Artificial stupidity

[Arker]

The worst thing about this game for me is the so-called AI. I'm really steamed right now. Scripted an atlantian king to cast a handful of spells then attack. He has the champions trident, but also a chest wound, so I'd really rather not have him attack, but the thing is, a few turns back when he was on 'stay behind troops' he decided to cast the cold-radiation spell and destroyed my mages with it. Dumb &(@%... grr... so I figured having him attack would prevent that. Nope. He casts his spells, and throws in that cold radation trick again all on his own, then goes to attack, killing another mage (the just arrived replacement from the capital for the two he killed before) and several spearmen in the process.

There's got to be something to do about this, it's just way too stupid. I've come up with a lot of little tricks to try and minimise it, but I haven't found any way to keep it from happening entirely. Very frustrating. Anyone else?

Any word on whether Dom III will pull the same crap? I think I'm going to wait to be convinced it doesn't before I buy it. I'm so sick of this.

[Wish]

you could... um... jut move him away from the mages for his starting position?

[Arker]

I do. He moves over to them and kills them anyway.

[Arker]

Started a new game with Jotunheim. At least breath of winter doesn't cause friendly-fire deaths with the giants. Still just hilariously stupid though.

Niefel giant prophet. Scripted:

Divine bless
Holy avenger
Fanaticism
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

What's he do?

Divine bless
Holy avenger
BREATH OF WINTER
Attack one turn
Fanaticism
Attack

I'm not making this up. Heck, I couldn't make this up. Blows my mind. This guy has that effect already, why would he waste fatigue casting it? *ROFL*

I've gone through the replay over and over, and thought and thought, and the only thing I can come up with is this. He hits the first fanaticism, no one has been hit yet, so there's no morale loss to fix, so he decides to cast another spell instead. That much of it makes sense, I guess. But why he picks a spell that does nothing but increase his fatigue is a mystery. Why his Atlantean predecessor would consistently pick that *same* spell, and proceed to decimate his own mages with it, is similarly a mystery. Playing man last week I had a Jade Sorceress with the same fixation. Whenever she got a chance, she'd fire off that Breath of Winter and then get lonely and start snuggling up with the lizards. This was particularly funny when she chose to do this while fighting Jotun, so not only was there no chance of it ever hitting anyone except her own side, it wouldn't hurt the enemy even if she did get close to them somehow.

The spell-casting AI in this game is seriously whack.

[Ygorl]

You're right about why he didn't cast Fanaticism. In a case like that, the AI picks a spell out of everything he might cast. The AI tends to favor spells that protect the caster, followed by spells that summon dudes, unless there's a nice target available for a direct-damage spell.

It might be true that Niefel Giants have "chill" (which causes fatigue and sometimes chilling of neighbors) but not "Breath of Winter" (which also causes actual damage). I suspect this is the case, actually? Anyway, the AI likes the spell, and isn't aware that it can sometimes hurt your own guys. It's maybe the biggest spellcasting AI frustration in the game.

The way the AI works, by the way, (if I'm remembering right) is that it first looks at the scripted spell - if it would have no effect, or if the script is such that the caster's spell is not specified, it practice-casts a bunch of spells (several times each?) and picks the one that has the best effect to actually cast. Not sure how "best" is defined.

[shovah]

I had the same problem with atlantis, the answer is either spread your mages out and set them to their spells then just cast (so they never move) or script them all to BoW.

[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).

[Graeme Dice]

Arker said:
I do. He moves over to them and kills them anyway.

First off, he will only cast breath of winter if you give him an untyped "cast" order, or if you didn't put him close enough to the front lines so that his scripted spells would reach any enemies, or if you asked him to cast spells that require gems. and there's only a trivial number of opponents. Secondly, if you tell him to attack, then he will only move into range of your other mages if there is an enemy in that direction.