A question on AI and magic use (spell selection and gem usage)

[Taqwus]

If you want to be able to cast more powerful spells in battle, there are few tactics more powerful than Communion abuse. However, Communion does require astral (or being a Pythium communicant, which auto-casts Communion Slave w/o knowing magic, or to be carrying the appropriate crystals created by astral/earth mages) or Sabbath (which requires the expenditure of blood slaves, if memory serves). Communion works best if at least one Master has Nature-1 as well and there are enough communicants to be able cast Relief as necessary. You can get to truly sick levels of magical power with enough communion slaves... an astrally powerful master with numerous communion slaves, a spell focus and a rune smasher can be incredibly effective at Master Enslave.
Storing stuff on scouts is a good idea, especially for things like supply generators which don't directly help in combat. You can also use them to store gem generators (notably astral clams, earthblood stones) and shift gems over to your casters as need be, and if you're concerned about blood slaves being wiped out in battle you can hide and ration those the same way.
Regarding priests, it can be a good idea to script Divine Blessing once. Most of their casting isn't damaging, however, unless they're mage-priests who could be casting something more worthwhile.

[onomastikon]

I like the idea of "guilt".

[Joe Bedurndurn]

On a sort of related note, what's the deal with mages not casting what you've scripted them to cast? I had set up a Nadja... er... (that 4 armed pretender god who's name start's with an N ) to cast flight, personal luck and then attack rear. The reqs for flight are I think Air2 and I'd set him up with Air4 so I figured he'd be all set. Four or five battles later, he had yet to cast Flight on himself or anyone else. On my latest game, I had empowered/itemed a druid up to Nature 6 or 7, given him several nature gems and scripted him to cast Growing Fury, then cast any old spell for 2 turns and then retreat. Instead he chose to do whatever he felt like for 3 rounds, then run away like I'd asked him. I know that mages are supposed to ignore orders if they don't have a valid target or if it'd over fatigue them or something, but in both of these cases I can't figure out why they chose to ignore me.