Frustratingly Stupid Fire Mages

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by thejeff

On the other hand, often moving forward is exactly the wrong thing to do. Brings the mage that much closer to the enemy that's closing on him.
Imagine a mage with an army on Hold and attack. He runs up past his troops and gets run down by the enemy's charging cavalry before his men even move.

It's not a trivial AI task.

If you know your army is scripted like that, you can script the mage more suitably (such as scripting hold, or perhaps casting a specific buff spell instead)

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by romis

...
i just lost a battle, because a mage cast ...

Hope this doesn't lean off-topic, but I've experienced pains when the SC's don't cast scripted spells.

Lost a recruitable SC who was suppose to cast Summon EarthPower, Blessing, Invunerability, but instead casted Summon EarthPower, Blessing, and Earth Meld..... just because some enemies were nearby. Yes he was all the way in the back of the battlefield.

[Bananadine]

i'm glad you are amused, i was worried i sounded like a jerk.

It all sounded civil and reasonable to me.

Like others, I've had trouble with disobedience by scripted mages many times. For instance, in one of my present games, I tried to have a few Vanir cast lightning on a single vine-shield-wearing Tuatha that they couldn't beat in any other way. The Tuatha only had 15 hit points, and hadn't bothered to cast Resist Lightning; 1-3 good lightning strikes would have killed him. And lightning is, like, the most basic air attack spell. And it costs no gems. And I'd told several of my mages to cast it, several times each. Instead, though, they produced a stream of illusory wolves and things that the Tuatha easily killed, and the province was lost. I can think of other ways to prepare to beat that particular foe with the resources I had then, but still, it's pretty lame that the obvious solution isn't allowed to work.

But this kind of problem doesn't get in my way very often. I think it's because I've simply learned to work around it. The recognition of these little bits of Dominions lore, and the formation of workarounds for them, comes naturally to me. It's a matter of fun puzzle-solving, sometimes.

Strangely, I've never had trouble with Flaming Arrows. So far, my mental model for the AI's decision-making process in the situation you describe is simpler than most of those so far presented in this thread: I've assumed that if the enemy force is strong, my commander will cast the spell, and not otherwise. The game's idea of what constitutes a "strong" force is difficult to pin down, but so far, my estimation hasn't failed. This isn't to say that this model is correct, while those involving esoteric questions of whether the archers are in range of their targets are incorrect--I'm just saying that that's what's worked for me so far.

More generally, what works for me (so far) is to learn how the AI behaves, and play accordingly. But this is an obvious strategy, and it seems to be what you're already trying to do.

If you do end up having to avoid playing certain nations because of this, well... that's not very bad, is it? There are plenty of nations. You could become an Atlantis specialist, and fight with neither fire, nor archers!

[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

Like others, I've had trouble with disobedience by scripted mages many times. For instance, in one of my present games, I tried to have a few Vanir cast lightning on a single vine-shield-wearing Tuatha that they couldn't beat in any other way. The Tuatha only had 15 hit points, and hadn't bothered to cast Resist Lightning; 1-3 good lightning strikes would have killed him. And lightning is, like, the most basic air attack spell. And it costs no gems. And I'd told several of my mages to cast it, several times each. Instead, though, they produced a stream of illusory wolves and things that the Tuatha easily killed, and the province was lost. I can think of other ways to prepare to beat that particular foe with the resources I had then, but still, it's pretty lame that the obvious solution isn't allowed to work.

I've gotten a lot of playtime with this game. Nowadays my mages pretty much do what I tell them to for the first five rounds. I've been able to identify every reason why a spell doesn't cast for me for the past 2 years. Most of the time its an issue of range. In your case the spells should have triggered, but lightning bolts have a limited range and would not have been cast if you didn't place your mages close enough. I doubt it was anything other then that.

[AreaOfEffect]

Yeah, I think I was going to respond to this thread a while back and forgot. If your attempting to cast a spell that uses gems that requires a communion as well as a boost from additional gems, the casting will often fail. This is especially true of mages that originally only have 1 or 2 skill in the path being used.

This would also explain why Fire Elementals get summoned while Flaming Arrows remains uncast as summoning an elemental requires much less magical skill, hence perhaps no boost is needed.

