AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I would like to both share and have others share what they know of AI spell preference for each path and path combinations.

For casters, since you can only script spells for 5 turns and battles often go on longer then that, it would be incredibly helpful to know AI spell preference for each path under the most common circumstances to help plan your formation and force composition.

On a more complex level, the AI preference for mixed path mage would be even better, since most mages have mixed path. For example, I believe D path's skelly spam has a much higher priority then most other AI spells, so a mixed path mage with 2D or more will spam skelly most of the time.

Of course, research level also matters on what AI will choose...

In general, each path seem to have a small list of spells AI will choose from, and these spells seem to have a priority rating (skelly spam has high priority for example), a mage with mixed path will tend to cast the higher priority spell. Actual circumstances are also a factor in what AI choose to cast, ex. if enemies are close, or if they are a horde of undead, or immune, or if you troops are mixed in with enemies ...etc

I'll start with some, please contribute what you know. I'll admit I haven't paid as much attention as I should have to what AI cast under most circumstances, so do correct my patchwork memory if I am wrong. I'll use +, ++, +++ and Pre to denote spell priority, Pre being 1 cast buff usually done before other spells, + denotes how high a priority I have observed (purely casual observation with no hard statistical work!)

pure paths:

Air - Not too versed in this one, I recall shockwave when packs of troops come within range.

Fire - Phoenix Pyre (Pre)?, Not too versed in this one, I do recall if packs of troops come within range flame eruption (or immolation if research not high enough) can be seen sometimes.

Water - Frozen heart (++)?, my memory fails me here.

Earth - Skin buffs (Pre), Blade wind (++), ???. The buffs are most noticeable, any mage with E almost always cast a E skin buff first, only S seem to have as high a buff priority then E. A mage with E and S together can waste a lot of time buffing...

Astral - Buffs (Pre), Paralyze(+++), enslave mind(+++).
Casters with astral tend to buff themselves with body ethereal and the like before moving on to Paralyze or enslave mind.

Death - Skelly spam (+++), disentegrate (++), wither bones (+). Everyone probably see this all the time, AI loves skelly spam, if disentegrate is avaible they will sometimes use this, I've observed rare wither bones if a clump of undead is within range sometimes, wither bones is never cast if you also have undead in the vicinity (due to friendly fire AI consideration). Overall AI spell list for D is quite useful.

Nature - I'll admit I'm not too versed with this one, I roughly remember barkskin prebuff and many castings of protection, vine arrow and vine storm in there somewhere...

Blood - Imps, goddamned imps. AI use this like skelly spam. Not too versed with this one either, but all I remember are the damn imps.

Mixed path priorities:

Keep in mind path level also matters, a 1D mage can't skelly spam and may revert to next highest priority spell which could be another path he has... I'm not sure if a D6S4 or a D4S6 mage have different priority value though, would AI factor in path level (and thus fatigue) in their priority?

-Astral and Death tend to have a higher priority then most spells aside from buffs, specifically skelly spam, paralyze, enslave mind. Astral buffs are among the highest priority buffs alongside Earth.

Astral and Death - Nether darts (++), most commonly seen with 1S1D mages, since they can't skelly spam or cast paralyze.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

This comes up a lot. Thank you for at least considering that there is SOME sort of pattern and not just stupid randoms. :)

Personally, I would like to see someone do some testing on it. I find that the mages have a preference for self buffing but I wonder if they dont have a valid union complaint. Can it be RPG'd as "he didnt give me anything buffy to wear so Im going to buff myself"?

For your project you might want to do some solo games with debug (-dd) turned on. Or ask for the games logs from one of the servers. Especially if its a finished game. Have the server run one more turning with logging on then zip up and send you the logs. (I highly advise asking for only ONE turns logging because they are really REALLY big)

Here is one small bit of one debug log for one round of combat of one battle for one commander named Zrakhnadar.
http://www.dom3minions.com/files/spell_ai.txt

A few of these should at least give you a list of what spells are considered and possibly what kind of weighting is given. If you come up with any specific suggestions to that then please let me know.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I'll pore through it~

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Air mages love spamming ghost wolves / phantasmal soldiers.

In fact, the AI seems to put a lot more weight in general on spells that summon new stuff on your side, as opposed to spells that try to destroy the other guy's stuff. I suppose it makes some sense in absolute terms, since adding one soldier to your army always works 100% while zapping the other guy might miss or fail to pass MR, but it's often silly in practice.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

The evaluation of actual damage spells seems pretty straightforward. We can quibble about whether it's better to do very likely damage to lots of little things or go for the long shot Soul Slay type kill against a high mr target, but it seems like the AI pretty much goes for max hp damage.

The usual complaints are with buffs and summons. Both of which the AI doesn't seem to treat as situation dependent. Often time is wasted casting self-buffs when the caster is well behind the lines anyway. Or summoning weak units or ones to slow to reach the fight. My feeling is that both summons and self-buffs are overweighted in the algorithm. I'm not sure what factors affect the summons calculation, but it's possible that more should be considered. Ideally range to enemy should be a factor, but at least the abilities of the unit, not just hp. This may already be done. The debug log doesn't really show you.
I would also love to see path booster spells considered. I don't think I've ever seen an unscripted Summon Earthpower and that should be a very high priority.

