AI spell list and priority for each path

[Finalgenesis]

I would like to both share and have others share what they know of AI spell preference for each path and path combinations.

For casters, since you can only script spells for 5 turns and battles often go on longer then that, it would be incredibly helpful to know AI spell preference for each path under the most common circumstances to help plan your formation and force composition.

On a more complex level, the AI preference for mixed path mage would be even better, since most mages have mixed path. For example, I believe D path's skelly spam has a much higher priority then most other AI spells, so a mixed path mage with 2D or more will spam skelly most of the time.

Of course, research level also matters on what AI will choose...

In general, each path seem to have a small list of spells AI will choose from, and these spells seem to have a priority rating (skelly spam has high priority for example), a mage with mixed path will tend to cast the higher priority spell. Actual circumstances are also a factor in what AI choose to cast, ex. if enemies are close, or if they are a horde of undead, or immune, or if you troops are mixed in with enemies ...etc

I'll start with some, please contribute what you know. I'll admit I haven't paid as much attention as I should have to what AI cast under most circumstances, so do correct my patchwork memory if I am wrong. I'll use +, ++, +++ and Pre to denote spell priority, Pre being 1 cast buff usually done before other spells, + denotes how high a priority I have observed (purely casual observation with no hard statistical work!)

pure paths:

Air - Not too versed in this one, I recall shockwave when packs of troops come within range.

Fire - Phoenix Pyre (Pre)?, Not too versed in this one, I do recall if packs of troops come within range flame eruption (or immolation if research not high enough) can be seen sometimes.

Water - Frozen heart (++)?, my memory fails me here.

Earth - Skin buffs (Pre), Blade wind (++), ???. The buffs are most noticeable, any mage with E almost always cast a E skin buff first, only S seem to have as high a buff priority then E. A mage with E and S together can waste a lot of time buffing...

Astral - Buffs (Pre), Paralyze(+++), enslave mind(+++).
Casters with astral tend to buff themselves with body ethereal and the like before moving on to Paralyze or enslave mind.

Death - Skelly spam (+++), disentegrate (++), wither bones (+). Everyone probably see this all the time, AI loves skelly spam, if disentegrate is avaible they will sometimes use this, I've observed rare wither bones if a clump of undead is within range sometimes, wither bones is never cast if you also have undead in the vicinity (due to friendly fire AI consideration). Overall AI spell list for D is quite useful.

Nature - I'll admit I'm not too versed with this one, I roughly remember barkskin prebuff and many castings of protection, vine arrow and vine storm in there somewhere...

Blood - Imps, goddamned imps. AI use this like skelly spam. Not too versed with this one either, but all I remember are the damn imps.

Mixed path priorities:

Keep in mind path level also matters, a 1D mage can't skelly spam and may revert to next highest priority spell which could be another path he has... I'm not sure if a D6S4 or a D4S6 mage have different priority value though, would AI factor in path level (and thus fatigue) in their priority?

-Astral and Death tend to have a higher priority then most spells aside from buffs, specifically skelly spam, paralyze, enslave mind. Astral buffs are among the highest priority buffs alongside Earth.

Astral and Death - Nether darts (++), most commonly seen with 1S1D mages, since they can't skelly spam or cast paralyze.

[Gandalf Parker]

This comes up a lot. Thank you for at least considering that there is SOME sort of pattern and not just stupid randoms.

Personally, I would like to see someone do some testing on it. I find that the mages have a preference for self buffing but I wonder if they dont have a valid union complaint. Can it be RPG'd as "he didnt give me anything buffy to wear so Im going to buff myself"?

For your project you might want to do some solo games with debug (-dd) turned on. Or ask for the games logs from one of the servers. Especially if its a finished game. Have the server run one more turning with logging on then zip up and send you the logs. (I highly advise asking for only ONE turns logging because they are really REALLY big)

Here is one small bit of one debug log for one round of combat of one battle for one commander named Zrakhnadar.
http://www.dom3minions.com/files/spell_ai.txt

A few of these should at least give you a list of what spells are considered and possibly what kind of weighting is given. If you come up with any specific suggestions to that then please let me know.

