my mages cast crap spells?

[Manwich]

Even if the battle was too small to cast battlefield spells, the weaker summon spell still costs the same amount of fire gems. My point is shouldn't the casting scale with the cost of the spell instead of the power? If I'm fighting a small battle I'd still rather cast an expensive powerful spell then an expensive weak spell!

[jutetrea]

I'd love to be able to just check/uncheck a spell from a list to make it available to battlefield mages. Don't think we need to go so far as personal rankings, but maybe (ick, even more micro).

I'd also like a toggle per mage in the army setup screen to determine max # of useable gems per combat. Possibly just a set of 5 radio buttons, leave blank for none, click 1 button for max use of 1 gem per combat, 2, 3, etc. Bloody annoying to give 30 gems to a good mage and have them gone in 2 battles.

Have a script command for Self buff, army buff, offensive. For instance, I hate scripting mages as well..but then they waste the first 3 turns and 60 fatigue buffing themselves when they aren't even gonna get scratched.

I'd like it to be set up so it can be like no self buffs, 2 army buffs, then offensive for the rest of the battle using a max of 3 gems. (from an "approved" list maybe).

Is it me or do the AI mages seem to do better at spell selection?

[Sombre]

Those are good ideas and I'd love to see them in the game, but I think it's best to push something very simple to the Devs.

I don't know how hard it would be for them to add a toggle function to researched battlefield spells (I can't think it's that hard, all you have to do is flag the spell as not researched when it's 'off'), but I do know it would /drastically/ lessen the need for scripting, for the less hardcore players.

I'd turn iron will, body ethereal, barkskin, raise skeleton and numerous other spells off in a lot of my games if I could and for a few turns it might be good to turn off stuff like falling fires, thunder strike etc to avoid friendly fire casualties, only to turn them back on when approaching stiffer opposition.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
I don't know how hard it would be for them to add a toggle function to researched battlefield spells (I can't think it's that hard, all you have to do is flag the spell as not researched when it's 'off'), but I do know it would /drastically/ lessen the need for scripting, for the less hardcore players.

Specifically, I think the spell research (F5) screen would be a good place to do this. Perhaps clicking on a researched spell greys it out again. This will prevent it from showing up in your list of ritual spells to cast if it's a ritual/global (makes it easier to hunt for the ones you want) and will prevent it from showing up in the tactical scripting AI list if it's a battlefield spell, as well as prevent it from being cast.

Edit: I can think of a potential complication, actually. Once you turn a spell off, how do you turn it back ON? The game would need to maintain a separate list of spells that are "really" researched, either because the right school level has been researched (Evoc-6) or because map commands started your nation out with that spell. What you'd do is keep the existing code for telling which spells are researched, but also maintain a separate, monotonically-increasing list of "really researched" spells. Every time a spell becomes available you add it to both lists; when someone grays out a spell you remove it from the "researched" list, when they click on an unresearched spell it adds it back into the "researched" list if and only if it's in the "really researched" list. That way the battlefield AI can keep its existing code for checking the "researched list," etc. I'm not sure how changes to the research lists would be encoded in .trn and .h files, though. It might be nontrivial.

-Max

[Sombre]

Yes in terms of multiplayer it's rather more complex because different people will have 'banned' or 'greyed out' different spells. The game would have to keep track of all of them, although it isn't like that would be any more complicated than anything the game currently keeps track of.

This isn't the sort of feature that can just be stuck into the game, unlike new units and spells and alterations to message text. On the other hand, it can't actually be /that/ complicated can it? I mean to the people who made the game from scratch. It's not like we're asking for a major altertion to the GUI or to the way the game works.

Currently the game checks your research level against the level of the spell and says yes you can cast it or no you can't (ignoring other costs for the moment). All spells are simply given a required level, there's no 'I've been researched' flag. But you can restrict spells to nations and via modding (every turn) you can do it on the fly, provided the mod is loaded from the start. That means it's currently entirely possible to alter a spell so it's no longer available to cast (by resticting it to a non existing nation). The complication here is that different people will want different restricted lists and the AI will want nothing restricted at all. But again, that doesn't seem like something too hard for the coder(s) who made Dom3.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
Currently the game checks your research level against the level of the spell and says yes you can cast it or no you can't (ignoring other costs for the moment). All spells are simply given a required level, there's no 'I've been researched' flag. But you can restrict spells to nations and via modding (every turn) you can do it on the fly, provided the mod is loaded from the start.

The way I read it, that means there must be a "I've been researched" flag. That is, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the #startspell map command, which flags a spell as researched at the start of the game. So the tactical AI must be checking an explicit list of researched spells and not just school/level constraints, and that explicit list must be on a player-by-player basis.

Reportedly #startspell is broken at the moment, though.

-Max

[Sombre]

I was thinking #startspell probably just removes the check for level or somehow moves the required level to 0. I suppose that's similar to a 'researched' flag.

But no, I wasn't actually talking about startspell. When I say 'modding' I mean .dm commands, not map modding - if you create a mod and load it up at the start you can alter the requirements of spells whenever you want. But you do this only by changing their required level etc.

Even if startspell works, does it function on a player by player basis? If it does, that would seem to bode well for getting this put in a patch. I really think allowing us to grey out our spell lists would be a serious improvement to magic in the game and, to an extent, reduce micromanagement.

[MaxWilson]

I haven't noticed them being particularly good at spell selection, but it's probable that the strategic AI scripts mages (it has a high tolerance for micromanagement ), which means that if you leave your mages unscripted it will be "better" for the first five rounds.

-Max