Fire mages casting Rage on Umbrals

[UncleYee]

As Abysia, I've got fire mages. Normally I just script phoenix power and let them do their thing. This has worked just fine, with falling fires and fireballs and the occasional hail mary flare. But now that they're engaging Agartha, I'm noticing that all they seem to want to do is cast Rage on Umbrals.

As big, scary monsters, Umbrals sure make an excellent target... for Incinerate. But instead, Rage. Line up 7 mages, and watch them cast Rage 7 times a turn. I've seen many rounds of this now, and I've never seen any effect.

I notice that the spell description for Hyrophobia, which sounds like the mass version of Rage, says only living units are affected. Rage itself doesn't specify, but I've sure never seen it work on an Umbral.

So is an Umbral an invalid target for Rage? If so, is the casting a bug?

[vfb]

They are probably passing their MR check. It's just a poor choice of spell, the combat AI does that sometimes.

You could use CBM, where rage requires a F gem and no longer gets an MR check.

[UncleYee]

Originally Posted by vfb

They are probably passing their MR check. It's just a poor choice of spell, the combat AI does that sometimes.

I don't know if I believe that. I'm talking about watching about 30 casts of Rage in a row (from lvl 3 and 4 mages) bounce off of a single Umbral. By comparison, I took my very first Scorpion Man into combat last turn, where he raced ahead of his unit. It took a lvl 1 enemy mage (using death gems) exactly two casts to disintegrate him, despite my poor scorpion man's magic res showing 18. These Umbrals were 16 or 17.

And what about Hydrophobia? Isn't it the same effect? That doesn't isn't supposed to work on undead. Does Rage really work on undead units?

[vfb]

Take a look at the debug output from the battle then, and see what's happening.

[Illuminated One]

I'm also quite convinced that this is not an mr issue in all cases (while it's totally possible mathematically). Try to use farstrike against single lightly armored enemies (a lone slinger for example). There's a big chance you don't deal damage on a hit.

[FAJ]

I am curious as to how the AI chooses its spells when it is disregarding scripting.

Recently I had a friendly neighbor suicide some militia an event gave him to kill them off. I had 3 diseased warlocks in the province, with slaves, scripted to "blood heal" then stay behind troops. The idea being to heal them back to full and keep them blood hunting for another 10 turns, in which I would blood heal them again, doing my best to retain utility out of diseased hunters untill they get eventually feeble-minded. Each was at HP < 40%

Instead of blood healing, they spammed "body ethereal" on their own blood slaves. and after they were all ethereal, they cast luck.

Is it possible that with old age, comes senile behavior? These warlocks are sacrificing themselves to buff their slaves!

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by FAJ

I am curious as to how the AI chooses its spells when it is disregarding scripting.

Logs show some of that. Here is a short bit of one...

com Baalboo cast spell (favspell Nothing) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 48
best spell so far Twist Fate (score112)
best spell so far Personal Luck (score951)
castspell: cnr783 spl340 (Personal Luck) vis0 x20 y9 spldmg2

I think that was on the lowest log setting. Setting it higher might give more info.

If you add a -d or -dd to the line that calls dom3.exe on the icon that starts the game for you then it will keep debugging logs.

[Sombre]

What you've never wanted to get lucky with an ethereal virgin?

HI-OH!

[Illuminated One]

What many people don't understand about the AI is that it's quite depressed.
Whenever preparing a battle you must plan ahead and take away any opportunities to commit suicide or kill their friends from your mages.

Planning to use lightning damage? Do not have ironskin researched. Or cast it yourself followed by lightning resistance and a lightning resistance ring.
Enemy has fire mages? Let your nature mages lead the charge instead of casting mass protection.
Now, the AI has not yet figured out how to kill itself with a sword, so SCs are fine.

[Psycho]

AI can be really stupid when deciding what to cast or on whom and often you can do nothing about it. Recently I tested my vampire queen with no lightning protection against a bunch of vanjarls. They were all scripted to cast resist lightning, spells. Instead of spamming the vamp queen with lightning spells in 90% of situations they cast banishment on her 26 MR.