthly' is applied before new conquests and gem income is handled. forging items, etc, etc, etc.

as it is you need a few sheets of paper to track whats happening in game. its enough. i am not going to start micromanaging gem supplies on individual commanders. its why i rarely play blood nations, and never for very long.

I appreciate the suggestion, but its not a solution as far as i am concerned. And please forgive any attitude that leeched into my post, its merely misdirected frustration, and i apologize for it.

i'm glad you are amused, i was worried i sounded like a jerk.

Its a thought, but its a little tough to manage. i find provincial defense and troop reports to be misleading and inaccurate. i've attacked an undefended province just as reinforcements arrived from seemingly out of thin air.
unless these are stealthy units who can sneak instead of attack, you've still momentum problems...


i appreciate all the feed back, look forward to more, definitely some things to consider here and try to work with. But alas, i think my tolerance for frustration and micromanagement is just a little too low for certain nations in this game.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

With MA Marignon I had the same trouble in a MP game ages ago (I think it was one of my first Dom3 MP's, right after this was released). I then started to place the archers way back, so they would for *sure* not be able to fire on first turn, not necessarily even on second. The mage on Flaming Arrows duty was scripted with (if I remember correctly) Phoenix Power, Power of the Spheres, Flaming arrows, cast spells.

Dunno if it was just coincidence, but that worked like a charm from battle to battle. Until I was hit by a ton of storm-demons or something (cant remember what it was anymore), but that is another story... Anyway, seemed to me the AI saw the archers to be in range, the mage had nice buffs so would take very low fatigue hit for casting flamin arrows, and thus the script went through. It also worked wonders with the knights having hold&attack, being below the archers in the command screen, so the flaming death hit first, and then the lances of the blessed knights ripped the rest apart. Anyway, like I said, I was soundly beaten in that game, but it sure was awesome as long as it lasted.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Some years ago, i asked here about a similar problem.
I had a Blood Fountain pretender that was maxed out in Blood magic. Because it was an endgame, and i wanted to test my best and well equipped commanders against some horrors, i casted the global enchantment "Astral Corruption".

To test my pretender itself, i launched an astral spell with it and the Slave of Unreason found its way to my fountain.
My fountain was scripted with "Cast Spell" to leave it free to chose its own. It casted only one spell, "Infernal Prison" that got rid of the Slave of Unreason.

But powerfull horrors like the Slave of Unreason never stay imprisonned for long. several turns after that, it appeared again in one of the province.
I sent my best commander, with the scripted spell "Infernal Prison" to see if he would do the same as my pretender to the Horror.

In the battle, he never ever casted "Infernal Prison". I didn't understood why, until someone mentionned the range. Infernal Prison has a range of 30 in the manual, and i had placed my commander far in the back, thinking about avoiding anything nasty the Slave of Unreason could launch first, letting my foot troops/canon fodder gets all the fun ;)

So check if you fire mages are not by any chances too far from the target when it is time for them to throw the first spell you scripted them.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Imo, this simulate well the difficult of general that have to deal with lieutenat and other officials.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

While medieval military history is full of commanders who didn't follow orders of the nominal superior commander, the default AI when a spell is out of range is stupidly predictable - cast buff spells. Generally historical commanders who refused to obey orders erred on the risky side rather than the conservative side.

IMO, a mage who is out of range for his scripted spell should have a chance of moving forward so he *might* be in range next round, possibly a very good chance... There's little point in standing around on a battlefield unable to do anything.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

On the other hand, often moving forward is exactly the wrong thing to do. Brings the mage that much closer to the enemy that's closing on him.
Imagine a mage with an army on Hold and attack. He runs up past his troops and gets run down by the enemy's charging cavalry before his men even move.

It's not a trivial AI task.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

If you know your army is scripted like that, you can script the mage more suitably (such as scripting hold, or perhaps casting a specific buff spell instead)

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Hope this doesn't lean off-topic, but I've experienced pains when the SC's don't cast scripted spells.

Lost a recruitable SC who was suppose to cast Summon EarthPower, Blessing, Invunerability, but instead casted Summon EarthPower, Blessing, and Earth Meld..... just because some enemies were nearby. Yes he was all the way in the back of the battlefield.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

It all sounded civil and reasonable to me.

