[Daynarr]

Mages will make good choices in spells (although you can tell them what to cast) and targets as well. For example, my pretender from before (level 9 fire) wasn’t shooting fire darts at enemy who were engaged in close combat with my troops, but at enemy that was behind them, or if there was no such enemy he would use more accurate spells, like incinerate to avoid hitting his own troops. All in all i think I saw him make only 1 friendly kill so far while he killed about 500 enemies total.

Oh yeah, it's true AI will ignore commands that will be useless in battle (like casting arrow fend if there is no enemy ranged troops on the field and he will also restrain himself from using gems if the battle is easy to win.