Some combat spells are never used?

[Ironhawk]

I dont have a script but I have seen Flame Eruption scripted against me. My enemy put some fire mages at the front of his army and placed them just right so that they blew away my whole front line just as they were about to slaughter them. That'll teach me to use the same formation twice!

Also, I have occassionally scripted close range spells during siege defenses. Its one of the only times you know with some degree of assurance that you can put a mage on the front line and he wont be killed immediately. The only problem is that there is a decent chance he will hit your own troops guarding the gate. Orb Lightning works like a charm in that situation tho!

[Dedas]

I always speed up my early expansion when playing Agartha using the Risen Oracle pretender (and sometimes also regular oracles) scripting the low level spell (alteration 1) "fists of iron". With high strength and high earth magic you can obliterate loads of enemies in one sweep. Can be very useful for taking out those pesky independent heavy cavalry units for instance. Though you have to take up the initial charge with some chaff first.

A rule of thumb when scripting for close combat is to learn how battlefield movement works. Great help here is the combat grid (activated by pressing "g") and the manual. Another thing is to use scouts to observe your enemies scripting (especially human) in combat. Some players never change their scripts and that is something you can use against them. It is a gamble of course, but then again, so is everything in this game.

[ExitJudas]

so Q's: if both sides start furthest forward. how many grids will be between the fronts? is it 2 AP per move? meaning Light infantry with 10 ap move 5 grids? does attacker move first? how many AP for casting a spell?

[Sensori]

ExitJudas said:
does attacker move first? how many AP for casting a spell?

Not sure about the rest, but here's an answer to two! Defender moves first and casting a spell ends the mage's "turn" even if he had full APs.