For this reason I suggest you always try to use Pheonix Power over a communion with a F2 mage (additional gem for boost). In the case of a F1 with astral, either communion with 8 slaves or with 2 slaves while using Pheonix Power and an extra gem. Only use 4 mages if your trying to cut out the use of an extra gem.

[Bananadine]

Lightning does have a limited range, but it's a long limited range, and the enemy did eventually enter it. This suggests an important question that I've somehow never wondered about: If a commander is ordered to cast a spell in round #x, does that spell get super-high priority to be cast starting on round #x, or only on round #x, or something else? I'd assumed it was the first of those choices--that is, that if you tell a sage to cast Horror Mark on round 1, and his astral skill doesn't get boosted to level 2 (by somebody else's spell) until round three, then he'll still cast Horror Mark on round 3 or very soon thereafter. Or, like, if a mage gets interrupted by a few harpies or something, maybe he'll spend one round killing them, and then the next few rounds continuing his orders as if nothing had happened. My experience suggests that this is how it works--but is it? If so, why didn't my mages cast Lightning after the enemy entered the spell's range? That's what I'd expected them to do.

Similarly: Is it ever possible to successfully order a mage to cast a short-range spell, like Hand of Death or Shock Wave? I've given Shock Wave orders, and it seemed that they succeeded, but maybe the mages were just making their own decision.

[thejeff]

You can see how it calculates by running the combat with debug on.

Near as I can tell, it prioritizes the scripted spell for that slot in the script. If he can cast that round, but can't cast that spell he'll cast something else and move on to the next thing in the script. If he can't cast at all, say he's surrounded by fliers and takes a swing at them instead or an earlier spell knocked him unconscious, when he next can cast he'll pick up he left off in the script.
Which spells you script have no effect on what mages cast after the script runs out.

You can script the short range spells, but it's tricky. You have to get them in range first and then keep them alive long enough. When in combat they're likely to cast those spells anyway, so it's hard to be sure.

[Bananadine]

Well now I've gotten all interested in this again. I just tried making a Vanadrott summon large air elementals while assassinating various Abysians. When facing an Abysian warlord or Rage Lord, the Van summoned the elementals. When facing an expensive, powerful warlock, he summoned ghost wolves. When facing a warlock wearing lots of magical equipment, he summoned the elementals. When facing a warlock carrying many gems, he summoned the elementals.

So, can I use air elementals as assassins, or not? It's awfully hard to tell....

[melnorjr]

One thing I want to note(though its somewhat offtopic) is that you mentioned how you are somewhat hesitant to split your mages up because of various factors.

in all honesty though, there is almost never any reason to NOT split them. I've been bitten by it more than enough times that I now always split my mages up.

Youll go into a battle with all your amges together...and then they get hit by a fireball and you lost 3 mages to one shot. that really sucks, especially if you are relying heavily on your mages, or have large numbers in the battle. even if the enemy doesn't do this to begin with(due to larger HP stacks in front) if your army routes before your mages do, THEY will be targetted by spells to the exclusion of any routing units, and this can happen anyway. I once went into a battle with about 15 mages, and lost 12 because I forgot to split them up and my army routed, then the enemy mages blew them all to pieces with one or two spells. Enemy archers can also do the same thing.

Regarding being worried about flying enemies, what you do there is put a bunch of infantry(preferably slow) behind your mages on hold-attack or some such(or stick a single commander back there with a bunch of infantry guarding him, and him on hold,hold,hold,hold,hold, stay behind). This way the flying units attack your rear guard, and probably die because most flying units suck.(unless they are a thug/sc, in which case you've got additional problems)

Basically you pretty much never want your mages grouped up for just about any reason(I can't think of one to do it).

[Sombre]

Regarding caelum - Set some troops guarding your commanders. Spread your mages out a bit more and make sure they are generally surrounded by blocks of troops.

Keep some troops at the back so they are picked up by attack rear orders. Dunno, all this stuff seems obvious so you've probably tried it.

I've never seen Caelum do that. They just suicide against my troops every battle when I fight them. They're just about the easiest nation to beat in SP imo.