Newbie question about orders...
 

Say you have a wizard that can cast a spell, and you put it in the first specific order slot, but the only possible targets are out of range. Does the wizard then ignore it and go to the second order slot, or does he move closer to the enemy until he is in range and then cast the spell?

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Neither. He casts something else.

He'll move to the second slot next round.

He'll only move if there is nothing he can cast. Rare except very early or with priests.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Now I know why my guy was casting something random on the first try, then exactly what I asked on him on the second round.

Thanks!

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Somewhat related follow-up question... are all of the touch spells more geared towards your Pretender than towards your mages? It seems like there are a lot of spells that would be suicide for mages to use... one hit with a sword and there goes the 300 gold you spent.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Some mages are hard to kill. See niefel jarl or fully buffed thugged out yaksha.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

I think the touch spells are more geared towards unplanned self-defense. They might even work once in awhile.

There may be niche situations where you'd want to script them, but none come to mind. Mages acting as thugs will usually do better with buff spells and a weapon. Less fatigue if nothing else.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Touch spells could be effectively used for planned defense if you have access to flight and mages with good HP and stats.

Example: In LA game I played Atlantis, they have cap-only water-death mages with HP above 20 and good stats. At some point Marignon started to raid me with Angels. As my cap-mages had great basic defense skill due to water magic I equipped one with flying boots and a shield, then send him to defend important province with script: attack one turn, cast Hand of Death, cast Hand of Death, cast Hand of Death, etc... Angel didn't have a single chance.

Had I equipped my mage with anti-thug equipment - Angel could have prevented his attacks by his own high defense skill, so my chances of success would have been slim, or I needed to send 3 or so kit-out mages to take him out for sure. But he could not repel Hand of Death in any way.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

I thought you had to make a successful attack for touch spells to work? I've had high def thugs dodge leeching touch at least.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

He dodged it because of luck, not defense skill.

Also mages engaged in close combat may use melee attack instead of casting spell, even if they are scripted to do so.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

No, the unit did not have luck. The description of most touch spells says something vague about "trying to touch" the target but poison touch explicitly says that "a successful attack roll is required". I ran some tests with water blessed Sidhe (def 25) vs Gygjas (att 7), see results below. At first I though that maybe they had missed the target square, or hit the square but missed the target like a missile, but I checked the debug log and it hit a full square without any effect. The debug log doesn't mention any attack rolls though so I'm not sure what determines if the spells hit or miss. I tried blinding all the Gygjas but that didn't seem to affect the hit rate.

Hit Miss Spell
h2 m0 Hand of dust
h5 m0 Hand of death
h4 m7 Leeching touch
h2 m0 Sleep touch
h4 m5 Poison touch

An example of the log when a spell misses:
castspell: cnr24 spl337 (Poison Touch) vis0 x36 y15 spldmg5005 vis 0 xvis 0 blastsqr: unr778 x36 y15 aoe0 dmg15 eff7 spc1082138752 as10039 al9 ustatbox unr819 sel00137450 guiarea

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Kadelake
Interesting tests.
I was wondering if your leeching touch result had to do something with Sidhe's mirror image and ran the same test with W9 blessed tien chi sacreds, defence skill 20. Result: 12 hits, 2 misses.
That's why I always run individual tests when I plan something, game's full of surprises. :)

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

How are you guys doing these tests? A one-off battle simulator sounds awesome!

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

I use this mod for my tests: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ighlight=debug

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

Also you can take a look at my (unfortunately not fully finished yet) utility that automates the process of testing here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45908

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

I've also run into spells whose hit marker seems to be baffling:

Star fire, on paper this looks like a great counter very early at Evo 1 against low hp high def thug such as Sidhe lord. However on testing, having 3 astral mage standing in the front rank casting star fire for 5 turns produced 0 hits on a sidhe lord (using weightless kite shield + frost brand) also standing in the front rank. I notice the star fire hitting the square sidhe is occupying multiple times to no effect. I just assumed that the hit marker for star fire is "magic missile", like nether darts which could be parried by shields (I've put off debug log reading, but you really should pick it up...).

There are other tests that gave rather surprising results, I can only say not to assuming the obvious and test everything beforehand, otherwise you WILL pay for it in MP when you confidently pull out a "counter" (Like I always do) only to look like a suicidal idiot.

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

WingedDog
Interesting :)
I used CBM 1.6 by the way.

I ran a test against agarthans (def 7) Results for leaching touch: 10hits 6misses. They never missed with hand of death (6 hits) and sleep touch (4hits) It looks like some of the touch spells always hits (hand of death) while some (leaching touch and poison touch) obviously miss sometimes. As to what determines if they miss I have no idea; mirror image, shields, the number of size points in a square, attack and defence skill all seem to have no effect.

Interesting sidenote: sleep touch has a penetration penalty of -1.

Finalgenesis
Yes, I was really scared of star fire before I saw the actual results :)
Abyssia used it against me and managed to hit twice, but most times it missed even though the square was hit. I've heard that all singe target, non precision 100, spells can be shield parried. I don't know if they can miss by hitting an empty area of the square. That would be good to test unless the vets already know the answer ;)

Speaking of veterans, if any these mechanics are common knowledge please say so and save us some pointless tests ;)
Sorry for hijacking your thread earwicker, but we found an interesting question :D

Re: Newbie question about orders...
 

So for those mods, you'd basically want to run two-player hotseat, correct? Interesting...