Dissapointed

[PvK]

Overall, the AI is very impressive, considering the huge amount of complexity in the game!

Suggested improvement for blood mages: Don't be so eager to kill all the blood slaves without a good reason. I have a Mictlani Prophet who is scripted to cast Smite five times. If we have blood slaves, though, he kills off all the slaves during the battle casting things which may be helpful, but I'd rather keep the blood slaves, especially when Smite is available for zero cost.

Similarly, conserving gems should be a factor.

I have seen multi-casting self-defense spells, but only rarely. One cause of stupid spellcasting is when the caster doesn't have many choices (low research). I'd suggest the AI should value resting higher than casting ineffective spells.

I think the body count for fire flies and stone shards is extremely low, and mostly friendly casualties rather than enemies. Missile & spell fire should be a bit less dispersed, and of course, the friendly fire risk needs to be weighed about 100 times more important than it currently is - killing your own men should be very very rare, rather than currently very common.

Probably the spellcasting AI should consider desperation - that is, compare the strength of both sides, and whether the spellcaster himself is currently at risk, and above all, whether the spell would risk own casualties, and then decide whether it makes sense to risk own units, or use gems or blood slaves, or even fatigue. (When the enemy is running away, it's probably a really bad time to massacre blood slaves to fling a badly-aimed magma bolt, etc.)

PvK

[Graeme Dice]

One thing I would like to see is that if a blood mage has slaves, and is near 100 fatigue, that they would be more likely to cast reinvigoration. This should be made even more likely if the mage is a sabbath master/slave and the slaves/masters have high fatigue levels. Of course, this might make the spell too useful, but as it stands, the mages seem to ignore it if not scripted, and fatigue themselves casting an extra summon imp instead of imp/reinvig/imp/reinvig, etc.

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by PvK:

Similarly, conserving gems should be a factor.

Agree. The Mages should think twice before they waste my valuable gems.

Originally posted by PvK:

Missile & spell fire should be a bit less dispersed, and of course, the friendly fire risk needs to be weighed about 100 times more important than it currently is - killing your own men should be very very rare, rather than currently very common.

Disagree. Heavy losses due to friendly fire are rare in my games, and in the few cases when they do happen, they are plausible.

[velk]

A cast (no gems) command would be nice also, although the spell list elimination option other people suggested would probably fix that too.

It's a big annoyance for me when I have a weak fire mage with a huge bunch of archers, script him to cast flaming arrows and then a few other spells and during long battles he runs over his script finds he has an inventory full of fire gems and begins gleefully using them all on spells that have little or no impact. Then of course next fight starts, he has none left and the army power is halved immediately.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
... Disagree. Heavy losses due to friendly fire are rare in my games, and in the few cases when they do happen, they are plausible.

Please send me your Version of the EXE, then! At first I thought to offer you money for it, but then I thought it would be more persuasive to threaten you with casting a special Version of Vengeance of the Dead, which summons the ghosts of everyone killed by friendly fire - thousands of them, including many great heroes.

Just kidding. Except I really have lost heroes, very many troops, and have seen too many battles where the archers killed more of their own than of the enemy.

It depends, I guess, on how much attention you pay, which units you use, etc., but I've seen way to many cases of friendly fire (mainly from archers rather than spells, though).

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by velk:
A cast (no gems) command would be nice also, although the spell list elimination option other people suggested would probably fix that too.

It's a big annoyance for me when I have a weak fire mage with a huge bunch of archers, script him to cast flaming arrows and then a few other spells and during long battles he runs over his script finds he has an inventory full of fire gems and begins gleefully using them all on spells that have little or no impact. Then of course next fight starts, he has none left and the army power is halved immediately.

Amen. One tip is to have someone like a scout or non-fire mage carry a gem supply, and only give one to the guy who is supposed to cast Fire Arrows.

Sadly, with blood slaves, I think casters can go kill each other's slaves (? not sure). I guess I could give them to scouts and have the scouts hide out with the blood slaves during battle! (I just need to be sure to use gay or eunich scouts for that... hmm - new random event idea: if ( Leader.IsMale() && Leader.HasBloodSlaves() ) ... ).

PvK

[Aikamun]

Speaking of Breath of Winter, my Pretender just killed his Prophet, mystic, and three battle wounded infantry with this spell. Maybe they should be smart enough to move out of the area of effect.
I will now disperse all casters to avoid killing other casters. They will now be very exposed to rear attacks without their mutual support. I already leave archers unsupported (no troops to their front) to minimize friendly fire. I have much better results with javelins, rather than crossbows.

Aikamun