Annoying death magic

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arryn:
If your "strategy" is to count on the AI fatiguing itself, or other such stupid behaviors, you're only cheating yourself by using what is basically an exploit. Against a human you'll be waxed and polished.

No, his strategy is to rely on his own mages casting spells as often as possible, such as the very useful raise skeletons/drain life/ raise skeletons/drain life combo that the AI is very good at doing.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arryn:
None of *my* troops. It was a SC pretender, solo. There were plenty of enemies in range.

As you've pointed out though, this wa in 2.06, so it doesn't really apply.

quote:

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Which patch were you using when you saw this behaviour?

2.06

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Have you seen the same behaviour after the verson 2.08 changes to the spell selection heuristic? You really can't use the old examples when the AI _is_ being changed with every patch.

[Arryn]

Graeme, other people have reported that it's not been fully fixed in 2.08, despite the devs trying to.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Graeme, other people have reported that it's not been fully fixed in 2.08, despite the devs trying to.

That's just it. Where are these reports of such behaviour? I haven't seen any reports that weren't explainable through the already known game mechanics, and I read virtually every post that comes through here.

Like I said, the only one I've seen in 2.08 of double protection is air sheild/air blessing.

[PvK]

As for the original topic, I've been seeing the AI making use of Nether Bolts and Ghost Grope (sic), and non-death spells from death mages.

PvK

[Arryn]

Originally posted by PvK:
As for the original topic, I've been seeing the AI making use of Nether Bolts

This was common in castle defense, even in 2.06

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
As for the original topic, I've been seeing the AI making use of Nether Bolts

This was common in castle defense, even in 2.06

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Well, it was common in Doms I Nether Darts is the most overpowered evocation, ergo, it gets cast.

Hard to say about spell AI. In 2.08, I have not seen Druids berserking other nearby mages anymore. But I did see an enemy pretender kill himself with Shock Wave. Ouch! I sent a turbo-assassin (assassin w/Lifelong Protection) against him, with orders to hold, and the hyper-powered AI commander (Freak Lord with Air 7, Earth 6, Nature 9, and 1 in all other paths, I think) cast Flame Shield, Astral Shield, a few Blade Winds (on nearby imps), and finally Shock Wave, twice. It was, in fact, brilliant - the choices were very good. Well, except that imps are immune to fire, but oh well=) The Shock Waves cleared away my imps quite well... but alas, the second one killed the pretender too. I've never seen a unit damage itself with Shock Wave before... In this case, there was not much choice, because it was surrounded by imps, so it might have seemed like a good idea (no time to cast resistance, I better push the button now!).

2.08 has some nice battle formation and strategic improvements. As Marignon, I got a random Friar / Flagellant uprising against Spectral Ermor. Meaning, 4 friars - quite a few! When they counter-attacked, they used... ONLY STANDARD TROOPS! No undeads at all. Well, possibly they lost all their undead leaders. But it turned out brilliantly:

2 Heavy Cavalry on the far-forward, top-and-bottom flanks, set to "Attack Rear". These guys went straight to the back and killed my 4 friars, skipping all my province defense and flagellants.

2 Groups of maybe 8 Tribal Archers in the middle, which rained arrows on my flags and killed them without a fight. By the time my province defense pikeneers arrived, the HC had killed all my leaders and they routed.

Wow! My army was worthless! There was nothing for my Friars to banish, and my normal troops didn't even get a chance to fight.