Like others, I've had trouble with disobedience by scripted mages many times. For instance, in one of my present games, I tried to have a few Vanir cast lightning on a single vine-shield-wearing Tuatha that they couldn't beat in any other way. The Tuatha only had 15 hit points, and hadn't bothered to cast Resist Lightning; 1-3 good lightning strikes would have killed him. And lightning is, like, the most basic air attack spell. And it costs no gems. And I'd told several of my mages to cast it, several times each. Instead, though, they produced a stream of illusory wolves and things that the Tuatha easily killed, and the province was lost. I can think of other ways to prepare to beat that particular foe with the resources I had then, but still, it's pretty lame that the obvious solution isn't allowed to work.

But this kind of problem doesn't get in my way very often. I think it's because I've simply learned to work around it. The recognition of these little bits of Dominions lore, and the formation of workarounds for them, comes naturally to me. It's a matter of fun puzzle-solving, sometimes.

Strangely, I've never had trouble with Flaming Arrows. So far, my mental model for the AI's decision-making process in the situation you describe is simpler than most of those so far presented in this thread: I've assumed that if the enemy force is strong, my commander will cast the spell, and not otherwise. The game's idea of what constitutes a "strong" force is difficult to pin down, but so far, my estimation hasn't failed. This isn't to say that this model is correct, while those involving esoteric questions of whether the archers are in range of their targets are incorrect--I'm just saying that that's what's worked for me so far.

More generally, what works for me (so far) is to learn how the AI behaves, and play accordingly. But this is an obvious strategy, and it seems to be what you're already trying to do.

If you do end up having to avoid playing certain nations because of this, well... that's not very bad, is it? There are plenty of nations. You could become an Atlantis specialist, and fight with neither fire, nor archers!

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Yeah, I think I was going to respond to this thread a while back and forgot. If your attempting to cast a spell that uses gems that requires a communion as well as a boost from additional gems, the casting will often fail. This is especially true of mages that originally only have 1 or 2 skill in the path being used.

This would also explain why Fire Elementals get summoned while Flaming Arrows remains uncast as summoning an elemental requires much less magical skill, hence perhaps no boost is needed.

For this reason I suggest you always try to use Pheonix Power over a communion with a F2 mage (additional gem for boost). In the case of a F1 with astral, either communion with 8 slaves or with 2 slaves while using Pheonix Power and an extra gem. Only use 4 mages if your trying to cut out the use of an extra gem.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I've gotten a lot of playtime with this game. Nowadays my mages pretty much do what I tell them to for the first five rounds. I've been able to identify every reason why a spell doesn't cast for me for the past 2 years. Most of the time its an issue of range. In your case the spells should have triggered, but lightning bolts have a limited range and would not have been cast if you didn't place your mages close enough. I doubt it was anything other then that.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Lightning does have a limited range, but it's a long limited range, and the enemy did eventually enter it. This suggests an important question that I've somehow never wondered about: If a commander is ordered to cast a spell in round #x, does that spell get super-high priority to be cast starting on round #x, or only on round #x, or something else? I'd assumed it was the first of those choices--that is, that if you tell a sage to cast Horror Mark on round 1, and his astral skill doesn't get boosted to level 2 (by somebody else's spell) until round three, then he'll still cast Horror Mark on round 3 or very soon thereafter. Or, like, if a mage gets interrupted by a few harpies or something, maybe he'll spend one round killing them, and then the next few rounds continuing his orders as if nothing had happened. My experience suggests that this is how it works--but is it? If so, why didn't my mages cast Lightning after the enemy entered the spell's range? That's what I'd expected them to do.

Similarly: Is it ever possible to successfully order a mage to cast a short-range spell, like Hand of Death or Shock Wave? I've given Shock Wave orders, and it seemed that they succeeded, but maybe the mages were just making their own decision.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

You can see how it calculates by running the combat with debug on.

Near as I can tell, it prioritizes the scripted spell for that slot in the script. If he can cast that round, but can't cast that spell he'll cast something else and move on to the next thing in the script. If he can't cast at all, say he's surrounded by fliers and takes a swing at them instead or an earlier spell knocked him unconscious, when he next can cast he'll pick up he left off in the script.
Which spells you script have no effect on what mages cast after the script runs out.

You can script the short range spells, but it's tricky. You have to get them in range first and then keep them alive long enough. When in combat they're likely to cast those spells anyway, so it's hard to be sure.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Well now I've gotten all interested in this again. I just tried making a Vanadrott summon large air elementals while assassinating various Abysians. When facing an Abysian warlord or Rage Lord, the Van summoned the elementals. When facing an expensive, powerful warlock, he summoned ghost wolves. When facing a warlock wearing lots of magical equipment, he summoned the elementals. When facing a warlock carrying many gems, he summoned the elementals.

So, can I use air elementals as assassins, or not? It's awfully hard to tell....

