Artificial stupidity

[Arker]

Started a new game with Jotunheim. At least breath of winter doesn't cause friendly-fire deaths with the giants. Still just hilariously stupid though.

Niefel giant prophet. Scripted:

Divine bless
Holy avenger
Fanaticism
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

What's he do?

Divine bless
Holy avenger
BREATH OF WINTER
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

I'm not making this up. Heck, I couldn't make this up. Blows my mind. This guy has that effect already, why would he waste fatigue casting it? *ROFL*

I've gone through the replay over and over, and thought and thought, and the only thing I can come up with is this. He hits the first fanaticism, no one has been hit yet, so there's no morale loss to fix, so he decides to cast another spell instead. That much of it makes sense, I guess. But why he picks a spell that does nothing but increase his fatigue is a mystery. Why his Atlantean predecessor would consistently pick that *same* spell, and proceed to decimate his own mages with it, is similarly a mystery. Playing man last week I had a Jade Sorceress with the same fixation. Whenever she got a chance, she'd fire off that Breath of Winter and then get lonely and start snuggling up with the lizards. This was particularly funny when she chose to do this while fighting Jotun, so not only was there no chance of it ever hitting anyone except her own side, it wouldn't hurt the enemy even if she did get close to them somehow.

The spell-casting AI in this game is seriously whack.

[Ygorl]

You're right about why he didn't cast Fanaticism. In a case like that, the AI picks a spell out of everything he might cast. The AI tends to favor spells that protect the caster, followed by spells that summon dudes, unless there's a nice target available for a direct-damage spell.

It might be true that Niefel Giants have "chill" (which causes fatigue and sometimes chilling of neighbors) but not "Breath of Winter" (which also causes actual damage). I suspect this is the case, actually? Anyway, the AI likes the spell, and isn't aware that it can sometimes hurt your own guys. It's maybe the biggest spellcasting AI frustration in the game.

The way the AI works, by the way, (if I'm remembering right) is that it first looks at the scripted spell - if it would have no effect, or if the script is such that the caster's spell is not specified, it practice-casts a bunch of spells (several times each?) and picks the one that has the best effect to actually cast. Not sure how "best" is defined.

[shovah]

I had the same problem with atlantis, the answer is either spread your mages out and set them to their spells then just cast (so they never move) or script them all to BoW.

[Graeme Dice]

Arker said:
I'm not making this up. Heck, I couldn't make this up. Blows my mind. This guy has that effect already, why would he waste fatigue casting it?

No, he doesn't have breath of winter by default. He has a chill aura that causes fatigue and can freeze opponents. Breath of winter is a completely separate effect.