[Finalgenesis]

I'll pore through it~

[Kobal2]

Air mages love spamming ghost wolves / phantasmal soldiers.

In fact, the AI seems to put a lot more weight in general on spells that summon new stuff on your side, as opposed to spells that try to destroy the other guy's stuff. I suppose it makes some sense in absolute terms, since adding one soldier to your army always works 100% while zapping the other guy might miss or fail to pass MR, but it's often silly in practice.

[thejeff]

The evaluation of actual damage spells seems pretty straightforward. We can quibble about whether it's better to do very likely damage to lots of little things or go for the long shot Soul Slay type kill against a high mr target, but it seems like the AI pretty much goes for max hp damage.

The usual complaints are with buffs and summons. Both of which the AI doesn't seem to treat as situation dependent. Often time is wasted casting self-buffs when the caster is well behind the lines anyway. Or summoning weak units or ones to slow to reach the fight. My feeling is that both summons and self-buffs are overweighted in the algorithm. I'm not sure what factors affect the summons calculation, but it's possible that more should be considered. Ideally range to enemy should be a factor, but at least the abilities of the unit, not just hp. This may already be done. The debug log doesn't really show you.
I would also love to see path booster spells considered. I don't think I've ever seen an unscripted Summon Earthpower and that should be a very high priority.

You could RPG it as you suggest, but I haven't noticed any real relationship. Obviously they won't cast buffs they already have, but mages are perfectly happy to Ironskin or Astral Shield if you've given them a luck amulet, for example.

[iRFNA]

I've seen the EA ulm PD shaman cast summon earthpower before.

I opened up a disassembler and hunted down the spell weighting function because I wanted to see what triggers use of the berserker spells, but it's a maze of crazy cases. The AI definitely isn't random in the least (ok I did say there was no random calls here but I've found a bit of randomization of the scores after their calculation, but it wouldn't cause any sort of trend), but the algorithms used are indeed questionable.

[Finalgenesis]

ah yes now I remember the phantasmal wolves... the damn wolves...

Interesting observation on the summon weighting, I know imps and skelly spams are top of the list, and wolves for air. I'd say in general the priority is Buff->Summon->Nuke. As seen with W or F mage with gems will spam elementals.

It would seem that a water/fire mage with no other path (and no gems!) are the best AI nuker. A mage with more then 1 good buff path (E+S say) are crap once off script since they'll take a long time to buff and by the time they get around to business they're already close to passing out. a mage with summoning path (A,D) will buff up then summon non-stop. These are all generalizations of course... there are exceptions (such as D mage taking a break from skelly spam to drop a wither bones... I think?).

Does that about sum up what others have observed?

hmmm I just tested a lvl 9 all path rainbow mage... he buffed body eth the 1st round, weapon of sharpness 2nd round (he is guarded by 10 troops tarts), quickening on 3rd round, wither bones, falling frost, wither bones, magma eruption. Enemy is 2 block of 30-40 troops, 1 is dust army, the other is shape shifters, it's actually surprisingly good cast choices... I don't recall my actual game mages doing stuff nearly half as good... Though he choose nuke over summon, whereas usually I see summons from AI casting... I wonder how the priority weighting calculation works generally, total damage done certainly seems to be a part of it... food for thought.

[bbz]

Also is it just me or when you script the same spell dont your mages just keep on spamming it (5xsoul slay or enslave mind)?
And if its not in the algorithm probably it should be, something like the last casted damaging spell cast it if possible otherwise cast some other damaging spell and if no1 is in range again, then summon somthing like that would be nice

[thejeff]

No. Once the script is done, they pay no attention to it. Soul Slay and Enslave mind are both pretty common choices for those that can cast them, but they're just as common if you spent the script buffing or casting other spells.

The L9 mage is probably biased towards the spells that scale with path level. Most of the spells you listed are very effective with high paths, while most summons don't scale as well.

[Gandalf Parker]

My only concession to the problem is to avoid doing any research in Alteration for as long as I can. Thats where most of the self-buffs are and those seem to be the ones that the mages go off script for the most.

As far as I can tell I THINK that the computer players spell casters are ruled by the same AI code as our casters which might also be part of the problem.