AI spell casting priorities

[Wrana]

Is it possible to lower priority for gem-using spells in general? This is the reason I need to park gems in some scout/fighter commander & transfer tham to mage each turn - or else hust not use gems... I don't think that this amount of micromanagement is much fun...

[Tuidjy]

I hate Touch of Madness. With a passion. It should never be cast unscripted.
I never leave a mage unscripted, but I know that if the AI decides that a nature
spell is not worth the gems, it will default to Touch of Madness, and send
archers or mages into the fray. At the end of the battle, the number of
casulties precisely matches the number of targeted units.

And not a single gem should be used against a retreating enemy, ever. What
really sucks, and I have seen it happen at least once, is when the AI decides
that it does not need Arrow Fend when I am storming a castle, but once the
enemy has routed, summoning some Air Elementals is a damn good idea. Arrow
Fend, by the way, is one of the spells I'd love to see as "scripted only".
If you can't be bothered to script it, you should not benefit from it.

[Sombre]

If you can't be bothered to script it you shouldn't benefit? That's a weird thing to say. For one thing, who would ever benefit from arrow fend being cast unscripted? Only the AI would have air mages of sufficient skill kicking about with handfuls of gems and no script and most of the time it would still be a bad choice of spell.

Also, why the hostility towards people who don't script? I can't be arsed with the micro hassle of it most of the time. I script when I want certain powerful spells cast or have a definite battlemage script assigned to a number, but that's about it.


I personally think all spells which require gems (other than blood spells) should be 'script only'. The only problem there is the AI nations obviously wouldn't cast any combat spells requiring gems, which is a pretty big problem I admit.

It would definitely be good if any spells which are likely to either be a waste of gems/time or harmful to your own side (like berserk causing spells) were either really low priority or script only. Niche spells like ones only useful to thugs (shields, breath of winter etc), ones which summon neutral creatures (lammashtas, horrors etc) and so on should all be low priority or script only. That way unscripted mages would be more likely to cast something generally useful.

[VedalkenBear]

For myself, I can think of at least one instance where summoning elementals during a 'rout' could be useful; that is, summoning air elementals to hit the rear to cause more casualties. However, this would be contingent on summoned elementals attacking the rear, and only really applies to air elementals.

I'd like to second _any_ spell that causes creatures to go berserk is very unhealthy.

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Sombre said:
...
I personally think all spells which require gems (other than blood spells) should be 'script only'. The only problem there is the AI nations obviously wouldn't cast any combat spells requiring gems, which is a pretty big problem I admit.
...

Oh, that would be *so* nice! Then you could actually give your Antimagic caster 3 pearls when he is supposed to storm a castle, and he'd actually cast it in three battles (magic/break siege/storm), instead of blowing all the pearls in the magic battle phase.

Armies of the AI nations could be allowed to use gems unscripted -- the game knows which nations are AI and which are human.

[Sombre]

I don't know if it's that easy, allowing the AI to use gems unscripted. AI nations currently use the same battle casting AI as humans I believe.

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Sombre said:
I don't know if it's that easy, allowing the AI to use gems unscripted. AI nations currently use the same battle casting AI as humans I believe.

It just needs to set/track/compare a flag indicating whether the nation is controlled by human or AI.

If the nation is human, and spell fatigue is over 100 and it's not favspell, set score to zero.