Spell casting routine is seriously screwed?

[Hadrian_II]

I think the worst with the spellcasting routine is, that she always burns all the gems a mage has, so if you are seiging a castle and the enemy makes a breakout on the turn you storm the castle your mages will waste all games to defeat the breakout, and you will have to storm the castle without real spell support.

Also fun is when a pan is supposed to cast weapons of sharpness, then he will always cast it on the maenads behind him and not on the centaurs that are fighting on the frontline.

Why mages love to spam ethereal wolves is a second riddle that would need some atention.

[PyroStock]

I've also seen the AI cast Legions of Steel on groups of units without any armor, which is useless.

Nothing is perfect, but the most "seriously screwed" thing with the AI spell selection is Touch of Madness. That should be script-only, like what was done with Breath of Winter.

[K]

My games have shown that the AI doesn't want to cast spells with a final fatigue over 200. Even with spells with a final fatigue between 100-200 are sometimes not cast.

Communions, gem boosting, and just having enough levels in a Path to reduce the fatigue down are needed to get the AI to do what you want.

Also, the AI wants to cast self-buffs on turn 1, and get progressively more sketchy on turn 3 and after. Cast your big spells on Turn 0 or Turn 2 if possible.

[thejeff]

That might actually be a bug. I don't think the AI realizes that Legions of Steel doesn't work on units without armor.

In Dom2 it did, right? I know Earth bless did. And some of the other armor handling changed. Maybe the spell-casting AI didn't keep up with the changes?

[Sombre]

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way from stopping it casting legions of steel on unarmoured guys. It also likes to keep casting it, because since it doesn't work, the AI can't tell the units have already had it cast on them.

[konming]

I would hate to have my air mage to cast arrow fend instead of fog warrior in a decisive battle.

Since this was a test game, I was able to rerun it several time. Sometimes the mage does cast army of lead but most of the time he just cast army of gold. And I do not think it is the fatigue either. Because after army of lead he only has 70 some fatigue, not exactly 200+.

What's wierder is that in one rerun, E6 mage casted army of gold and then army of lead (script: army of lead), and A6 guy casted arrow fend then fog warrior (script: fog warrior).

Due to the randomness of the result, I have to think that this is a bug. A very bad one as well.

[Kristoffer O]

thejeff might be right about the legions of steel. Seems like a possible explanation.

konmig: hmm, forgot what I was thinking. I though I had an explanation for a second there.

[Edi]

thejeff probably is right. Now that it's been mentioned, I remember seeing that behavior several times. I'll add it to the shortlist.

[Meglobob]

In Armadillo as long as I had a A4 mage with 4A gems he cast fog warriors everytime and I cast fog warriors roughly about a million times in that game, give or take a few million...

So this arrow fend instead of fog warriors seems a little strange?

Unless it got introduced in 3.10?

[Kristoffer O]

> and I cast fog warriors roughly about a million times

Yes, you did!