Whoah theres a lot of micro management in this game

[shatner]

Originally Posted by Question

One thing i noticed is that my mages in combat, especially my pretender, have a very high tedency to ignore my script and cast random stuff. E.G. I set prince of death to cast shadow blast (or whatever the AOE level 5 evocation spell is...). I even put him infront of my undead horde. Instead of casting though, he just spams animate dead/skeletons instead(what IS the difference between those two spells anyway? Help text is very vauge.)

Shadow Blast has a fatigue of 100, i.e. it requires the caster to spend one death gem from their personal stock to cast the spell. If the script tells the caster to cast something that has no valid targets (such as an anti-undead spell where there are no undead), something that has no targets in range (trying to cast bless from the back of the battle when all the sacreds are at the front), or requires gems that the caster doesn't have, the caster will then ignore the script.

Also, casters won't spend gems casting spells if they are fighting an enemy that is considered too weak. This is to keep giant armies from spending dozens of gems blasting 1PD into smithereens, but sometimes you will have cases where it causes results that are less than satisfactory.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by shatner

Also, casters won't spend gems casting spells if they are fighting an enemy that is considered too weak. This is to keep giant armies from spending dozens of gems blasting 1PD into smithereens, but sometimes you will have cases where it causes results that are less than satisfactory.

Odd. I've found the opposite, gems will be burnt on stuff too minor to warrant them, and everything that actually does warrant them will see gem use. The AI being what it is, that tends to mean copious gem use even if the mages are outfitted to deal with something much more dangerous than whatever it is they're fighting.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Knai

Odd. I've found the opposite, gems will be burnt on stuff too minor to warrant them, and everything that actually does warrant them will see gem use. The AI being what it is, that tends to mean copious gem use even if the mages are outfitted to deal with something much more dangerous than whatever it is they're fighting.

There's a relative army strength threshhold which the AI uses to determine if it will spend *any gems* whatsoever. Its a yes/no condition. If no, absolutely no gems will be spent.

If yes, it will waste gems in teh most gratuitous and bizarre manners possible. Ok, its not quite that bad, but it will freely burn gems no matter how minor the actual threat so long as there's enough enemy army strength for it to spend any gems at all. Since the relevant strength is quite a ways below equal, carrying too many gems can and often does equate to gratuitous gem wasting.

How the AI actually measures relative army strength is of course flawed, and there are times when any sane player would have wanted to spend gems that it simply doesn't.