Spell casting routine is seriously screwed?

[QXel]

Yep. This IA isn't very smart ...

In an SP game I am running these days, I have my EA Arcocephale 3A 1E 3N scripted as "Eagle Eye/Lighting Orb x4/ cast spells" for some [Medieval Fantasy réplicas of Katiouchkas] casting 'breath of the Dragon' in my war against ... C'Tis !!! (at list 50% Poison resistant Lizards ...)
Very, very, very irritating (at most ...).

Also, as other threads allready complains, the horrible "'touch of madness' 3N mages illness" ...

The same with magic items management.

Two examples : an IA mage going into battle with a the 'research skull' (forget the name) and the biggest joke the game made to me : my Abysian fire mage with an eye of aiming picking up after killing an enemy mage ... another Eye of aiming !!!

Well. This is not very often, so, I don't complain a lot ...

But still, a little cleaning in the routine code will be welcome ;o)

[Meglobob]

I have had this a couple of times I script a battle winning spell and my mage ignores it, to cast something totally useless.

Its not just small battles, its happening in, its big decisive, war winning battles. So turns of planning fall apart because your mage ignores your scripting.

[thejeff]

Lightning Orb is short range. If no targets were in range it would have to ignore the script.

[autumnalcentaur]

I've had this same problem, but have generally been able to get around it by scripting one buffing spell for the mage first, and then scripting whatever I want. It seems that the mages _always_ try to cast a buffing spell if they can as the first thing they do in combat.

[Edi]

If they don't have anything with the range to hit the enemy, that is.

[Hadrian_II]

I think the worst with the spellcasting routine is, that she always burns all the gems a mage has, so if you are seiging a castle and the enemy makes a breakout on the turn you storm the castle your mages will waste all games to defeat the breakout, and you will have to storm the castle without real spell support.

Also fun is when a pan is supposed to cast weapons of sharpness, then he will always cast it on the maenads behind him and not on the centaurs that are fighting on the frontline.

Why mages love to spam ethereal wolves is a second riddle that would need some atention.

[PyroStock]

I've also seen the AI cast Legions of Steel on groups of units without any armor, which is useless.

Nothing is perfect, but the most "seriously screwed" thing with the AI spell selection is Touch of Madness. That should be script-only, like what was done with Breath of Winter.

[K]

My games have shown that the AI doesn't want to cast spells with a final fatigue over 200. Even with spells with a final fatigue between 100-200 are sometimes not cast.

Communions, gem boosting, and just having enough levels in a Path to reduce the fatigue down are needed to get the AI to do what you want.

Also, the AI wants to cast self-buffs on turn 1, and get progressively more sketchy on turn 3 and after. Cast your big spells on Turn 0 or Turn 2 if possible.