View Single Post
  #9  
Old April 16th, 2007, 05:12 AM

MaxWilson MaxWilson is offline
Major General
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,497
Thanks: 165
Thanked 105 Times in 73 Posts
MaxWilson is on a distinguished road
Default Re: my mages cast crap spells?

Sometimes I don't understand the tactical AI's choices at all. For instance, I was attacking Solaris' indy province of Knights of the Chalice + Flagellants with a couple of Sauromancers and Shamans and some chaff. The Sauromancers were scripted to cast <Communion Master, Storm of Thorns, SoT, SoT, SoT>. Come battle time, the knights charge my lines, my mages cast Communion Master and then, when the knights are seven squares away, cast Storm of Thorns as scripted... at the flagellants 18 squares away! I was relying on SoT for its stopping power, and it's not like there was any danger of friendly fire. Totally baffling to me. It turned out all right, and in fact on the fourth round of battle my mages took some time out from shelling flagellants to tie up some knights, but there are times when I don't understand my mages at all. I'd have them executed for incompetence but there's no disband command...

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, I bet the AI was optimizing for damage output. Since Knights have high Prot, they hardly take any *damage* from the vines, so the flagellants look like a better target. I suppose next time I expect a situation like this I should script Tangle Vines instead even though it has a much smaller AoE.

-Max
__________________
Bauchelain - "Qwik Ben iz uzin wallhax! HAX!"
Quick Ben - "lol pwned"

["Memories of Ice", by Steven Erikson. Retranslated into l33t.]
Reply With Quote