B2 mage can't cast Life for a Life?

[Baalz]

Life for a life, requires B3 and 1 blood slave. Why is it my B2 mages refuse to cast it using a second blood slave? Plenty of blood slaves, several valid targets, spell is scripted....why can't they cast it?

[K]

Life for a life, requires B3 and 1 blood slave. Why is it my B2 mages refuse to cast it using a second blood slave? Plenty of blood slaves, several valid targets, spell is scripted....why can't they cast it?

I find that mages often won't cast spells that would give the mage more than 200 fatigue in one shot. Life for a Life is 199 fatigue, and then spellcasting fatigue is added in, so you are looking at more than 200.

People have tried to tell me differently, but my experience with casting Blood and high-path Air spells has shown this to me over and over.

[thejeff]

Standard question: What does debug tell you?

[ano]

I did cast Life for a Life with B2 mages many, many times so probably it is specific problem

[K]

What was your opposition like? The AI, in it's infinite wisdom, might have decided that they didn't need to cast high fatigue spells and so went with low fatigue stuff.

[Baalz]

Demonbred, flying frantically to the front to stop the neverending onslaught of Pythium angels. Yes! I finally got to life for a life and can stop the fire immune slaughter. Set several clever ambushes and catch half a dozen raiding angels (in 4 or so separate battles, 1 or 2 angels per fight. Harbingers and Angels of Fury). No! No! Stop with the damn imps! :/

[K]

Demonbred, flying frantically to the front to stop the neverending onslaught of Pythium angels. Yes! I finally got to life for a life and can stop the fire immune slaughter. Set several clever ambushes and catch half a dozen raiding angels (in 4 or so separate battles, 1 or 2 angels per fight. Harbingers and Angels of Fury). No! No! Stop with the damn imps! :/

Yeh, it sounds like the AI decided that the battle wasn't important enough for high fatigue spells.

I'd bet death gems to donuts that if you had communioned them in a simple two-slave communion you'd have been fine.

[Baalz]

Here's the relevant parts of the debug log. Looks like mayusegems was true, not sure if this is different than the high fatigue eval you're suggesting K.

com Shapash cast spell (favspell Life for a Life) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 37
.
.
.
Eval: Summon Imp score 477 (fat 50)
comp_castspell: eval Summon Imp result 477
best spell so far Summon Imp (score477)
.
.
.
comp_castspell: eval Life for a Life result -1
.
.
.
castspell: cnr276 spl698 (Summon Imp) vis2 x49 y12 spldmg303

How frustrating!

[K]

I'd be very interested in finding out how the Eval module works. It says "(Fat 50)", so it is making some sort of judgment about fatigue when it looks at Summon Imps (and since it is a B2 casting a B1 spell with 100 fat, the total is fat 50).

I suspect that "mayusegems=1" is a test for whether there are gems in inventory (which is probably an initial test for whether the spell can even be cast since it requires gems).

It doesn't look like it is a test for whether gems SHOULD be used because of weak opposition.

[thejeff]

I think mayusegems is the should test. There's something else for not enough gems. And I don't think that test even applies to blood mages? I've never seen blood mages just refuse to cast and all (almost) Blood spells use gems.

The -1 result for Life for a Life looks like what it usually gets when it can't find a valid target. Nothing should be immune and it's range 100, so that shouldn't apply. So it has to mean not high enough level to cast, but that doesn't explain why not to use the second slave?

[Kristoffer O]

Targets are in range I suppose?

And not inanimate or something else that might make LfL useless?

[Baalz]

Nah, it's got a range of 100, and even if there's some strange interaction that made the angels immune, in one of the fights there was also a human mage buffing the angel - imps killed him, but there is no way he was immune to the scripted LfL.

[NTJedi]

Well I know higher level mages receive a fatique discount casting lower level spells. I'm thinking it might be vise versa for low level mages casting higher level spells, thus if this is the 4th spell being casted during battle even with extra blood slaves it's too much fatique.

[archaeolept]

i've often had difficulty having mages cast spells that *should* be possible given a maximal gem output. Try using blood 3 casters instead.

or, preferably, don't ;p

imps are all you need, i'm sure :)

or perhaps the spell does not affect magic beings?

