Wind ride & Hellbind heart

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
People used to complain when AI didn't abandon scripts and wasted gems in underwhelming forces. Before the script override you could teleport in a single commander before you walked in a separeate army, thus depleting all the gems of the spellcasters before the main force arrive. This was a complaint from dom 1 that was remedied for dom 2.

Does this mean that _no_ lone commander, including SCs - pretenders, ice devils, etc - will be attacked with spells that require gems?

[atul]

Originally posted by HJ:
I have a mage scripted to cast Wind ride on an enemy capitol. I have two Skrattis, one blood 2 and one blood 3, each with 3 blood slaves on patrol in the same province, and one has a Spell focus on him.

What province are you operating from? Your capital? Could it be that PD (if capital and still in original shape, 25 or more) were considered an army big enough backing up your mages not to warrant them casting slave-using spells? If so, would the outcome be different in a province with little or no PD?

[HJ]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
People used to complain when AI didn't abandon scripts and wasted gems in underwhelming forces. Before the script override you could teleport in a single commander before you walked in a separeate army, thus depleting all the gems of the spellcasters before the main force arrive. This was a complaint from dom 1 that was remedied for dom 2.

I understand, but blood is specific in that it (almost) always requires "gems" to cast it. This kind of puts it at a disadvantage, since something like HH is not exactly Army of Lead to be considered a waste of gems. I don't know how plausible it would be to make the AI consider low level blood spells just like any other that don't require gems (something like low path requirement or the ones that only require 1 slave to be cast with respect to caster's level), but it would alleviate the problem in this case.

Yes, it was the capitol, so I guess the 25 PD is considered an overwhelming force. I might try it later with a single Skratti somwhere without any PD, but it might be that a regular commander still won't look too impressive in comparison to him.

Thanks to all for the replies.

Cheers,

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes I usually setup a lab with no defense away from my capital for that tactic. A Garnet Amazon province works well. Whats fun is collecting mutliple prophets from everyone.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by HJ:

quote:

---

Originally posted by johan osterman:
People used to complain when AI didn't abandon scripts and wasted gems in underwhelming forces. Before the script override you could teleport in a single commander before you walked in a separeate army, thus depleting all the gems of the spellcasters before the main force arrive. This was a complaint from dom 1 that was remedied for dom 2.

I understand, but blood is specific in that it (almost) always requires "gems" to cast it. This kind of puts it at a disadvantage, since something like HH is not exactly Army of Lead to be considered a waste of gems. I don't know how plausible it would be to make the AI consider low level blood spells just like any other that don't require gems (something like low path requirement or the ones that only require 1 slave to be cast with respect to caster's level), but it would alleviate the problem in this case.

---

Seems like _something_ like that needs to be done, since there's only about ... one(?) blood spell that doesn't require slaves for casting.

I'm still curious about whether or not _all_ spells that require gems won't be cast, if it's only a commander coming in. If so, then things are (imo) rather screwed, because you can't use your heavy artillery spells against super combatants if they come in alone.

For instance - no casting Storm to keep a VQ or other SC from flying about, which means no casting Summon Storm Power. No casting Wind Guide to help your crossbowmen hit the SC, etc.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
I'm still curious about whether or not _all_ spells that require gems won't be cast, if it's only a commander coming in. If so, then things are (imo) rather screwed, because you can't use your heavy artillery spells against super combatants if they come in alone.

For instance - no casting Storm to keep a VQ or other SC from flying about, which means no casting Summon Storm Power. No casting Wind Guide to help your crossbowmen hit the SC, etc.

I think that most SCs are actually sufficiently heavyweight by themselves to trip the gem usage switch. I've seen gem-usage spells being used against single SCs.

[PvK]

I don't think it's necessarily a problem with the "is this a serious threat?" evaluation, or with blood spells needing to be more liberal with blood (they already seem very eager to kill all their blood slaves, and I don't want that to happen when an enemy sends one silly unit against my army).

The real issue would seem to be that Hellbind Heart should be an exception to the gem use override, because you don't just want to win - you want to capture.

PvK

[Teraswaerto]

A "spell casting AI override on/off" switch in the orders menu would be nice, though I have no idea how much work something like that would entail.

[Cainehill]

Bump.

I'm wondering if this was remedied in 2.13, or if it will be in 2.14? Hellbind Heart (and a very few other spells) the AI shouldn't override just because it's "smarter".

[Huntsman]

Gandalf Parker said:
Yes I usually setup a lab with no defense away from my capital for that tactic. A Garnet Amazon province works well. Whats fun is collecting mutliple prophets from everyone.

What would happen if a mage inside a castle used Wind Ride on an enemy? Would the enemy end up fighting the PD and patrollers or would he be storming the castle?