[Soapyfrog]

Well we all know the root cause of the problem, and that is overly simplistic AI.

A Mage should be able to make some basic checks to his situation... if there are nothing but mages on one side of a battle, they should not be buffing themselves repeatedly into unconciousness while the enemy waltzes up and skewers them. Mages should know when they need to be casting attack spells rather than buffs. Lastly, the AI should be aware of fatigu state, and not try to cast spells that will knock itself out.

Assuming this is too difficult a problem to fix, then there are some simple patches that can be done to minimize the impact af the AI, and these have already been mentioned in this thread (and I am sure elsewhere):

1) extend the script... I am not talking about unlimited scripts, but just to 10, which ought to cover some of the longer battles in dom2.

2) "cast offensive" and "cast defensive" in addition to the "cast spells" option. This ought to do the trick for the most part, and would not rquire extending the script.

3) Change "cast spells" to alternate between offence and defence. Once the script runs out, the mage should alternate between attack spells and buffs instead of just picking one spell it likes and going crazy with it.

All these I think would be good solutions, and hopefully not too difficult to work in.

For sure the current situation of mages buffing themselves to unconsciousness and then getting slaughtered is not what the designers had in mind!