[Lingchih]

Hehe, your post is hilarious romis. I've seen all of those things happen. You do seem to know some of the solutions though, and all the posts here are right, and will help.

Flaming arrows can be notoriously hard to cast correctly though. It seems like the mages just become show-offs when you give them fire gems. "Flaming arrows... bah! Behold... walking fire!" I've played MA Marigon a few times, which is quite dependent on the spell, and I eventually got to a point where I could usually cast if effectively.

You definitely just give the mage only as many gems as he needs for the cast. Hopefully you can use a mage that can cast it without needing to boost his level. An extra gem for level boosting will often make him do his Merlin impersonation instead of just doing the job. Moving him up a bit may help, but most of all, just use it on large armies. Trying to use it on smaller armies will almost always make the mage decide it's not needed. And often times, I find they will eventually cast it, but not where you have it scripted. They'll do a couple other things they think are more important first, then cast it.