Artificial stupidity

[shovah]

Atlantian kings are great thugs, add on some decent equipment and they can all do nice buffs: all can do quickness+BoW, earth can do summon earthpower+invunerability, nature gets regen, fire gets fireshield, air gets mistform and mirror image, astral gets quite alot,death causes extra fear and i guess blood could cast blood vengance although ive never seen a blood king)

[Arker]

They definitely DO cast on 'stay behind troops.'

[Saxon]

I recommend spreading your mages out, no matter what. One group has a higher chance of attracting arrow fire and of being hit by stray shots. Also, if they fatigue out and your troops run, the enemy has to cover more ground to kill all the mages. Sometimes one or two will recover from fatigue and be able to flee.

I agree, you see some less than ideal spell choices at times, but you will also get some very pleasant surprises. I never script the spells that hold an enemy in place, yet one of my casters did just that to a flying pretender god. End result, dead pretender.

It was once described as giving orders and hoping they are followed. As a manager of real life humans, I can tell you that the results you see are very lifelike. Not that a game about magic, dragons and talking lizards should try to create “realism,” but in this case they have!

[shovah]

and if you were a mage about to be charged by a group of knights even though you could kill some with a spell wouldnt you cast a self protection spell?

[Oversway]

The AI is pretty BoW crazy, though. Once you've researched it, you can pretty much bet that any mage with 2w (or 1w and a gem) will cast it if they are scripted to cast some other spell that would have no effect (like fanaticism on a turn where troops do not have a morale check).