Newbie question about orders...

[earwicker7]

Say you have a wizard that can cast a spell, and you put it in the first specific order slot, but the only possible targets are out of range. Does the wizard then ignore it and go to the second order slot, or does he move closer to the enemy until he is in range and then cast the spell?

[thejeff]

Neither. He casts something else.

He'll move to the second slot next round.

He'll only move if there is nothing he can cast. Rare except very early or with priests.

[earwicker7]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Neither. He casts something else.

He'll move to the second slot next round.

He'll only move if there is nothing he can cast. Rare except very early or with priests.

Now I know why my guy was casting something random on the first try, then exactly what I asked on him on the second round.

Thanks!

[earwicker7]

Somewhat related follow-up question... are all of the touch spells more geared towards your Pretender than towards your mages? It seems like there are a lot of spells that would be suicide for mages to use... one hit with a sword and there goes the 300 gold you spent.

[Debaser8]

Some mages are hard to kill. See niefel jarl or fully buffed thugged out yaksha.

[thejeff]

I think the touch spells are more geared towards unplanned self-defense. They might even work once in awhile.

There may be niche situations where you'd want to script them, but none come to mind. Mages acting as thugs will usually do better with buff spells and a weapon. Less fatigue if nothing else.

[WingedDog]

Touch spells could be effectively used for planned defense if you have access to flight and mages with good HP and stats.

Example: In LA game I played Atlantis, they have cap-only water-death mages with HP above 20 and good stats. At some point Marignon started to raid me with Angels. As my cap-mages had great basic defense skill due to water magic I equipped one with flying boots and a shield, then send him to defend important province with script: attack one turn, cast Hand of Death, cast Hand of Death, cast Hand of Death, etc... Angel didn't have a single chance.

Had I equipped my mage with anti-thug equipment - Angel could have prevented his attacks by his own high defense skill, so my chances of success would have been slim, or I needed to send 3 or so kit-out mages to take him out for sure. But he could not repel Hand of Death in any way.

[Kadelake]

I thought you had to make a successful attack for touch spells to work? I've had high def thugs dodge leeching touch at least.

[WingedDog]

Originally Posted by Kadelake

I thought you had to make a successful attack for touch spells to work? I've had high def thugs dodge leeching touch at least.

He dodged it because of luck, not defense skill.

Also mages engaged in close combat may use melee attack instead of casting spell, even if they are scripted to do so.

[Kadelake]

Originally Posted by WingedDog

He dodged it because of luck, not defense skill.

No, the unit did not have luck. The description of most touch spells says something vague about "trying to touch" the target but poison touch explicitly says that "a successful attack roll is required". I ran some tests with water blessed Sidhe (def 25) vs Gygjas (att 7), see results below. At first I though that maybe they had missed the target square, or hit the square but missed the target like a missile, but I checked the debug log and it hit a full square without any effect. The debug log doesn't mention any attack rolls though so I'm not sure what determines if the spells hit or miss. I tried blinding all the Gygjas but that didn't seem to affect the hit rate.

Hit Miss Spell
h2 m0 Hand of dust
h5 m0 Hand of death
h4 m7 Leeching touch
h2 m0 Sleep touch
h4 m5 Poison touch

An example of the log when a spell misses:
castspell: cnr24 spl337 (Poison Touch) vis0 x36 y15 spldmg5005 vis 0 xvis 0 blastsqr: unr778 x36 y15 aoe0 dmg15 eff7 spc1082138752 as10039 al9 ustatbox unr819 sel00137450 guiarea