How many troops form a "large enough" force?

[ano]

I always wanted to know, how many troops you should attack with to make enemy mages use their scripts. If you attack with single scout, they won't cast scripted battlefield enchantments and other spells that require gems, but it may be really useful to send in a "large enough" suicide group of cheap chaff to see what is awaiting you.
Does anyone know what this "large enough" equals to?

[Ironhawk]

I dont think anyone knows the formula. It has to do with how dominions internally calculates the strength of the attacking army compared to your own. Off the top of my head I would say something like at least 30% as strong as the force you are attacking?

[Zeldor]

1% makes it enough too. MY mages burned like 40-50 gems last turn against single warlock.

[vfb]

I had an S3 Shadow Seer sneak into an enemy province to provide Mind Hunt cover for an assassin. The Shadow Seer got discovered, and it caused the full scripts to be used, really quite a lot of gems. He had Returning scripted too, but got killed by an Air Elemental before he could cast it.

[K]

I've seen Golem SCs and Earth elementals from Earth Attack cause gem blowing battles. I don't think the counter has anything to do with GP cost.

[Zeldor]

And I have seen 20 mages totally ignoring script when trying to storm castle with over 10 enemy mages inside. Instead of anything that deals damage they decided to cast body ethereal, luck etc on meatshields, while they were getting poisoned and shot by fort towers.

[kasnavada]

I just lost over 300 maenads (half of my troops) in a game against an army of about 80 demons because the script was ignored.

I would also probably have won on a standard map but this was a castle defence... I outnumbered them so much that eventually the maenads and other troops would have found the mages that hid behind the ennemy troops.

The script was : cast phantasmal armies (in order to reduce my loss), shoot a few lightning bolt, or buff and then fly to attack rearmost units (hopefully the commanders, but it should have killed enough to break their morale). Since the army in front was "small" the SC neglected using the gems and was therefore stuck for a dozen turns while the castle and ennemy archers shot my maenads until morale broke, and finally buffed (no idea why) then flew to the back and started doing it's job (with over 90 fatigue, this was a suicide, but thankfully, morale broke before it was too late)).

The ennemy force was about 8% of mine in number, and equal in force (with the castle). If we consider HP, the ennemy army had about 30% what my army had (rough estimate). If we consider average defence, attack, hp, he would have the advantage (and by far : this army was chaff mostly).

I'd love to see an AI capable of taking into account more information (like comparing average HP or attack or protection), in order to do a better guess when deciding to use gems or to follow the script...

It would make chaff armies a little stronger (since in a fight between a chaff armies and a "elite" army the chaff woult start using gems) but I don't actually see this as a problem.

Well, in my case, the main mistake was casting such a spell. I won't ever do that again...

[Amhazair]

I really had the impression the point at which gems start to be used was lowered several patches back, (I can't remember which one exactly) but since nothing of the kind was mentioned in the patch notes I suppose it could just my imagination.

Generally though, since that point I never had a situation where I wished my mages used gems but didn't. The other way around however... In my last game a large R'lyeh army (~750 chaff, some quality troops, 40+ mage communion, 1 Tartarian SC, and maybe a dozen other assorted mages) blew around 30 gems against 25 Pythium PD. Including a will of the fates on turn 2, and then, unscripted, a second will of the fates to give luck to the legionaires I had master enslaved after the first cast. That was funny... At least the second and third master enslave I had scripted were deemed unnecessary though.

[Sombre]

I think generally speaking people would rather waste a few gems now and then than have their mages ignore script against a serious threat and get their asses killed.

[Zeldor]

But AI also ignores spells that do not need gems. I really see no logic in casting Body Ethereal on wolves instead of for example Soul Slay or Gifts from Heaven.