my mages cast crap spells?

[Manwich]

what's with the summon lesser fire elemental spam? I am playing as EA Abysia in a SP game vs a mix of mighty and impossible AIs, and I back up my armies with 4-5 annointed of rhuax stacked wtih fire gems. I researched to evocation 9, and was fairly satisfied with my mages' ability to wreck an army. I then researched into conjuration to allow my mages to pheonix fire and cast fire storm, or flame storm. However as soon as I researched conjuration all they do is quickly blow all their gems chain summoning lesser fire elementals. I can't imagine why I'd ever want to spend a gem on a lesser fire elemental instead of a fire storm, especially when my armies are immune to fire! In most battles I'd rather they cast the free spells such as falling fires, fire pillar, fire cloud, then summon lesser fire elemental.
My question is am I screwed? Can I get them to stop without scripting out spells for them? I can only script so many spells anyway. Do I have to resort to forgoing firestorm and flamestorm by not giving my commanders fire gems?

[Shovah32]

Are you sure the battles they were in would be considered big enough for them to use battlefield spells? That could have stopped them. If that is the problem give the gems to non-mages until your going into a big battle where they will cast the desired spells.

[Sombre]

I get tired of scripting mages - that kind of micromanagement doesn't really appeal much to me (which is fine, since I play SP) and I get what you're talking about. If you research nothing but evocation they're fine, but sometimes when you teach them a new spell that's actually pretty bad, they just go nuts casting that instead.

I think a very simple way to solve the problem (far more simple than allowing us control over AI 'weight' on different spells) would be to allow us to 'ban' or 'forget' certain researched spells - to toggle them on or off. That way you can restrict your unscripted mages to stuff that might actually be useful.

Good idea?

[Ironhawk]

Sombre, you know you can store spell scripts in hotkeys, right? Point at a commanders script space in the army setup screen. Press Ctrl-<number key> to store it. Then point at another commanders script line and press a number key to deploy that script. In this way you can script many mages quickly.

Same thing works for regular commanders and troop formations, as well.

[Sombre]

I know that, but it's still annoying because the script that would actually be useful varies according to the mages having gems, the situation you're in and the spells you have researched. So in effect the hotkeys don't really reduce the micro for me that much.

This is just personal preference - I can't be bothered tweaking the scripts of tens of different mages all over the map, hotkeys or not. I think a lot of people are in the same boat as me and being able to disable spells you never want cast (such as sabbath slave or whatever) would help people like me out. The AI also sometimes decides it doesn't want to cast what you scripted, so this would help even those who enjoy using scripts extensively.

[Manwich]

Even if the battle was too small to cast battlefield spells, the weaker summon spell still costs the same amount of fire gems. My point is shouldn't the casting scale with the cost of the spell instead of the power? If I'm fighting a small battle I'd still rather cast an expensive powerful spell then an expensive weak spell!

[PvK]

I think Sombre's idea is very good. (Happens to be I thought so since it occurred to me back before Dominions II ... ) I think it's been suggested to IW before, but it wouldn't hurt to re-suggest it.

[Beorne]

PvK said:
I think Sombre's idea is very good. (Happens to be I thought so since it occurred to me back before Dominions II ... ) I think it's been suggested to IW before, but it wouldn't hurt to re-suggest it.

I agree with Sombre, the idea is very easy to implement and it is very good. Unfortunately, as PvK said, it has been around for years and IW don't seem intertested. A little more push ...

[MaxWilson]

Sometimes I don't understand the tactical AI's choices at all. For instance, I was attacking Solaris' indy province of Knights of the Chalice + Flagellants with a couple of Sauromancers and Shamans and some chaff. The Sauromancers were scripted to cast <Communion Master, Storm of Thorns, SoT, SoT, SoT>. Come battle time, the knights charge my lines, my mages cast Communion Master and then, when the knights are seven squares away, cast Storm of Thorns as scripted... at the flagellants 18 squares away! I was relying on SoT for its stopping power, and it's not like there was any danger of friendly fire. Totally baffling to me. It turned out all right, and in fact on the fourth round of battle my mages took some time out from shelling flagellants to tie up some knights, but there are times when I don't understand my mages at all. I'd have them executed for incompetence but there's no disband command...

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, I bet the AI was optimizing for damage output. Since Knights have high Prot, they hardly take any *damage* from the vines, so the flagellants look like a better target. I suppose next time I expect a situation like this I should script Tangle Vines instead even though it has a much smaller AoE.

-Max

[Jazzepi]

I think the biggest problem with Dominions 3 is the distinct inability to easily manage the troops.

What we need is...

1. A better system for handling mage scripts. A single set of 9 hotkeys is isn't very useful especially when you can't readily see what is stored in them without over writing some commander's commands. I'd like to see a graphical interface where you could drag and drop premade scripts into commanders. It would be great if you could create a library of them and give them names, taking them from game to game. People could exchange script libraries and such, or post juicy ones they really liked.

2. Longer scripting buffers, with the option to end in a "always cast this spell" mode. I'd say something like 20 actions instead of the 7-8 that are allowed now.

3. The ability to turn off the casting AI on individual leaders. I find this so irritating when my mages completely ignore what I want them to cast.

4. A better army setup screen. There needs to be a way to toggle between individual unit displays, and big stacks of them. It would also be nice to be able to use the mouse in this respect, to drag and drop after using a box to highlight instead of being forced to select the units then click on the commander. But really the thing that's desperately needed is a compressed unit view where you can drag hundreds or even thousands of chaff troops around at a time.

5. You should be able to limit mages on which spells they can cast in general without specifying. A little box that pops up and allows you to check or uncheck individual types of spells. A good example would be that the box has a selection for Buffs, Offensive, Defensive, Self-Buffs (making a distinction between buffs that improve troops and just the caster). Obviously the details would be a little complicated, but I think it'd be extremely useful.