[Psitticine]

I've made the same mistake with trying to cast animation spells that require bodies when there just aren't any bodies yet. It's easy to do!

The AI will avoid spells that cost gems or dangerous amounts of fatigue if it doesn't see a reason, but it isn't unreasonable about. It only gets really balky if you have set it to do something that simply won't help. A good example would be in the game I'm currently playing a turn or two a day in. (What is this 'free time' thing I hear so much about?) I had my Carrion Lord set to cast a spell that starts Manikin to regenerating. Alas, all his Manikin were dead (well, dead again) so he had nobody to "boost". He aborted the spell and did something a little less pointless instead.

A note on the graphical corruption: Alt-enter cleans it up, and you can alt-enter back to fullscreen instantly afterwords, obviously, if you so wish. I find that it usually strikes me only when something co-opts the program, like a TSR or something. Alt-entering and back works well, and makes a nice option when you are multi-tasking.