Mages casting weak spells

[Electro808]

Why do my mages always seem to cast the weakest possible spells.

I am mictlan in the game I'm playing and i have fire mages which have fire skill 2 and they also are filled with fire gems. I have researched Evo 4 which should allow my mages to cast spells such as fire cloud and fireball, even fire blast. But my mages decide every single time to cast either fire flies(evo0) or fire darts(evo1). Why do they choose the most useless spells??

[Sombre]

Probably because your enemy doesn't warrant (in the AIs 'mind') the expenditure of gems.

Are you scripting your mages at all?

[Electro808]

No i didn't script him i thought they had some intelligence.
I was fighting those nefelheim giants and they were kicking my armies *** so i think it warranted it.

[Electro808]

Maybe i should just not count on any intelligence from mages. Is that was most people do?

[Humakty]

You should research conj3, and use the booster spells to raise your mage's level(script it !). This done, they will naturally cast higher level spells, without using any gems.

[Yrkoon]

Or maybe the enemy doesn't come within range of your more powerful spells. Happens a lot if the mages are placed at the very back of the battlefield.

Either bring your mages closer to the front line, or get the enemy to close in before starting melee by giving your melee units the "hold and attack" order, or placing them on the very back of the battlefield. That way, the enemy melee troops will get closer to you before the melee starts. Be careful if you use hold and attack though, for your missile units may end up in front of your other troops as they try to get within firing range.

[Torin]

specially not on nature mages IQ until the next patch.
where bersekers and touch of madness will be cast less often and not on archers and mages.
The one in the woods died in a battle because i scripted sleep cloud but no enemy was at range and he casted berserkers on himself.

[Electro808]

range might explain fireblast but fireball has greater range than any of the spells they cast.

I just start scripting them

[Yrkoon]

Torin, there is a mod that changes "touch of madness" to make it cost one nature gem. It also adds nice spells that affect the caster like Ethereal self (body ethereal), bless self (bless). It is not overpowered at all. I'll get you the name if you are interested.

[Agrajag]

My guess: Fire Flies and Fire Darts both target "one person" and have 6/3+ effects. Fire Blast, for example has AOE 1.
When fighting against Niefel Giants, there should only be 1 giant per square, so while Fire Blast will deal 26+ AP damage to one giant, Fire Flies will deal 6 AP damage to 6 giants, and Fire Darts will deal 10 AP damage to 3+ giants. It is therefore possible that the AI considers this a better deal. Though in the case of Fire Blast it is more probably because it is range 5.
Fireball has a usable range, but is AOE1, 14+ AP damage, which again would target just one giant for 14+ AP damage, Fire Cloud would hit 5+ targets for 8 AP damage. The first could be considered weaker than both FF and FD, and the second is probably considered "not worth an extra gem over FF or FD".