Dissapointed

[tinkthank]

quote:
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Originally posted by Pillin:
Top of my head request would be a way to disable available spells for combat. So that if you dont want your mage to cast the panic spell, you disable that one
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THIS WOULD BE GREAT !
I hate watching my mages cast etheral shield or fire shield when all enemy units are retreating off the field.

AI: better usage of spells (e.g. not casting Iron Warrios on *yourself* after casting Invulnerability; not casting Barkskin four times in a row; not casting precision-boosting spells on melee friends, etc. etc.)

- better control over spellcasting (such as dividing spells into offensive, defensive, etc., or even individual ones, and being able to exclude ones you don't want to be cast; or a longer script list, e.g.)to lessen friendly fire and unnecessary protective spell casting

AI problems. I have seen my pretender cast Body Ethereal six consecutive times, despite having a very nice choice of other spells that it could have cast instead.

It is ridiculous, I have a pretender that basically goes into battle alone and takes out 250+ armies without breaking a sweat. The only time she has died has been to her casting magma eruption at such a close range she hurts herself, this drops her mistform, which instead of casting again, she casts magma eruption again to kill 3 or 4 useless enemy militia standing next to her. This process basically means she commits suicide when she could instead be casting much better spells.

It actually turned me off the game when this happened and I have been enjoying it immensely.

[ January 20, 2004, 15:43: Message edited by: Strages Sanctus ]

Protection does not stack; once Mass Protection has been cast, Barkskin / Protection are pointless unless additional units have been gained by summons, charm / enslavement etc.
I'd be happy if the spell AI would refrain from committing pointless fraticides, such as casting Breath of Winter when surrounded by hordes of non-cold-immune friendlies, or casting Protection on friendlies surrounded by heat-aura folks.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

These are just a few of what some others had written, so I cant be the first one.

I remember "Barksking" "Strength of Gaia" "Blessing" and a few other being cast over and over on myself despite lots of other nice choices.

And my commanders dissapeared after a battle -- watched the battle, waiting for them to die, but no, they survived nicely.

[johan osterman]

Blessing and similar spells that do not target just the commanders could very well have been cast on other blessable troops in the vicinity. I am a little sceptical to claims that the AI has cast nonstackable spells that only targets the caster and has no fail chance repeatedly on itself. I attribute the cases reported to having troops nearby that can be affected by spells, so for example body ethreal has an area of 1 and so can be cast on nearby bodyguards, so that reported incident is most likely not a case of casting a nonstackable spell repeatedly on itself. As for not casting offensive spells on fleeing troops this is most likely stems from not being in range or that the AI calculates that the chance of hitting friendliess is to high. Most people otherwise seems to believe that the AI's friendly fire avoidance is not strict enough. The spellcasting AI will never be human smart, and if it were magic would become even more dominating in the game.

Your other complaint is probably caused by the battle replay bug. Unfortunately sometimes the battle replays does not match the battle. This might happen more if you participate in an MP game where the game is hosted on another platform. This bug has not been localised.

Edit: Also in the 2.07 patch the spell AI will drop the estimated worth of some protective enchanments. As it stands it will also value protective enchanments less and less as turns go by.

[ January 27, 2004, 13:16: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[IKerensky]

I am sure many people have posted this suggestion but...

Why not add a spellbook management for the mages , something simple like:

Switching on/off spell he could cast.

Some other spell order can be usefull:

Order him to cast 1 spell continiously. ( so we can give him this as the 5th order ).


This is very bad when you lose undead spellcaster because thet doesnt cast raise undead but go to spell protection or decay

Anyway I would greatly like the possibility to "tweak" the mage spellbook so we can have him serving in the purpose we want without having to hold his hand too much.

[sachmo]

On the other side of the coin, I'll bet there are some who would complain if the spellcasters did not case protection spells at the start of the battle. Maybe a defensive or offensive switch?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by IKerensky:
Why not add a spellbook management for the mages , something simple like:

Switching on/off spell he could cast.

I just had a funny experience. I had 3 Serpent Priests stacked on the same tile in a rear corner, and one of them (my prophet) decided to cast Berserkers on the group instead of the Fanaticism he was scripted for. The 3 quickened SPs outran their bodyguards (I had mistakenly deployed those in the opposite corner), and gave chase to a few flying militia until they reached the opposite rear area. They were mopped up there by more routing enemy troops. Luckily for me the entire enemy army was routed before my Last priest died, as my army was now leaderless. These 3 priests were my only casualties BTW.

[diamondspider]

I love the idea of a "don't cast" list.

Much easier than fussing with the AI which tends to be very time consuming (in the little bit that I've done).

The spell queue is nice and another option would just be to expand it to 10 spells although that would be more clicking in some cases when there are a few spells I just don't want casted.

A bit deeper on this topic, I actually REALLY like not managing the tactics of my troops. In Total War you have to manage your troops and while it is very fun sometimes, it can also get really tedious. You can let the AI do it, but you get such better results doing it by hand that you really have to unless you have a 10 to 1 advantage.

The downside to how Dominions does it though is, indeed, that when the AI does something absurd it can be very frustrating.

[ January 27, 2004, 14:51: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
I am a little sceptical to claims that the AI has cast nonstackable spells that only targets the caster and has no fail chance repeatedly on itself. I attribute the cases reported to having troops nearby that can be affected by spells, so for example body ethreal has an area of 1 and so can be cast on nearby bodyguards, so that reported incident is most likely not a case of casting a nonstackable spell repeatedly on itself.

Well I was just playing the demo -- try it out and see if I am wrong. I don't think so.
Anyhow, I am not the first person to "complain" about this. Other people say it about "barkskin". In any case, even if there was a chance that some neighboring troop could get a bit of that "body etheral" area effect 1, that is IMHO not a good choice for the AI in most of the situations I saw.

Are you happy with it? Would you like it to stay as it is in the full Version? If you were on the programming team would you think my "complaint" was uncalled for?