You could RPG it as you suggest, but I haven't noticed any real relationship. Obviously they won't cast buffs they already have, but mages are perfectly happy to Ironskin or Astral Shield if you've given them a luck amulet, for example.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I've seen the EA ulm PD shaman cast summon earthpower before.

I opened up a disassembler and hunted down the spell weighting function because I wanted to see what triggers use of the berserker spells, but it's a maze of crazy cases. The AI definitely isn't random in the least (ok I did say there was no random calls here but I've found a bit of randomization of the scores after their calculation, but it wouldn't cause any sort of trend), but the algorithms used are indeed questionable.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

ah yes now I remember the phantasmal wolves... the damn wolves...

Interesting observation on the summon weighting, I know imps and skelly spams are top of the list, and wolves for air. I'd say in general the priority is Buff->Summon->Nuke. As seen with W or F mage with gems will spam elementals.

It would seem that a water/fire mage with no other path (and no gems!) are the best AI nuker. A mage with more then 1 good buff path (E+S say) are crap once off script since they'll take a long time to buff and by the time they get around to business they're already close to passing out. a mage with summoning path (A,D) will buff up then summon non-stop. These are all generalizations of course... there are exceptions (such as D mage taking a break from skelly spam to drop a wither bones... I think?).

Does that about sum up what others have observed?

hmmm I just tested a lvl 9 all path rainbow mage... he buffed body eth the 1st round, weapon of sharpness 2nd round (he is guarded by 10 troops tarts), quickening on 3rd round, wither bones, falling frost, wither bones, magma eruption. Enemy is 2 block of 30-40 troops, 1 is dust army, the other is shape shifters, it's actually surprisingly good cast choices... I don't recall my actual game mages doing stuff nearly half as good... Though he choose nuke over summon, whereas usually I see summons from AI casting... I wonder how the priority weighting calculation works generally, total damage done certainly seems to be a part of it... food for thought.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Also is it just me or when you script the same spell dont your mages just keep on spamming it (5xsoul slay or enslave mind)?
And if its not in the algorithm probably it should be, something like the last casted damaging spell cast it if possible otherwise cast some other damaging spell and if no1 is in range again, then summon somthing like that would be nice

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

No. Once the script is done, they pay no attention to it. Soul Slay and Enslave mind are both pretty common choices for those that can cast them, but they're just as common if you spent the script buffing or casting other spells.

The L9 mage is probably biased towards the spells that scale with path level. Most of the spells you listed are very effective with high paths, while most summons don't scale as well.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

My only concession to the problem is to avoid doing any research in Alteration for as long as I can. Thats where most of the self-buffs are and those seem to be the ones that the mages go off script for the most.

As far as I can tell I THINK that the computer players spell casters are ruled by the same AI code as our casters which might also be part of the problem.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I suspect they are not, but I haven't actually checked. Or, more accurately that they are ruled exactly the same way ours are. In other words the AI "scripts" them. Easily enough checked in the debug scripts. Have you ever seen "favspell" in the debug log for an AI mage?

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

No research in alteration? Not really something you can do with a lot of nations. You need a lot of these spells. Alteration also has some of the rush stoppers.

Most of the time casting some of the buffs is irritating, but not that big of a problem.

The main problem is when your mage casts ironskin when bombarded with lightning, after you already cast stoneskin.

Or casting stoneskin when you have a chill effect.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Agree, I find an E component on a mage to be the worst when it comes to AI post-script action, as it not only waste turn/fatigue but actively harm you sometimes.

The flip side of the coin is if you know you're fighting a nation with national E mage (or E path thug/SC) you can keep tabs on their research progress and know what to use. For 1E mage expect stone skin -> iron skin later on, 3E mage expect invulnerability later on, all outside the opposing human's control, they will most likely (always?) cast it after their human script runs out. Though lighting and it's BE version isn't easy to come by without a real A nation, and poison will need to be applied via the slow working BE, otherwise poison cloud and dragon barf might not specifically target them... So its good that it isn't super easy to exploit this.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I'm much less worried about mages self-buffing than chain-summoning crap - after all, it might just stop a stray arrow.

Re: death mages taking a break from skellyspam to disintegrate/wither bones, it's possible the AI switches to nukes when the result of that nuke would destroy more HP than a summon would create ? I have no clue, but it's an avenue of research.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Always surprises me when I come out of turn after turn of agonizing over how to convince enough of my mages to JUST. MAKE. SKELETONS. to see people saying defensive spells and weak summoning spells are what they want to avoid. I generally don't mind the defensive spells, myself, because they sometimes help and they tend to run out of targets before long. And I seem to spend most of my time in big, long battles where there's time for that.

Maybe the discrepancy is that I've been playing in a late game setting where everybody is rich and every player is human? I find that in that situation, unscripted offensive spells usually aren't effective. It's too easy to block almost all of them by casting every kind of battlefield-wide defensive spell, and by putting expensive clothes on every important commander. But a wall of skeletons can still hold off or pin down almost anything, as long as the skeletons rise frequently enough. It might not help on offense, but on defense I'd much rather see an ever-changing crowd of skeletons clogging the fortress gate than one failed attack spell after another.

