I *hate* unscripted Touch of Madness.

[Taqwus]

An unscripted Touch of Madness can send one's archers, mages, or pretender counter-productively running into melee, and there's no "execute the caster for treason or capital stupidity" option.

For, say, Arco -- where it's useful to have priestesses tagging along with your armies, for the healing and prayers -- is there a good workaround other than scripting every priestess and hoping they take the hint after five non-ToM orders?

[Sombre]

Mod touch of madness to be very high level, like N9D9, thus removing it from the game.

[bananafish]

i agree... or at least have the AI do a better job of making sure there is a squad melee troops close enough to have this cast upon. and not cast it if mages are present w/in the squad.

[TwoBits]

Count me in the "hate" column too. Often I'll try to keep level 2 or above nature mages out of combat just to avoid this problem.

Heck, if it was merely a matter of a pointlessly wasted spell (think Earth mages spamming Legions of Steel), or even of wasted gems (mage thinks, "hmm, I think we need another puny elemental in this already lopsided battle..."), that'd be one thing.

But this spell gets friendly units killed. And sometimes very valuable units!

I think there needs to be a way to disable the AI from casting certain spells. This has often been suggested before though...

[Sandman]

It should just give the beserker ability, without actually making the target beserk.

[PyroStock]

there needs to be a way to disable the AI from casting certain spells

[HoneyBadger]

They should just add a "cast friendlies/cast enemies" option and be done with it. Then you could set a mage to either cast spells at your own troops, or at the enemy troops-no enemies close enough? your mage sits his *** down.

[B0rsuk]

The problem is, Touch of Madness looks good on paper. You'd never cast it on mages or archers, so you never consider it...

Moving the spell to the same category as Breath of Winter (scripts only) would solve it once and for all. No real drawbacks, because the Touch has small range, so it has to be cast at the beginning of the battle anyway. While the infantry is still on Hold&Attack.

Alternatively, it shouldn't be very hard to make it so it's only cast on infantry, flyers or cavalry but NOT on units with missile weapons. But I think this kind of change never happened in a patch before, so I'd be happy enough with BreathOfWintering it.

[Cor]

I am also a hater.

[sum1lost]

It's come in handy in chaff vs. undead chaff battles, but apart from that...

I've lost valuable units to it.