AI doesn't follow orders ?

[Olive]

Hi,

Got a problem with the AI. I've a F9S5 pretender that I script like this :
- Cast offensive spell(s) which needs gems (i.e. Flame Storm).
- Cast returning.

The goal is to teleport him in an enemy province where there's an army, slaughter some troops and bring him back home.

But that moron doesn't seem able to follow those simple orders. He has the gems, but :

- If the army is too weak, he doesn't even cast the flame storm, he just casts spells like astral shield, and casts the returning spell. Complete waste of gems.

- If he casts the Flame Storm and the enemy army is routing, well, it's worse because he doesn't cast the returning spell and plays the sitting duck behind enemy lines.

OK, I think usually It's smart to spare gems if the enemy is too weak or routing, but here... Any way to force him executing his scripted orders without being too smart ?

[Sheap]

Not really, the AI is just too "smart" for its own good sometimes. It will ignore your orders if:
* There is no valid target for the spell it is trying to cast. It's not very smart about this, either. At least in dom2, it wouldn't cast for instance resist fire, if you had a 50% fire resist item, so having such an item actually made your resistance WORSE than if you didn't have it. I don't know if this aggravating problem is still around. Of course, the AI will happily try to summon soulless, even if there are no corpses...
* The AI thinks the enemy army is too weak and does not want to waste the spell.
* The AI thinks the fatigue cost would be too high for the spell (the AI will never cast a spell that puts it over 200 fatigue, and sometimes won't cast them to put it over 100 fatigue).

If you are worried about being a sitting duck, you should probably have Ritual of Returning on your pretender. This way, he won't risk getting himself killed when he is out playing mobile artillery. It's a waste of a turn if he gets stranded, but at least he won't die.

[Meglobob]

Yes, I have encountered this too. Personally I would prefer the AI to follow the players script no matter what. Then if it all goes pear shaped, you have only your self to blame...

[Olive]

Yes I've ritual of returning cast on the pretender, it's safer as he's not of the SC type.

There's always the solution to script him with returning and attack his province with a earth attack or such to bring him back home next turn (let's hope he'll cast the returning spell this time )

[Maltrease]

There was abuse where players would flood large armies with count and chaff attacks and so the large armies would use up all of the gems, before the "real" battle.

So looks like both approaches have problems.

[NTJedi]

I've had scenarios where the entire enemy is retreating yet my mages were casting spells like "living fire" which summons fire elementals.
Complete waste of gems.

[Evil Dave]

I occasionally run into problems with many-paths-1 rainbow mages "forgetting" to cast power of the spheres, making the rest of my orders for powerful spells useless. I wonder how hard it would be to add a "just follow orders" option to go with spell scripts.

[Sheap]

Yes, the real problem with any simultaneous-turn game is that you never can predict exactly what will happen between what you are planning for and what actually happens, that might ruin your plan. Like in this MP game I am in, where I arranged my troops for elephants, but instead got longbowmen because someone else attacked at the same time as me.

Clever players will exploit this to waste your gems if the AI does not have ability to override orders, it is easy to do, just cast a cheap remote summon and watch the gems boil away.

A checkbox to say 'always follow my orders no matter what' would be good, but if you use it too much, gem-wasting attacks become viable again.

Better would be if the AI's overriding was smarter, but how smart can it get really?