[NTJedi]

Life for a life, requires B3 and 1 blood slave. Why is it my B2 mages refuse to cast it using a second blood slave? Plenty of blood slaves, several valid targets, spell is scripted....why can't they cast it?


How much fatique do these B2 mages have at the time they are scripted to cast life for a life?

How much Spell Casting encumberance do these B2 mages on the battlefield?
(not regular encumberance, clicking on encumberance will display the spell casting encumberance)

[archaeolept]

it's their first spell, and they are demonbreds w/ 2 spell casing enc.

though i can't tell what really happened in the battle as they were done under 3.17 and i can't trust the replay under 3.20...and i seem unable to watch even the redownloaded turn's battles using the old 3.17 executable (an aside: wtf?)

edit: also, it is cbm 1.3; fatigue for the spell is 199

[capnq]

it's their first spellThat might be the problem right there. The AI seems to have a strong preference for casting some kind of buff on the first round.

[archaeolept]

nah, the AI summoned imps :D

the debug indicated there wasn't a valid target... the game is under CB mod, but I don't think LfL was changed at all.

maybe it acts as if it were a 2 slave spell, for some reason... 199 fat isn't ordinary.

[K]

nah, the AI summoned imps :D

the debug indicated there wasn't a valid target... the game is under CB mod, but I don't think LfL was changed at all.

maybe it acts as if it were a 2 slave spell, for some reason... 199 fat isn't ordinary.

I can't find the CB changes for version 1.0, just the changelogs for 1.1 and 1.3. I'll PM quantum_mechani to see if he altered Blood or LfaL.

This problem could easily be explained by a range change.

[K]

nah, the AI summoned imps :D

the debug indicated there wasn't a valid target... the game is under CB mod, but I don't think LfL was changed at all.

maybe it acts as if it were a 2 slave spell, for some reason... 199 fat isn't ordinary.

I can't find the CB changes for version 1.0, just the changelogs for 1.1 and 1.3. I'll PM quantum_mechani to see if he altered Blood or LfaL.

This problem could easily be explained by a range change.

QM says there was no change.

[duncanshriek]

*Bump*



Exactly my problem in ComfortZone.

There are those kitted Vanjarl raiders (15HP). Absolutely perfect targets for my 'Life for a Life' Skrattis in one on one battles, wouldn't there be something named 'AI'. Makes me pulling my last hairs out.

To state it clearly: I abhor AIs overriding any decision in which I had invested some precious time of my life, even if that decision would have been the worst ever. Much more so if AI makes an error instead of just doing what it has been ordered.

The problem with different tactics needed to be scripted for different situations can and should only be addressed through more flexibility in the scripting interface. Something that will unfortunately never happen in future versions.



That means onward to new X4 shores for me after that game.

[Alpine Joe]

This problem also happens to me a lot with bloodletting, also with skratti.

[duncanshriek]

There's also this bug:

Just saw the first scripted Life for a Life actually firing, as very first spell in a battle with just one of those Jarls on the opposite side: _No_ damage!

[Baalz]

Duncanshriek you can check the debug log to see what's going on, might be luck or twist fate or something like that.

[duncanshriek]

Duncanshriek you can check the debug log to see what's going on, might be luck or twist fate or something like that.

Ah. That's an explanation I overlooked. That one had a Pendant of Luck. (Debug log would lie on the Llama server)

[thejeff]

If you turn debug on and watch the battle, you'll get a debug log. Dominions actually goes through all the calculations again locally.

[MaxWilson]

In frustrating situations like this, it's always worth replaying the battle and tossing in e.g. 20 Cyclops via Shift + 'U' just to make sure it's not a quirk of the random number generator or something.

The other thing that occurs to me is that maybe the AI didn't think the second blood slave was in range. I know that blood mages can use any slave within a certain radius (even if they "belong" to another mage), maybe it can go the other way. It seems unlikely but if this is what's going on maybe it wouldn't happen if you had more than 2 blood slaves with you. Imps only take 1 slave.

-Max

[Baalz]

Well, from my experience (awhile ago) it happened reliably over several battles with different available targets. Now I just play as if blood slaves can't be used to boost your level for casting which seems to be tied to this frustrating behavior whether true or not.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm, that's an interesting possibility. I guess the manual does specifically say you can use *gems* to boost casting level.

-Max