My mages are idiots!

[Kaljamaha]

Let me ammend that, my mages AND troops are idiots.

Anyway, I'm Vanheim (Midgård), fighting Pythium. I was beating him pretty good, Principes are no match against Vanir, expecially ones with an Air9 blessing. Then he decides to bring in hydras...

...and the trouble begins...

...in the first battle a single hydra caused the death of countless troops. Ok, my bad, I wasn't prepared for it. I decide to Cloud Trapeze in some Galdermen with 3 Air. I script them Aim, Thunder Strike, some other spells.

What do they do?

That's right, cast Aim not on themselves, but on Vanir and some Huskarls. Great. Then they go on to Thunder Strike some random Pricipes. Arrgh! And to top it off, my Vanir who are supposed to attack rear charge straight at the hydra, dooming themselves! I would have beaten them easily, had my mages blassted the stupid thing OR had my Vanir just left it alone and wiped out the Pricipes and commanders. But noooooo...

So, to make a long story short, is there any way to influence how your mages target their spells?


K.

[Wauthan]

You're not the first who have been puzzled by the AI choice of actions. I'm not sure of anything but I'm starting to feel that there is a logical pattern behind the 'chaos'.

Aim will be cast at the closest missile unit with the worst precision score. This can be a great boon for Abysia with it's shotgun totin' mages but not so good for the superaccurate Vanir (who also have a lot of javelin tossers).

Area damage spells seems to be defaulting to strike as many units as possible. This is great since it means your mages will always go for the most bang for the buck. It's not so great when they keep tossing fireballs into the frontlines and roasting your own troops.

Single target damage or affliction spells will be aimed at the closest, mightiest, unit. If you want to stop Hydras then load up on Lightning, Blindness, Mind Burn, etc. If you want to protect Hydras (and other expensive units) bring a big monster commander or pretender and deck it out with magicresistant gear. The mages will go for the beefiest unit as long as they have a chance of hurting it. That means 100% resistance is not always better than 75%.

Units on attack rear will gladly charge trough cloud effects, since they are diverted from their path by 'threats'. A threathens a huge area and thus attracts a lot of units. This is the reason why makes Hydras so powerful and cost a fortune. Get as many missile units as possible and put them on fire at large enemy creatures. Put the infantery or cavalery on the flanks with hold and attack enemy archers (not rearmost). I had more wins than losses with this setup when playing against Pythium.

[ May 11, 2004, 09:55: Message edited by: Wauthan ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Kaljamaha:
Let me ammend that, my mages AND troops are idiots.

Anyway, I'm Vanheim (Midgård), fighting Pythium. I was beating him pretty good, Principes are no match against Vanir, expecially ones with an Air9 blessing. Then he decides to bring in hydras...

...and the trouble begins...

...in the first battle a single hydra caused the death of countless troops. Ok, my bad, I wasn't prepared for it. I decide to Cloud Trapeze in some Galdermen with 3 Air. I script them Aim, Thunder Strike, some other spells.

So, to make a long story short, is there any way to influence how your mages target their spells?


K.

To answer your Last question - no. Your Vanir have javelins, and are therefore valid targets for Aim.

One way to ensure that your mages will benefit would be to surround them with the Vanir at the beginning of the battle. Not sure if scripting the Vanir to "fire closest" or "fire something else" will work.

Or, you could use Wind Guide.

But mostly, fighting Hydras with Vanir is just a bad idea, unless you've got a way of protecting them from poison. Vanir are very hard to hit (and your Air blessing makes them almost immune to missiles), but poison will murder them, and their price will start to tell. I'd say it's a perfect case of having to adapt your troop selection to the opposition (I don't know what troops are available to the Midgard theme, but I'd say there probably are some that are better suited, cost-wise, to fighting Hydras).

Or, if you have access to Fire mages, Flaming Arrows with archers set to "fire at large monsters" could do the trick.

[proteus]

Yeap, another weak part of the AI.
Still this part isn't that bad. The strategic SP AI is lot worse.

[Kaljamaha]

Originally posted by PhilD:
To answer your Last question - no. Your Vanir have javelins, and are therefore valid targets for Aim.

One way to ensure that your mages will benefit would be to surround them with the Vanir at the beginning of the battle. Not sure if scripting the Vanir to "fire closest" or "fire something else" will work.

Or, you could use Wind Guide.

Yeah, I'll probably have to switch to that.

But mostly, fighting Hydras with Vanir is just a bad idea, unless you've got a way of protecting them from poison. Vanir are very hard to hit (and your Air blessing makes them almost immune to missiles), but poison will murder them, and their price will start to tell. I'd say it's a perfect case of having to adapt your troop selection to the opposition (I don't know what troops are available to the Midgard theme, but I'd say there probably are some that are better suited, cost-wise, to fighting Hydras).

Yup, I know. I thought I was clever, and had Groups of huskarls in the front on "fire big monsters", so that they would hurt the thing and then tie it up (I deemed them expendable). My Vanir were on the side, with "attack rear". Now, as I said, had the mages killed the hydra, OR had my Vanir attacked the rear (couple of commanders + pricipes) I would have won easily. But alas, neither happened.

Unfortunately my beginning position was quite bad, and I have found neither indie crossbows nor nature 2+ mages in the (about) 15 provinces I have. I do have some Nature 1 Galdermen, so I guess I could forge some snake rings for Vanjarls and have them attack the thing, and cast Shockwave or something. But unless heavily armed and armored, that's like throwing away a perfectly good commander.

But the point of my thread was that my mages botched this one up pretty bad. Somehow I figured they would bLast the hydra as the first order of business. Oh well, I'll try some of those single target spells and see if I have better success.


K.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by proteus:
Yeap, another weak part of the AI.
Still this part isn't that bad. The strategic SP AI is lot worse.

From Wauthans post Id say the AI was doing great. Not what Kaljamaha wanted but obviously some thought was in it.

[PDF]

Well, when it comes to Hydra clouds or any "Lasting" spell effect (Sulphur Haze, etc..), I always curse the AI that just throw entire squads right through the killing clouds instead of making any detour...
The soldiers (except mindless and berserks )should *at least* have some survival instinct and try to avoid them, no ?
Worst case is when you have half of your army dying when pursuing a routed hydra !

[NTJedi]

One spell I see casted which bugs me is when the witches from Machaka are casting FireShield. Their life points are so low that casting this spell is nothing but a waste in my opinion.

Overall what the game really needs is a way to "Disable Spells" for commanders. Perhaps this feature will be introduced with Dominions_III.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
One spell I see casted which bugs me is when the witches from Machaka are casting FireShield. Their life points are so low that casting this spell is nothing but a waste in my opinion.

Combine fireshield with ironskin on a sorceress, and you get a high protection, fireshielded spider as soon as she is hit.

[NTJedi]

Yes on the sorceress fireshield with ironskin is great... but fireshield on the witches is a waste.