Mass flight bug - wrong script processing

[ano]

I just didn't get it...
I had a huge army storming the castle defended by many mages and some troops and an A3 Rakhsharaja with 3 gems scripted to cast Mass Flight (spell requires A4 and 2 gems). It should have been an easy victory.
But he due to some reason decided to cast Arrow Fend and Storm Warriors and obviously things went in quite another way with much more losses.

Can anyone explain this? Maybe there're some bugs with this spell?

[K]

Check the file.

If there was a Storm going on, then flight wouldn't have worked, so the AI may have decided not to cast it.

Also, the AI prefers a buff for round 1, and it may not consider Mass Flight a buff.

[Baalz]

This can be one of the more frustrating things about the spell casting AI, it sometimes decides to override your "suggestions" regarding what spells to cast. Most of the time this can be a good thing, it keeps you from blowing a bunch of gems if an enemy scout attacks your army, or shooting lighting bolts at a lighting immune guy. Sometimes though, it seems like the AI's thought process goes like this:
This battle is easy, no need to cast mass flight, I'll save the gems
Hmmmm, no script, let me see what I should cast...
Wow, I've got some gems, I'll cast arrow fend!

This is one of the more frustrating things in dominions IMO.

[thejeff]

Rerun the battle with debug on, see what the log says about the casting decision.

Takes a little work to interpret, but can be helpful...

[ano]

I'll check it at home with debug options, probably with all those priorities displayed.
Yes, it's really frustrating, but if AI decided not to cast Mass Flight at this situation, I really can't imagine the situation when it would cast it. Two big armies (about 1300 units) were at the different sides of the walls and it was the prefect situation to cast it, but I've got Arrow Fend instead.
Did you successfully cast it at all?

[ano]

This is what I found there (extracts):

com Aksa(A) cast spell (favspell Mass Flight) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 59
spellscore, Arrow Fend score 220322 (boost 91 scorat 262128)
Eval: Arrow Fend score 179123 (fat 33)
comp_castspell: eval Arrow Fend result 179123
best spell so far Arrow Fend (score179123)
spellscore, Mass Flight score 873 (boost 92 scorat 1023)
Spell punished for excessive fatigue 459 -> 153
Eval: Mass Flight score 153 (fat 100)
comp_castspell: eval Mass Flight result 153
looser spell Mass Flight (score 100153)

SO!
The spell is punished for excessive fatigue! And thus Arrow Fend was definitely a better choice...
I can't call this a bug, this is just a bad algorithm that costed me a half of my army (or even more). Actually, this either has to be changed or anyone planning to script some big battlefield spell will have to think about this algorithm and the fact that AI may find another *not so exhausting* spell instead of the one your whole strategy is based around.
Actually I think that scripted spells should never be be *punished for excessive fatigue*. If someone disagrees, let's discuss this.

[ano]

One more thing...
In this very case I could have given my raksha an air booster but let's imagine the situation where someone is planning to cast something like mast flight (I don't mean exactly this spell as it is useless in the storm) with A2 mage and storm power. He will never be able to do this as the mage will always be *punished for excessive fatigue*.
If it is really so, I think, it's unacceptable.

[thejeff]

ano said:
This is what I found there (extracts):

Actually, read it more closely. Mass Flight is being punished for extra fatigue, but that isn't what's stopping him from casting it. That just drops the score from 459 to 153, which combined with the 100,000 bonus for being scripted puts it at 100,153. That's below the 179,123 for Arrow Fend, so Arrow Fend is cast. It still would have been less if there wasn't the fatigue penalty: 100,459.

The real question is why is Arrow Fend rated so highly?

[Endoperez]

ano said:
This is what I found there (extracts):

The spell is punished for excessive fatigue! And thus Arrow Fend was definitely a better choice...

Actually, Arrow Fend got score of almost 180 000, while Mass Flight's total was 150 and even before fatigue reduction Mass Flight's score was under 1000... So there's something else going on in there. Perhaps Arrow Fend's score increases for every one of your units but Mass Flight's doesn't (i.e. Mass Flight isn't considered a buff, which someone already suggested), or perhaps every enemy archer on the field increases the chance of casting Arrow Fend, or perhaps castle's towers are considered more heavily than they should, but fatigue reduction wasn't relevant in this case.

[ano]

Yes, you're right. Problem is in extra high Arrow Fend score.
My army was about 800-900 units large (this may be the reason) but the only archers enemy had were two dozens of sprites (this doesn't seem to affect the score).
However I still think that scripted spells should never be punished for extra fatigue. And in order to avoid such situations scripted battlefield enchantments should never be overridden at all unless the enemy army is *too weak* and is not worth spending gems on it.
Btw... Does all this mean that my mage could cast nothing but Arrow Fend in this situation? It seems so...