George,
I do not think the AI rates the spells as castable/non castable, I think it rather hands out a value number to different spell+target comboes, and selects the spell with the highest number from a sample of alternatives. Thus useless spells will be cast even if their value is low, because there's no other option of higher value.
I do not want my mages & priests charging into melee if they have no usable spells, I do not think you want yours to do it either. If I tell'em to cast, I want them to cast.
On the matter of the AI targetting rules, I am pretty sure hps, big clusters of units & distance are taken into account, both in the spell choice & the target choice. SCs are a curse magnet, clusters of troops attract area spells/multiple effect spells, and mages often switch targets to hit whatever just showed up next square (not the 1st time I fly a SC towards a bunch of theurgs and get them to drop whatever crap they were casting & hit with multiple Star fires). You will not always agree with the choices made, but I see the AI often making better choices than many human opponents, so it's not like any fight that goes past the 5 scripted spells is doomed to spell missusing.
I gave an example of the AI doing better than me here:
thread
I only consider the breath of winter/soul drain complaint valid (and to a lesser extent the related friendly fire one), and maybe the AI should be better also at identifying elemental/poison damage & acting accordingly in order to raise protections..but apart from that I think it's extremely good.
Besides, did you notice that Dom's II AI is far less prone to fall to gem draining tactics? I find myself saving a lot of gems when I catch scouts around.
[ February 22, 2004, 20:51: Message edited by: Wendigo ]
Re: Proof of stupid AI spellcasting
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