Mass flight bug - wrong script processing

[NTJedi]

Baalz said:
Sometimes though, it seems like the AI's thought process goes like this:
This battle is easy, no need to cast mass flight, I'll save the gems
Hmmmm, no script, let me see what I should cast...
Wow, I've got some gems, I'll cast arrow fend!

This is one of the more frustrating things in dominions IMO.

These are two of my most annoying AI battlefield scenarios:

1) Front Mage Guard says, "Mage Leader we're winning and the troops of the enemy are now on the run."
Mage Leader says, "Let's see I'm done with my script orders... the enemy is retreating so I'll use my last earth gems and summon earth elementals!"
Front Mage Guard says, "Why waste those earth gems on elementals which won't even be able to fight???"
Mage Leader says, "Because using lots of gems gets me high."

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2) Main Commander says, "Our troops are starting to fall... what shall we do Mage Leader?"
Mage Leader says, "Yikes you're right... I'm casting astral shield on myself and some other self help spells."
Main Commander responds, "This won't help our troops and it will make you fall asleep plus astral shield has almost no value for someone with low hitpoints such as yourself."
Mage Leader says, "It's all about me."

[OmikronWarrior]

I once gave a Grand Master (I think thats the MA Marignon unit) some fire gems to cast flamming arrows. After running out of script and while the opponent had routed, he used some remaining gems to summon a fire elemental, whose heat aura managed to kill the Grand Master.

As for the fatigue, I thought it was always capped at 199 no matter how much the calculated fatigue would be?

[ano]

Yes it is capped, but that is not an issue. Casting Mass Flight would cause 200 fatigue while casting Arrow Fend caused much less so AI decided to override the script.

As for your example with Grand Master, it has nothing to do with battle mechanics - just an unlucky situation) No bug there.

[cleveland]

Chief Bodyguard: “Well done, Nature Mage! Your last 5 spell choices were both clever and tactically relevant!”
Nature Mage: “Thank you, Loyal Bodyguard. But rational thought bores me…Touch of Madness!”
Bodyguards & nearby archers, in unison: “CHARGE!”
Nature Mage: “CHAR…”

[Saulot]

NTJedi said:
Mage Leader says, "It's all about me."

Internet law demands I post this.

[Bananadine]

Would it have also helped to have given your ape four gems--2 for the spell cost, 1 for the level gain, and 1 more for fatigue reduction? That seems much more convenient than having to spend multiple turns forging an item and getting the mage to a lab to equip it, just so he will feel comfortable about casting one spell that he could have cast anyway if he weren't so worried about losing consciousness. And presumably it would work with Storm Power too.

I agree though, it's lame that such an obviously good spell choice would be overriden by a commander who should know better. The spells in this game are so varied and quirky, it seems very natural that big, special-effects like universal flight should get their own special priority determination methods (and maybe they do). For instance if Mass Flight was always given a priority boost when a large enemy army could be seen beyond a wall, then maybe that would overcome the excessive fatigue penalty. Or maybe the excessive fatigue penalty should be reduced when the friendly army is very large (thus meaning the tired-out mage won't be lying unconscious on a battlefield all by himself). And maybe it is, how would I know?

There are so many details that could go into their spell-scoring system--how interesting that code may be!

[ano]

I could not give four gems because Raksha is level 3 air mage and thus can use only 3 gems per cast. So the only option is giving a booster item (Flight has obviously no sense during storm). This means (as I mentioned above) that this spell seems to be uncastable at all for a A3 mage without boosters once Arrow Fend is researched.
As for the battle mechanics, I just think that scripted spells should never be overridden because of "excessive fatigue". They still should be overridden if the spell cannot be cast or if the opponent army is *too weak* (I think, this is a separate discussion topic) but NOT in the case when everything is ok but the non-scripted spell which AI likes very much (Arrow fend in my case with 220322 score) is cast instead of scripted one just because it causes less fatigue. It makes no sense at all in my opinion.

[Bananadine]

ano said:
I could not give four gems because Raksha is level 3 air mage and thus can use only 3 gems per cast.

Ah yes, thanks, I forgot that rule. A good thing to remember!

About the problem with the algorithm etc.: You keep saying scripted spells should never be ignored in this way, as if that rule should be patched onto the existing system on top of everything else. But it seems like they've already tried to work the rule into the spell priority system by giving some huge point bonus to scripted spells. So like others are saying, it might make more sense to say that the weird thing is the high Arrow Fend score.

However, due to the complexity of the spell system, this is surely not a problem that will respond well to addition of big new rules--it's a delicate, fussy tuning problem. There's probably no simple solution anybody's going to come up just by thinking about it; they've got to have access to the code and be able to twiddle with it until it seems to work in all reasonable situations. I'm a programmer, so my fantasy scenario would be to have a server someplace that runs a large number of test battles every time a developer tweaks the spell AI, and makes sure the mages in these battles all still make reasonable decisions. And then every time a thread like this comes up, they'd add another few test battles and then make little changes to the AI until all the tests pass again.

[kasnavada]

An solution I've seen around for scripting is creating a player-defined spellbook for each caster so he can only cast a limited portion of list of spells you have researched, and doesn't use unwanted spells randomly.

[Bananadine]

kasnavada said:
An solution I've seen around for scripting is creating a player-defined spellbook for each caster so he can only cast a limited portion of list of spells you have researched, and doesn't use unwanted spells randomly.

How is this done?