[st.patrik]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
When the spellcasting AI did not override gem use in dom 1 there was an awful lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over that, since scout attacks could deplete thr gems of spellcasters before a real battle toock place. I think most people that have played dom 1 and can compare the two much prefer the current system. As to what should be considered to insignificant to waste gems on, the chance that a formula will please everyone and be workable for the AI is rather slim. So while it might perhaps be changed in some small way, it will most likely remain pretty much the same.

I think Dom II is a great improvement over Dom I in this Category - sometimes my mages actually have gems left over after a battle for the next one. This is way better than them spending all their gems on a scout attack and then having nothing left when they try to storm the enemy castle right afterward. Trust me.

There are times, though, when I would want them to use the gems and they don't. I think the best solution would be to have a checkbox for each mage so you could switch between 'strict orders' and 'lax orders'. i.e. the latter (lax orders) being the way the AI works now, and the former (strict orders) meaning that the mage must follow your casting instructions to the letter, with the consequences (however negative they may be). That way if you knew you wanted to cast a certain gem-requiring spell no matter what, you could do that - and reap the consequences if you made a bad decision. [obviously you'd need to add an alternate command so that if the mage is scripted to cast something that is out of range it would move forward instead, or something like that.]

however, even without this I'm pretty happy with the AI *most* of the time.