Spell Casting AI

[Archonsod]

Presumably Fat refers to the fatigue incurred for casting, Boost is the bonus gained by gem use, vis looks like LOS or potential targets.
Unfortunately, it's not clear to me how it's coming up with the final scores. It looks like it's automatically discarding spells which you can't cast (either through magic picks or range etc) with those -1 results. It looks like it assigns a point value based on targets hit & damage or effect (for offensive spells) and effect on self for buffs (I would assume the point values are assigned, i.e. slowing the opponent is worth 2 points). Problem is, we can't see the calculation it then uses for the final score (so we don't know how much fatigue and gem use factor into the calculation).
The interesting thing is, it looks like it's thinking about using a gem to cast Summon Earthpower...

[BigJMoney]

Archonsod said:
The interesting thing is, it looks like it's thinking about using a gem to cast Summon Earthpower...

I don't read it that way. I think it's coincidence that they are adjacent to each other. For example, if he had a different favored spell, it would still say (mayusegems1). It might be there is a way to set (mayusegems 0) so that they never use any gems at all.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[Wick]

The "mayusegems 1" at the top probably is 1 = true, 0 = false and since it's true he's checked for gem use for every spell at "boost xx scoreat x". I also think the scoreat 0 means he doesn't actually have any gems.

I still think we are seeing the easy part. How does it set the relative score for Ironskin at 1003, Quicken at 768, Flying Shards 7, and so on?

A different point is that this routine could probably be speeded up a lot by checking the favored spell first and stopping if it works (favored is +100000!) and setting mayusespells to 0 if the commander doesn't have any.

[Endoperez]

Archonsod said:
Presumably Fat refers to the fatigue incurred for casting, Boost is the bonus gained by gem use, vis looks like LOS or potential targets.

Also, Dominions magic system is heavily influenced by Ars Magica role-playing system. In Ars Magica, everyone plays a mage, magus, and there's this beautiful system which allows very liberal use of magic, and beautifully described spells. I'll take Arcs of Fiery Ribbons and Ball of Abysmal Fire over Scorching Ray and Fireball any time of the day. Ars Magica also had rules for how auras of different powers (Fae, Infernal, Dominion of God, and Magic) interact with the world...

Any way, magic "gems" were called Vis in Ars Magica. Further:
Not enough vis for Summon Lesser Earth Elemental

It fits.

[Sindai]

Hehe, looks like the system already works the way I said would be nice in the Dom2 forum. I guess the evaluation functions just aren't as rigorous as they could be.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well once the new release settles in we can always make suggestions. We would probably need to examine other combat samples than just this one.