Losing Commanders in a rout

[Darryl]

Originally posted by PvK:
Was he in an aura that causes fatigue or damage to him?

As I've mentioned before, I lost my wonderful mummified death priest by trying to guard him with Devils. Heat plus dry ancient bandages and imbalming fluid is a bad combination.

PvK

Nothing he shouldn't have been able to handle normally. He had a snake ring on, so the poison from the tarrasque wasn't affecting him (did that one before though). Although I do remember screaming at the screen when the Sea King casted "Breath of Winter". Seeing no enemies near I didn't understand that one (the Sea king was right next to the mage that died). Hmmmm....maybe that was it? The mage definitely wasn't cold resistant.....oh you've gotta be KIDDING?!?! (I just read the spell description) Again I say there were no enemies past the halfway point of the screen, with the Sea King and mage on the left side of the screen, and my troops routing the enemy on the right side (the rout message came a few seconds after the mage "vanished") Don't tell me the spell casting AI killed my mage with no enemies close enough?!?

Ok, I just did a search on "Breath of Winter". That was probably it. If so, it's pretty idiotic. I know people say more control is unbalancing but man! I went to all the trouble to protect my mage from the tarrasque poison only to find I should have protected him against ANYTHING my mages can cast! Beautiful. I thought water magic kind of lagged behind the others. Now I'll never use a water mage again unless ALL of my units are immune to cold.

By the way, anyone know how much damage that spell does? The mage had 10 HP and Prot 16 right before he vanished.

[ March 09, 2004, 00:03: Message edited by: Darryl ]

[PvK]

Chalk up another dead mage to friendly Breath of Winter.

I tend to think the AI should be made smart enough to avoid deadly auras areas.

PvK

[Psitticine]

I agree. Aura spells have their place, but that place should be comfortably away from friendly troops.

[Darryl]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
I agree. Aura spells have their place, but that place should be comfortably away from friendly troops.

To be honest I didn't understand 90% of the spells the AI cast in this battle. I had about 6 tarrasques and 4 abominations along with an Ether Lord and 14 "Ether troops" or whatever they're called. My mages were basically there to ensure a stray arrow didn't rout the army. The AI KEPT casting spells which basically did nothing since no enemies was CLOSE to the left side of the screen. It seems to just cast some spells with no regard to how effective it would be against the enemy. I mean it wasn't like they were being attacted when Breath of Winter" was cast.

[johan osterman]

In general it is allways a good idea to spread out mages, both for outflanking missile and aura spell reasons.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Darryl:
To be honest I didn't understand 90% of the spells the AI cast in this battle. I had about 6 tarrasques and 4 abominations along with an Ether Lord and 14 "Ether troops" or whatever they're called. My mages were basically there to ensure a stray arrow didn't rout the army. The AI KEPT casting spells which basically did nothing since no enemies was CLOSE to the left side of the screen. It seems to just cast some spells with no regard to how effective it would be against the enemy. I mean it wasn't like they were being attacted when Breath of Winter" was cast.

The AI cast breath of winter precisely because there were no enemies close by, had there been enemies within range the AI probably would have used a ranged attack spell. Now, most likely, it didn't find any applicable ranged spells and therefore choose a passive/defensive spell. The AI is not clever enough to make a prediction if there will be troops nearby later in the game, and breath of winter certainly can be useful in many circumstances even if no enemies currently are present.

The AI does make an evaluation of which spell it considers most appropriate to a situation, obviously though it will never get as good as a human to discern when a spell is best though.

[ March 09, 2004, 01:09: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Darryl]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
In general it is allways a good idea to spread out mages, both for outflanking missile and aura spell reasons.

I actually had 8 commanders in that battle. The one who died just happened to be the closest to the genius water mage.