Very disappointing news about AI combat spell use

[Arker]

Kristoffer O said:
Breath of winter is also nerfed. It was unreasonably powerful for a lvl 1 spell. It now causes fatigue instead of AN damage.

VERY glad to hear that.

That one spell has been my bane for far too long. I could count the number of times it's done me any good on one hand. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've seen friendly fire casualties from it though.

Okin: Very good demonstration. Happy to say that hasn't happened to me, yet. However, other than BoW, yes I've had the experience with nature mages insistently casting protection all around when playing Abysia, and when fighting Abysia. It gets very frustrating.

PvK said:
Heh! I was wondering if the AI would ever creatively decide Vortex of Returning by itself.

Just marking Vortex of Returning as "AI never casts" would be a crude but simple solution. But I think there is a counter-argument, which is that, in an ideal world, there would be enough time to program the AI so that it sensed when its own troops were in grave danger of being wiped out, and the home province was safer, and only in those circumstances to cast that particular spell.

Here's my thinking on it, for whatever it's worth. Yes, it's *better* to have an AI that can read the situation intelligently and know when it makes sense to cast a spell like that, or not. But it's MUCH easier and quicker simply to disable the spell, and without making a number up, I'd say most of the time the two solutions have the same practical effect - the spell is not cast. So disable the problematic spells first, then later if the programmer has time to add them back in with appropriate logic, great! If not, just removing them is still great though. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good.