Is this normal spell-casting ai behavior ?

[Wauthan]

Spellcasting AI seems to consider the closest enemy only. It's a great strength in missileweapons that they got better targeting.

See if you can try the same scenario again but with elemental magic mixed in. The mages should start tossing lightning and fire at the statues instead of summoning, once they get into range.

I'm just glad I'm not the one responsible for balancing the AI. If it's too good then mages would be even more of a menace than they are now. There would be little need for troops if mages were able to bLast commanders on turn 1. That said it would be nice to tell mages what spells they should NOT use and have the AI work along this decision. A small spellbook icon on the unit screen that allows you to pick say 10 spells for the individual mage. The topmost spell gets the highest priority etc. And a way to copy this spellbook between commanders?

It would be very different from the current system and a fair bit more micromanagement though.

[Cainehill]

Wauthan said:
Spellcasting AI seems to consider the closest enemy only. It's a great strength in missileweapons that they got better targeting.

I don't think so - I just had a turn in which my four Holy Pyre casters (including 1 quickened one) were bLasting away at the militia and infantry that were much further away than the knights which charged up and killed my troops and 2 of the commanders. It'd make a lot more sense if it actually did target the closest non-retreating enemies, imo.

[Kristoffer O]

Distance is considered, but also probable results. Holy pyre would not affect knights very much (rather low dmg and high prot), but the militia would be severely hurt.

I'm not sure but the AI measures potential HP dmg of different spells and targets. The knights would yield lower results then the militia.

Targeting closest enemy would make sense. Especially if one target is much closer than the rest.

[Huzurdaddi]

See if you can try the same scenario again but with elemental magic mixed in. The mages should start tossing lightning and fire at the statues instead of summoning, once they get into range.

Nope not at all what will happen. The AI will summon almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Assuming that it has summoning spells availiable the AI seems to cast summoning spells to some threshold and then will start casting some other spells mixing in summons perhaps as the number of summons increases the percentage of other spells increases as well. Not really sure.

But it's simple to see it in action. Take Pythium ( easy to get mages with high level and no fatigue problems ) research evoc-5, alteration-3, and thaumaturgy-6 and script communion, quickness, and some elemental spells and you will see a bizzilion ghost wolves then after a little bit you will see some other random spells once in a while.