Which spells the AI will never cast?

Blood Slave · #1 March 4th, 2009, 02:38 PM

What spells will never be picked up by the AI, until they are manually scripted?

Lingchih · #2 March 5th, 2009, 12:39 AM

Mostly, the ones you really want to cast.

K · #3 March 5th, 2009, 01:27 AM

That's a great topic.

Everything is dependent on what you research. This means that to get a smart AI, you often have to NOT research a Path.

For example, let's say you are facing low HP, unarmored or lightly armored stuff; Fire Cloud is awesome for that, and since it last 3 rounds you can kill a lot of chaff with a low expenditure of fatigue.

But, let's say you have Falling Fires. The AI loves Falling Fires and once your script runs out Falling Fires is cast instead of Fire Cloud.

So if you want a fire mage to not cast Falling Fires, you have not research Falling Fires.

On a lighter note, always research an S1 AoE buff like Body Ethereal before you get Blink. Otherwise, your S1 mages will cast Blink and effectively commit suicide.

Blood Slave · #4 March 5th, 2009, 05:08 AM

No, I mean the spells the AI won't cast under any circumstances.
For example, Reinvigoration.

I thought we could get a list of "bugged" spells (never considered useful by AI) for devs to fix.

llamabeast · #5 March 5th, 2009, 06:13 AM

The AI definitely does cast Reinvigoration if you script it to. Well, I don't know if special circumstances are needed, but I've definitely seen it cast.

silhouette · #6 March 5th, 2009, 06:19 PM

Are you asking about the AI controlling the spells selected by your casters during/after the scripts are up, or about he spells used by fully AI nations or the spells used by independants? Not sure if the first 2 are the same (depending on research available, of course), but we know the last one is different.

All we know about independants is that they have a small fixed set of spells available to cast -- this "grimoire" it's referenced in the progress logs from earlier:
"
27th july
* Indep grimoire slightly improved.
"
This forum had a thread on the comment at that time, including a short note from K.O.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...99&postcount=4

Sill

Lingchih · #7 March 6th, 2009, 02:41 AM

I think what he is asking is which spells the your battlefield AI won't use after your scripted commands have run out. And yes, I've never seen a blood mage cast reinvig on his own in the unscripted part of the battle.

As far as other spells that are not used... well, there are a bunch. But I can't begin to list them here. It just takes experience... knowing what the AI will start to cast when your script runs out.

I can say that if you give an elemental summoning mage extra gems, they will just summon like mad. They'll even override your script to summon something like a fire elemental. So pass out your gems wisely.

Agema · #8 March 6th, 2009, 09:19 AM

Summoning can be a big problem, it's not just gem wastage on elementals. I've noticed mages with death often just sit back and spam skeletons and soulless when they could be firing much, much more useful stuff. The summoned skeletons usually just lag behind the battleline and/or get stuck behind your other troops, and contribute little or nothing (except maybe some distraction for enemy mages with anti-undead spells).

thejeff · #9 March 6th, 2009, 10:10 AM

This, of course, depends on the battle. Skeleton spam is quite capable of winning battles and when you're aiming for that you're glad they do it so reliably.

One or two death mages sitting way in the back summoning skeletons when they could be doing something useful is annoying though.

I have noticed that even a couple of undead can make AI priests/mages ignore anything else. One D1 mage spamming Animate can keep priest-mages spamming banishment instead of slaughtering your real troops.