But of course it is a big game and there are many many settings. I think there was a time when I was mad about somebody casting Body Ethereal on all his friends instead of attacking... the other problem with late-game large-map no-CBM play is that it lasts forever and you forget how the other parts of the game go. :)

As iRFNA says, Summon Earthpower is definitely in there, and sometimes it even comes up fairly early. But it can also be easily put off forever in favor of stupid Flying Shards and endless (but potentially non-stupid!) Earth Grips.

I wonder about the others, though. I don't think I've ever seen the water, fire, or air ones used without a script.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Okay well I always have to test this stuff after I start to wonder about it. I just sent an E2 mage into battle against an F2 mage, with nobody else around and with the two at maximal distance from each other. Both sides knew every spell. The earth mage summoned earthpower in the third round, after two defensive spells. The fire mage used two defensive spells, attacked twice with the startlingly long-ranged Pillar of Fire, and then used Phoenix Power, in the fifth round. Good job, extremely-far-apart mages!

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Just tried an A1 mage in a storm, extremely far from his opponent. He summoned storm power immediately!

I also ran an underwater, extreme-corners battle between a W1 mage and a W2 mage. Both summoned water power on the second round.

I guess these spells are pretty popular, as long as there's nothing in their way!

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

I'll stand corrected on the booster spells. And keep an eye out for them.

I suspect you don't see the Air and Water ones unscripted often just because of the circumstances.

Wall of skeletons is great when you're planning on it and have critical mass. When you only have a couple of death mages and they're spamming it instead of casting Dust to Dust on the Banelord...
The other spammable summoning spells are pretty worthless.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Well, what if you got like.. 500 spire horn seraphs spamming phantasmal warrior??

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Then they'd do better spamming something else. Or researching while something more cost-effective killed things.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Small crowds of phantasms can tear up enemies that aren't ready for them. Unarmored, barely-conscious mages, for instance. Of course they very often cannot reach such enemies. :)

I don't think I've ever seen a mage cast Dust to Dust on a powerful undead commander... oh what a lovely spell that could be, if it were used more!

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

The objections fall in two categories:

Air magic: JUST BLAST STUFF ALREADY. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

Death magic: Everybody loves skellyspam to tie up opposing armies or provide targets for enemy blaster mages, but as a general rule we bloody hate seeing ineffectual skellyspam used against thugs and SCs configured for army destruction. It is particularly agonizing to see the AI choose to create a bunch of skeletons instead of blasting the Bane Lord or Tartarian next door with Dust to Dust (for those with good precision) or Wither Bones (for those without)

And, of course, many of us hate any and all AI-chosen summoning spells once we are into the endgame and the AI chooses to summon chaff while Wrathful Skies, Fire Storm, or Acid Rain is active. If we want any chaff at that point, we'll damn well cast Mists of Deception.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

That makes sense. For whatever reason, I don't see it happen. My death mages don't choose skeletons over good attack spells--because they have Disintegrate, which is almost all they're willing to use. And my air mages don't choose phantasms over lightning, because they've already dedicated all their time to Confusion. Since Disintegrate and Confusion do almost nothing in the very late game, I long for weak summoned units, which are at least something. (But Dust to Dust and lightning would also be welcome.)

Of course it's all the same complaint: obviously useless spells instead of obviously good spells.

Re: AI spell list and priority for each path
 

Hence needing to know what AI prefers for different path under various circumstances, or basically a) AI spell list and b) conditions for AI to consider it. Some paths are gonna have a suck spell list (well arguably they all do, just suck at different level).

Ex. With a 2S / 3S / 4S mage assuming you have the research, will be spamming paralyze/soul slay/ enslave after buffing body ethereal and maybe astral shield, knowing this, you can put them where needed (vs SCs without crazy MR, big low MR units...etc) and maybe some cheap pen gear like void eye. However if you want it to stellar enemy elites or SC thugs after 5 turns, don't bother. I assume solar ray is on the spell list but the 3 biggies just overrides it in 99.9% of the situations.

Or if the mage has E and S path, expect it to have a useless (more useless then usual) AI spell list, because it'll buff for 3-4 turns or so and knock itself out or close to it, don't expect these to add much spell power after 5 turns. I think a ES combination favors the 3 astral spam once they get through the buff cycle and when awake, I guess the 3 astral main spam has much easier conditions then all the other earth stuff.

Or that blood has a 99% useless AI spell list, the 1% being when spamming imps are useful (which does happen), I think I've seen non-imp spells from blood though but I don't use it enough to remember. Blood really does take intelligent scripting to work well (more so then others.

Now I have a fair idea of the AI spell list and conditions for Astral, Death, and some of earth and blood, but I know I have holes in earth and blood (I'm sure they have other spells on the AI list with more uncommon conditions) and perhaps some really offbeat ones with astral and Death.

What I'm really lacking are the other paths and when you have combination of paths.

Feel free to share more of what you know on spell list and conditions!