Quote:
ioticus said:
How about a toggle that lets you specify the maximum number of gems a mage will use in any given combat? The AI may decide to use less, but at least this way you can be sure you won't use your full inventory of gems in one battle.
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Everybody seems to want this
But keeping a scout stocked with slaves and gems (and maybe a winebag) works just as well, especially because he's hidden and cannot die in combat. Just transfer the number of gems you want to be usable from the scout to the mage. It seems like a clutzy solution, but actually I prefer it to additional interface complexity.
For me, there are a couple aspects of commander control that cannot be solved without interface changes, which take higher priority.
1) Forcing / disabling spells beyond the script, as there is no way to keep a commander from casting "Breath of Winter" and killing all of your other mages and commanders, or to force him to cast "Lightning / Thunder Strike" instead of useless phantasmal warriors.
A simple "Repeat last spell" option might solve this.
2) Ordering a commander to never retreat, unless he personally has a morale failure. This problem makes Molochs and some other pretenders that auto-summon allies very weak, and exacerbates the supercombattant problem, since SCs cannot be grouped with normal units - so they must be used solo, thus they can't be deployed unless they can take on an entire army alone, forcing people to use a few insane SCs rather than lots of medium SCs, narrowing choices and making the game less interesting. It also weakens thugs - very strong combat commanders that can take out an army, if you have maybe 5 of them. If one gets killed, the rest rout and you lose. So why bother? Just save your gems for a single powerful SC. Also, the slave collar is rendered useless. Has it ever had a function in any version of Dominions?
A "Never Retreat, Never Surrender (R)" toggle per commander, defaulting to "off", would solve this.