I *hate* unscripted Touch of Madness.

[Taqwus]

An unscripted Touch of Madness can send one's archers, mages, or pretender counter-productively running into melee, and there's no "execute the caster for treason or capital stupidity" option.

For, say, Arco -- where it's useful to have priestesses tagging along with your armies, for the healing and prayers -- is there a good workaround other than scripting every priestess and hoping they take the hint after five non-ToM orders?

[Sombre]

Mod touch of madness to be very high level, like N9D9, thus removing it from the game.

[bananafish]

i agree... or at least have the AI do a better job of making sure there is a squad melee troops close enough to have this cast upon. and not cast it if mages are present w/in the squad.

[TwoBits]

Count me in the "hate" column too. Often I'll try to keep level 2 or above nature mages out of combat just to avoid this problem.

Heck, if it was merely a matter of a pointlessly wasted spell (think Earth mages spamming Legions of Steel), or even of wasted gems (mage thinks, "hmm, I think we need another puny elemental in this already lopsided battle..."), that'd be one thing.

But this spell gets friendly units killed. And sometimes very valuable units!

I think there needs to be a way to disable the AI from casting certain spells. This has often been suggested before though...

[Sandman]

It should just give the beserker ability, without actually making the target beserk.

[PyroStock]

there needs to be a way to disable the AI from casting certain spells

[HoneyBadger]

They should just add a "cast friendlies/cast enemies" option and be done with it. Then you could set a mage to either cast spells at your own troops, or at the enemy troops-no enemies close enough? your mage sits his *** down.

[B0rsuk]

The problem is, Touch of Madness looks good on paper. You'd never cast it on mages or archers, so you never consider it...

Moving the spell to the same category as Breath of Winter (scripts only) would solve it once and for all. No real drawbacks, because the Touch has small range, so it has to be cast at the beginning of the battle anyway. While the infantry is still on Hold&Attack.

Alternatively, it shouldn't be very hard to make it so it's only cast on infantry, flyers or cavalry but NOT on units with missile weapons. But I think this kind of change never happened in a patch before, so I'd be happy enough with BreathOfWintering it.

[Cor]

I am also a hater.

[sum1lost]

It's come in handy in chaff vs. undead chaff battles, but apart from that...

I've lost valuable units to it.

[thejeff]

I don't know. It's not that bad.
Pangaea's sent lots of his centaur archers charging down field at me.

[Taqwus]

Might be interesting turned into a target-enemy spell instead, but yeah -- I'd rather see it get flagged as 'only when scripted'. Don't think that's moddable, is it?

[Jazzepi]

thejeff said:
I don't know. It's not that bad.
Pangaea's sent lots of his centaur archers charging down field at me.



I must say, this is exactly why people hate it. When you have 150-200 archers and your mages spam that stupid spell all over them.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

Its only a range 15 spell so it should be possible to place your unscripted nature mages far away from your archers/mages ect(maybe near but still a little behind the front lines and with a few body guards. That could even help by making your own troops berserk).

[lch]

The funny thing is, if you *try* to use it effectively, by berserking some Thugs/SCs, it tends to fail. The caster will either select another far away staple of units, or cast something entirely different. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
To minimize range and thus the ability of the AI to select unwanted units, you sometimes even have to take your lesser nature mages into battle, or not research too high. Because with enough gems, they'll still cast the more powerful version.

[Ewierl]

Count me in on a big vote for "don't cast unscripted." The number of times I've seen my mages send each other charging down the battlefield is ridiculous...

Especially as MA man, where you don't have the option to keep nature mages out of combat, where your mages are physically weak, and where you want to cluster your mages a bit for other reasons (Soothing Song).