Is this normal spell-casting ai behavior ?

Boron · #1 October 27th, 2004, 09:08 AM

I fought as Pythium against Pangenea . Pangenea had a medusa + 100 living statues .
I had the idea to script my theurgs to quickness , false horror x4 , cast spells .
The plan was just to generate a "meat shield" with a few false horrors in the hope that the theurgs cast after this combat spells occasionally too .

My theurgs only casted a few buffs after the 5 spells and then continued with false horrors + phantom warriors only

.
Is this normal behaviour ?
They could have casted at least mind burn too which would have helped a lot agains the living statues .

Chazar · #2 October 27th, 2004, 09:14 AM

I also have the impression that the AI prefers to choose among the 5 selected spells. So I usually script my seraphs to "Quickness","False Horror","False Horror","False Horror" and then either "Orb Lightning" or "Frozen Heart".

I guess that having a spell scripted shifts the weights for AI spell choosing a bit. At least according to my experience - and I really like it that way. In fact I would prefer it if one could only encourage the AI to cast certain spells instead of specifying a specific order...

Wauthan · #3 October 27th, 2004, 09:19 AM

AI seem to prefer summoning spellls over dealing damage when the battle is far away from them. Great legions of souless and skellingtons shambling about the rear ranks tends to be evidence of this.

To remedy this you need to get your spellcaster closer to the enemy by scripting in a few attack commands. It's risky but it makes the spellcaster more useful since many good spells have a fairly limited range. The spell Haste is a good way to get the whole lot of spellcasters running to the frontline with just one attack command. Flight is a little bit too risky without serious protective spells and equipment.

Boron · #4 October 27th, 2004, 09:30 AM

Yeah i have the same impression that the spellcasting Ai loves to spam troops .

Since the theurgs are so fragile i thought it would be a good idea to place them rearmost cause i thought pan has a few longbows too or similiar .

Still i feel a bit cheated that my about 25 theurgs did cast no single mind burn in a 50 turn battle ... .
Everyone buffed with body etheral , astral shield etc. after the 5 scripted spells but then continued to spam the horrors + phantom warriors .

So if i want to place a mage far behind and casting mainly artillery spells if the mage has either death or air i can forget this after the first 5 scripts anyways i fear

Kristoffer O · #5 October 27th, 2004, 09:39 AM

Mindburn probably doesn't work on mindless units such as living statues. If it does it should be fixed so that is doesn't.

Arralen · #6 October 27th, 2004, 11:31 AM

Even better so: If the only available target for mindburn is the one and only enemy commander

And with range=100 he shouldn't have been out of range, right?

Boron · #7 October 27th, 2004, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Arralen said:
Even better so: If the only available target for mindburn is the one and only enemy commander

And with range=100 he shouldn't have been out of range, right?

Yeah there were 3 enemy commanders . But against none mind burn was ever used

.

Wauthan · #8 October 28th, 2004, 06:58 AM

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 · #9 October 28th, 2004, 11:53 AM

Quote:

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 · #10 October 28th, 2004, 01:34 PM

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.