Dissapointed

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by Zen:
The more prevelant and exploitive way of using the AI is against indeps (for early expansion). Their Archers/xbows/missile units are all set to fire closest. Thus you can leave a single unit with a shield in front of a mass line of archers. Most of the time if you have a decent archer brigade, the lone shield bearing lamb will surive due to the spread of arrowfire, while you incure no losses and most indeps break before they get to your line.

Another is that all normal fighting troops are on attack closest (as far as I can tell, I've never had anyone attack a flank that didn't engage them first). So you can exploit it in that fashion with spells, retreating options, etc.

I haven´t really noticed that yet. But if it is so, perhaps the Indies could be added some tactical scripting?

[OG_Gleep]

The spellbook idea, or any sort of implementation that would allow control of what spells are allowed to be cast would be great.

Also just a chime in on what Jonas said earlier. Every forum I visit is full of people that submit bugs which are really just mistakes or misunderstanding on the their part. In almost all cases I am aware of, in order to fix a bug the developer must be able to replicate it.

Just my 2 cents.

[tinkthank]

This game could be so good, and it really had me intruiged for the 2-3 weeks I have had the demo. It is so intricate and clever. But I think two things are keeping me from buying it (well besides the price). What do you think?

First, they put so much effort into developing this amazing magic system (and item system), but when it comes to battles where they are implemented, the automated AI just ruins it. Sure you can say "cast specific spell" up to five times, and although that is not always a good idea (since you dont know exactly what will be going on), it helps -- but then the computer takes over and you get your super duper pretender casting the same ridiculous (non-stacking!) spells on himself over and over until he drops from fatigue instead of doing anything different. It's a shame, because the magic system just looks so good.

And maybe this is different in the full Version, but I have had a number of bizarre bugs where my commanders will just dissapear. I don't mean die, or get discovered, or unable to retreat to a friendly province -- they are just gone without a message.

I dont see any clues about upcoming patches or even indicating that there are things that need addressing on illwinter.com or here -- that is too bad also. Or is the full Version so different?

[PvK]

Overall, the AI is very impressive, considering the huge amount of complexity in the game!

Suggested improvement for blood mages: Don't be so eager to kill all the blood slaves without a good reason. I have a Mictlani Prophet who is scripted to cast Smite five times. If we have blood slaves, though, he kills off all the slaves during the battle casting things which may be helpful, but I'd rather keep the blood slaves, especially when Smite is available for zero cost.

Similarly, conserving gems should be a factor.

I have seen multi-casting self-defense spells, but only rarely. One cause of stupid spellcasting is when the caster doesn't have many choices (low research). I'd suggest the AI should value resting higher than casting ineffective spells.

I think the body count for fire flies and stone shards is extremely low, and mostly friendly casualties rather than enemies. Missile & spell fire should be a bit less dispersed, and of course, the friendly fire risk needs to be weighed about 100 times more important than it currently is - killing your own men should be very very rare, rather than currently very common.

Probably the spellcasting AI should consider desperation - that is, compare the strength of both sides, and whether the spellcaster himself is currently at risk, and above all, whether the spell would risk own casualties, and then decide whether it makes sense to risk own units, or use gems or blood slaves, or even fatigue. (When the enemy is running away, it's probably a really bad time to massacre blood slaves to fling a badly-aimed magma bolt, etc.)

PvK

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
This game could be so good, and it really had me intruiged for the 2-3 weeks I have had the demo. It is so intricate and clever. But I think two things are keeping me from buying it (well besides the price). What do you think?

First, they put so much effort into developing this amazing magic system (and item system), but when it comes to battles where they are implemented, the automated AI just ruins it. Sure you can say "cast specific spell" up to five times, and although that is not always a good idea (since you dont know exactly what will be going on), it helps -- but then the computer takes over and you get your super duper pretender casting the same ridiculous (non-stacking!) spells on himself over and over until he drops from fatigue instead of doing anything different. It's a shame, because the magic system just looks so good.

And maybe this is different in the full Version, but I have had a number of bizarre bugs where my commanders will just dissapear. I don't mean die, or get discovered, or unable to retreat to a friendly province -- they are just gone without a message.

I dont see any clues about upcoming patches or even indicating that there are things that need addressing on illwinter.com or here -- that is too bad also. Or is the full Version so different?

As far as I know you are the first person complaining about the computer casting the same non stackable spell on himself over and over again, so I am a little curious what spell he was casting.

On your second part, under what circmustances did this transpire? Was it commanders dissappearing after a battle? Or when they were home researching?

[Graeme Dice]

One thing I would like to see is that if a blood mage has slaves, and is near 100 fatigue, that they would be more likely to cast reinvigoration. This should be made even more likely if the mage is a sabbath master/slave and the slaves/masters have high fatigue levels. Of course, this might make the spell too useful, but as it stands, the mages seem to ignore it if not scripted, and fatigue themselves casting an extra summon imp instead of imp/reinvig/imp/reinvig, etc.

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by PvK:

Similarly, conserving gems should be a factor.

Agree. The Mages should think twice before they waste my valuable gems.

Originally posted by PvK:

Missile & spell fire should be a bit less dispersed, and of course, the friendly fire risk needs to be weighed about 100 times more important than it currently is - killing your own men should be very very rare, rather than currently very common.

Disagree. Heavy losses due to friendly fire are rare in my games, and in the few cases when they do happen, they are plausible.

[velk]

A cast (no gems) command would be nice also, although the spell list elimination option other people suggested would probably fix that too.

It's a big annoyance for me when I have a weak fire mage with a huge bunch of archers, script him to cast flaming arrows and then a few other spells and during long battles he runs over his script finds he has an inventory full of fire gems and begins gleefully using them all on spells that have little or no impact. Then of course next fight starts, he has none left and the army power is halved immediately.

[Targa]

Well, the concept behind the battles (besides making PbEM games possible) is that you really do have no control over what an army or a commander does while "in the field". Sure, you can tell him ahead of time what you'd like him to do, as well as his troops, but when the chaos ensues, all hell breaks loose and things don't always go as planned. Think of it this way...in a real war, the Commander-in-Chief (U.S. President) doesn't micromanage the commanders and troops on the battlefield.

I do agree with one thing though:

but then the computer takes over and you get your super duper pretender casting the same ridiculous (non-stacking!) spells on himself over and over until he drops from fatigue instead of doing anything different

There's nothing more annoying than fielding a powerful spellcaster with your army, only to see him sit way behind the troops casting things like "flame shield", "air shield", "bark skin", etc... on himself rather than casting offensive spells. I once saw a caster cast "flame shield" on himself throughout the entire battle. This could definitely use some work, IMO.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
... Disagree. Heavy losses due to friendly fire are rare in my games, and in the few cases when they do happen, they are plausible.

Please send me your Version of the EXE, then! At first I thought to offer you money for it, but then I thought it would be more persuasive to threaten you with casting a special Version of Vengeance of the Dead, which summons the ghosts of everyone killed by friendly fire - thousands of them, including many great heroes.

Just kidding. Except I really have lost heroes, very many troops, and have seen too many battles where the archers killed more of their own than of the enemy.

It depends, I guess, on how much attention you pay, which units you use, etc., but I've seen way to many cases of friendly fire (mainly from archers rather than spells, though).

PvK