Legions of Steel - can someone explain me this?

[Tifone]

Hello, I'm playing an hotseat test friendly game with some ppl and one trying kailasa is having a strange behaviour with a Yaksha.

He is set to Legions of Steel, Legions of Steel, spells. The spells are actually... flying shards so not that good, but we wanted to try a prot-enhanced first line of the big Bandars gorilla guys with armour and shield.

Well, the quality of the tactic is surely dubious but the problem is another. The Yaksha casts the spell on the archers first, despite the bandars being closer, and then to the lonely markata scout prophet in the back, then just goes for the flying shards. He just ignores the Bandars, who surely need it more! I don't get the reason of this.

Prolly some of you might answer this without even giving a look to the battle (I have probably misunderstood the nature of the spell?), still I post it so you can see yourself eventually. Latest patch and CBM required.

Thanks for any help

[archaeolept]

i think it's just stupidity on the part of the spell-casting AI. It sees the archers as most in need of armor, so...

solution in this case is to place the prophet w/ the archers, at least.

[AdmiralZhao]

I have the same behavior in a test game I am running with Shinuyama. I have one Bakemono mage ~4 spaces behind a squad of 25 samurai that he is supposed to cast Legions of Steel on. The mage casts the spell on himself before casting it on the grouped samurai. This has happened reliably in 5+ combats. I'm not sure what to do about this except put the mage in the middle of the samurai.

[Tifone]

Mmh. Dunno if to post this on the Bug thread or what

@archaeolept, tried (while at the risk of some lucky Fire/Attack archers slaying my prophet). The Yaksha so casts archers then himself or the flankers. He really has to hate those Bandars.

@AdmiralZhao: ouch putting a 0 prot mage in the middle of the first line really calls for a lucky arrow I was thinking about doing that too but I would regret too much losing a 320 gold mage to an indie archer...

Thanks for the answers guys.

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, you could try to put the mage 11 squares away from the archers.
If he is already closer to the bandar moving the archers to the left or right behind the flankers could do the trick.

[Lokean]

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that protective spells are preferentially targetted on the lowest protection units first.

[Nikelaos]

or mix a few markata into your bandar wall, chances are he'll target the markata and hit the bandar too.

[Tifone]

@ Lokean ...which are also the ones you place carefully trying not to have them attacked, that's why spell seems a bit in need of a fix to me...

[Wrana]

iirc, it was even reported as bug... Not sure that it will be fixed soon, though - authors planned to change spells order of preference, but said nothing about targeting...

[zzcat]

Legion of steel has range 10, so the bandars may be out of range at the third turn.

The real problem is why AI cast LoS on archers. As we know LoS is totally useless vs unarmored unit. IMO AI should only cast a spell when at least a valid target is found. IIRC AI will try to find archers before they cast wind guide, and if no archer in the BF, the command will be ignored. Obviously the procedure is omited in LoS script