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

One thing I want to note(though its somewhat offtopic) is that you mentioned how you are somewhat hesitant to split your mages up because of various factors.

in all honesty though, there is almost never any reason to NOT split them. I've been bitten by it more than enough times that I now always split my mages up.

Youll go into a battle with all your amges together...and then they get hit by a fireball and you lost 3 mages to one shot. that really sucks, especially if you are relying heavily on your mages, or have large numbers in the battle. even if the enemy doesn't do this to begin with(due to larger HP stacks in front) if your army routes before your mages do, THEY will be targetted by spells to the exclusion of any routing units, and this can happen anyway. I once went into a battle with about 15 mages, and lost 12 because I forgot to split them up and my army routed, then the enemy mages blew them all to pieces with one or two spells. Enemy archers can also do the same thing.

Regarding being worried about flying enemies, what you do there is put a bunch of infantry(preferably slow) behind your mages on hold-attack or some such(or stick a single commander back there with a bunch of infantry guarding him, and him on hold,hold,hold,hold,hold, stay behind). This way the flying units attack your rear guard, and probably die because most flying units suck.(unless they are a thug/sc, in which case you've got additional problems)

Basically you pretty much never want your mages grouped up for just about any reason(I can't think of one to do it).

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

I freely admit i have a very low tolerance for frustration, and i don't particularly find simulating the independence of commanders to be fun, or cool, just frustrating. Its not an aspect of real life that needs to be rendered in a game, it doesn't add anything of value.
why not also have armies sometimes refuse to march, or march to territories of their own choosing. etc. etc.
ofcourse, i don't believe this was the developers intent anyway.

quote snipped to save space, my apologies, but this looked like my replies were going to get long with the quotes intact.

it may, because of enemy army placement, be the case on occasion, but is not the norm. i have watched as a handful of virtually identical mages in virtually the same place, split themselves between what i've scripted and something else. which would imply either randomness or as i suggested earlier, some complex collection of variables too numerous and subtle for me to track.

snipped

I am trying to figure it out, but failing, which is why i hoped either to see a patch fixing it, or someone with more patience than i, who figured it out, to tell me the solution. but it seems it is not a simple thing. most have repeated either a lack of power in the sphere or a being too far away. Its not that simple. atleast i got to vent.
As stated previously, i have a very low tolerance for frustration. loosing fair and sqaure is one thing(as long as it doesn't happen too often)but otherwise, its just aggrevating. So unlike you i can't appreciate the puzzle solving aspect of figuring out why something doesn't work like its supposed to. its simply not in my nature. i mean some puzzels are certainly entertaining, figuring out how to properly deploy my troops, attack strategies, spell strategies, but trying to figure out why my orders are being ignored. That is not one of those puzzels.

While there are other nations, alot of them hold no interest for me, i've played them once or twice, and i don't like their play style, or their tactics are not natural to me, and certainly in some cases i don't know how to play them right despite reading the strategy guides here. In other cases its the way they have to be played, for instance micromanaging a blood nation.
So i am afraid there are only so many nations i really like to play.

snipped

I play single player if i forgot to mention, and it wasn't obvious. In SP this kind of behavior is actually far more beneficial because of the limitations of the AI's tactics, as well as some obnoxious behavior i have noticed.

in the most recent patch, against caelum, no matter what tactic i employ, the 'attack rear' command they use for their fliers often bypasses all troops i have and basically results in an 'attack commanders' order. or rather, actually worse, an 'attack least defended commander' order. i have been unable to find a reliable counter to this,including your suggestion, and generally accept several mages are going to die when fighting caelum. often dedicating a large portion of my infantry to gaurding my commanders

And good or bad, the tactic for my mages is generally to destroy the enemy infantry and cavalry, i let the arches and the infantry deal with everyone else. as such they are far enough back to generally avoid archers(save saromatia maybe), and definitely enemy mages barring something like pillar of fire and thunderstrike. but within range to devastate the enemy infantry, if not immediately then after casting some scripted buffs to let the enemy close range.

were i playing multiplayer, i would fully agree with you that i was asking for trouble, and i do occasionally split them up when tactics warrent it. But as it stands, the only thing about this tactic that gets me killed are my own people.


I truely appreciate all the replies.

Re: Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages
 

Regarding caelum - Set some troops guarding your commanders. Spread your mages out a bit more and make sure they are generally surrounded by blocks of troops.

Keep some troops at the back so they are picked up by attack rear orders. Dunno, all this stuff seems obvious so you've probably tried it.

I've never seen Caelum do that. They just suicide against my troops every battle when I fight them. They're just about the easiest nation to beat in SP imo.