How to use Pangea songs?

[Beorne]

tune of growth then tune of fear

[Actuarian]

Actuarian said:
They sound great but don't seem to be particulary useful spells.

Twice, early in a game, I put the caster in the front row, set my melee troops to hold and attack, and scripted the caster to cast flying shards for a couple of turns and then cast one of the 3 spell songs. Both times the AI overrode the script and kept casting shards even though the enemy troops were definately in range.

I really wanted to see how the spell worked, so I attacked a province with no archers(I also had no archers), and set my troops to guard commander. The AI still overrode the script and kept casting shards.

The first two times I had the troops scripted for hold and attack. The caster was scripted for shards, shards, attack, tune of death, tune of fear.

The third time turns out to be a case of user error
The spellcaster was in the default position on the battlefield and not on the front row.

Still, it seemed like in all three cases (definately the first two) the enemy troops were within range 15 by the time the song spells were scripted to kick in.

[Arralen]

Actuarian said:
Still, it seemed like in all three cases (definately the first two) the enemy troops were within range 15 by the time the song spells were scripted to kick in.

ha!

The error is (nearly) always in front of the computer

The songs have range of "0" squares, but 15 areas of effect.

This means the effect hits 15 areas around the caster - what is very unlikely to include one 15 squares away.
How the distribution is calculated is not fully known AFAIK, but I would guess it works similar to a 15-area fear or cold aura effect, but only temporary. There's some information about the working of (fear) auras by one of the devs which sheds some light on the distribution of effects, but I wasn't able to dig it up again.

However, you can safely assume the songs have a 'effective' range of 1-3 squares.

PS: use Pans to cast those spell songs ..

[Graeme Dice]

What I would love to see is an order that resulted in "Move forwards as if you were attacking, but cast spells at the same time". There's all kinds of neat sort range spells that would be much more useful if your mages would move towards the enemy.

[Actuarian]

Arralen,

You're right. My mistake.

Still, that makes those spells close to useless. From a single save I tried several times to get my Pan close to the front line to sing those songs. For the first four times I got him killed, but on the fifth time I actually a cast terror spell. It didn't seem have any effect. The next turn my surviving Pan was killed. I did win all five battles fairly easily, no thanks to those spells. It seems to me that those national spells should be a bit better.

Maybe if I set more troops to guard commander it would work better?

I'm curious. Do you know what causes a script to not work? In this case I guess the spell was automatically in range but it didn't cast because none of the target squares contained an enemy. Is this correct?

Good idea, Graeme.

[Beorne]

Arralen said:

ha!

The error is (nearly) always in front of the computer

The songs have range of "0" squares, but 15 areas of effect.

This means the effect hits 15 areas around the caster - what is very unlikely to include one 15 squares away.
How the distribution is calculated is not fully known AFAIK, but I would guess it works similar to a 15-area fear or cold aura effect, but only temporary. There's some information about the working of (fear) auras by one of the devs which sheds some light on the distribution of effects, but I wasn't able to dig it up again.

However, you can safely assume the songs have a 'effective' range of 1-3 squares.

I understood the diffetence between range and aoe.
I were in the second line, enemies were 1 or 2 squares away. I scripted attack, attack, attack (to advance) tune and tune.
Obviously is not clear how the aoe is implemented. It is a circle affecting both fiend and enemies? In this case the tunes are a waste of programming time of the devs.
Is it a shape of area 15 from the caster affecting only enemies? In this case the tunes should be very useful, but from experience this is clearly not the case. Is it half way (ie: area shaping but incuded in the 15 area circle) ??? Who knows? A word of the devs it is needed to use effectively these spells.

PS: use Pans to cast those spell songs ..

Seriously ... would you put a 350 gp Pan in the front line to cast these spell? Are you joking?

[Agrajag]

AFAIK 15 AOE means a circle with a territory of 15.
That gives us 15=Pi*r^2 => r=sqrt(15/Pi)~=2.185
Assuming the circle is centered on the caster, that would make the spell affect anything withing a range of 2, or just a space of 1 between the caster and the affected enemy.

I'm not sure about wether it affects friends and foes or only the latter, since I haven't checked or tested those things, but atleast I can give you an approximation fo range

[PhilD]

Agrajag said:
AFAIK 15 AOE means a circle with a territory of 15.
That gives us 15=Pi*r^2 => r=sqrt(15/Pi)~=2.185

The problem is, apparently nobody (maybe not even the devs) knows exactly how the affected squares are chosen - I don't think it's "the 15 closest to the caster, breaking ties randomly in a uniform way".

[Actuarian]

Thanks for the info, Agrajag. Only enemies should be valid targets for these spells; otherwise my script would have worked.

I may be completely missing something, but I think that in their current form those song spells are interesting concepts that don't work in practice.

They would be somewhat useful if the range was two or three. You could reduce the area of effect to compensate a bit. Otherwise, I can't see how anyone in their right mind would ever script them, and without scripting they would only be used once in a blue moon.

[BigJMoney]

PhilD said:

The problem is, apparently nobody (maybe not even the devs) knows exactly how the affected squares are chosen - I don't think it's "the 15 closest to the caster, breaking ties randomly in a uniform way".

Exactly. It's more like "15 squares around the caster, chosen randomly, but retaining a 'circlish' kind of shape."

What sucks is that if it's a true AoE, that means it's 'wasting' some of the precious 15 squares behind and to the sides of the caster; ie. to achieve the full effect of the spell, your caster is supposed to be surrounded on all sides.

I think a solution in part would be to make the songs fan shaped at a 90 degree angle in the front arc and still 15 squares of AoE.

It could be that the spell isn't casting, not because it isn't in potential range, but because when it goes through the simulator, it doesn't manage to hit a single square with an enemy in it. In fact, the spell doesn't have a range at all, so it would be impossible for this spell to not be cast simply due to range! There must be some different criteria for range 0 spells. Or maybe you truly do need to have an adjacent enemy to satify the range 0 requirement. In that case, my 90 degree fan idea wouldn't any difference for helping the spell go off.

=$= Big J Money =$=