MA Ulm - you called me a forge what?

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by BesucherXia

They even perfered a melee attack with the enemy, which made that battle simply a total slaughter.

What's wrong with them?

Do you mean that they actually moved *into* melee range to engage the SC? That would be weird. If the SC just showed up next to them, though, you should be aware that a caster in melee combat has only a 50% chance to be able to cast a spell, otherwise he will engage in melee.

-Max

[BesucherXia]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Do you mean that they actually moved *into* melee range to engage the SC?
-Max

Indeed. You can check my save file in last post. The mages pretended to have been given an order "Stay behind troops". After the minions were dead, they came into melee, only to prove that they are no better than a heavy infantry.

Hmmm... This is really annoying. Hope the reason behind it could be tracked.

[archaeolept]

yeah, it looked like they were on "stay behind troops" to me, as they moved up a bit and then did nothing, after their original spell. is the previous turn available so that the orders can be checked?

edit: yah, that was a strange bug - I added a bunch of principe to the battle w/ shift-u, and the smiths spammed magma erruption, and a few other things probably dependent upon scripting and range.

further edit: yeah, the smiths just refuse to target the Mother of Tuathas. The prophet will target her w/ smites, but the smiths won't cast jack **** on her. She's not counted as a valid target for them, very weird. - ok one time one sent a cast of flying shards at her, after all the principe were gone.

[BesucherXia]

Sorry, the previous turn are not available... That was a small Blitz MP game and no extra files have been saved.

Besides, some mages did cast Magma eruption / Iron blizzard upon the enemy, means they were not "staying behind troops" but waiting?

[archaeolept]

adding extra units to the battle shows that the smiths were likely set to cast magma erruption. why the Mother was not considered a valid target, I have no idea. It certainly seems to be a bug.

as further insult, half the time the normal ulmish troops manage to take her down anyways - bane of heresy dispells the mistform

[MaxWilson]

I wonder if it's because they don't calculate that they're going to hit a lone target with Magma Eruption, and don't have any spells researched that would be better for a single target. That doesn't sound very plausible, though, since I'm pretty sure I *have* seen mages try to target individual cavalrymen with Magma Eruption. Maybe storm was in effect or some other precision-killing effect? I would check it out but I'm not at my game computer at the moment.

The only way to know for sure what's going on is to run the battle replay with the debug logger running.

-Max

[archaeolept]

they cast magma bolts, flying shards, and fire and iron darts as well - those could certainly be used.

edit: ok, i tried another run through, where i delayed the tuatha from showing up at the ulmish line for a few rounds, and the smiths happily targetted her for one round of spells, and then stopped

perhaps a calculation is being done that they will cause more harm to their own troops w/ thier spells - though the AI seems happy enough usually to kill its own ;p

yeah, when she's not surrounded, they seem happy to target her

[MaxWilson]

Aha. Yes, the combat AI does do a friendly-fire calculation. Am I correct in thinking that the Mother of Tuathas is a low-HP unit? I think the "value" of an arty spell is primarily determined by how much HP damage you do and not so much who you do it to--if she is surrounded by Ulmish warriors most of the HP will be done to Ulm (especially because most of the time it will ONLY hit Ulmish warriors because of Prec).

I'm guessing that if you check the debug log it will have a bunch of lines that say "Friendly Fire" and decline to cast Magma Eruption. It's kind of perplexing that they would run all the way up to melee, though. Note also that the friendly fire calculation is a little bit weird anyway, because at close range you're supposed to be 100% precise according to the manual (under Prec/2 distance?) and yet Agarthan Stone Throwers and such will often engage in melee instead of throwing boulders, presumably because of friendly fire issues. I don't fully understand it.

-Max

[archaeolept]

she's high HP - over 200. But friendly fire is the only thing that makes sense in this case - if BesucherXia had alt 2 researched, they would have spammed combustion - and probably would have spammed earth grip w/ alt 1. But their only spells are fairly imprecise collateral damage spells like magma erruption and flying shards.

let this be a lesson to research alt 1 before conj 6 :judge:

[BesucherXia]

I have made some further SP tests. The friendly-fire calculation should be to blame.

First case, Smiths with only 10 units: They cast the spell like crazy, drove the enemy away.
Second, Smiths plus 80 extra units: They refused to cast any spells again after the enemy was surrounded.

Now I see the AI will only consider how much damage an art spell will bring to the both sides, but never understand the importance of those damage.
Besides, the AI are not likely to change their mind once they thought they should avoid hurting friendly units, even after all friend units have already gone...

A good lesson for me.