my mages cast crap spells?

[Sombre]

Yes in terms of multiplayer it's rather more complex because different people will have 'banned' or 'greyed out' different spells. The game would have to keep track of all of them, although it isn't like that would be any more complicated than anything the game currently keeps track of.

This isn't the sort of feature that can just be stuck into the game, unlike new units and spells and alterations to message text. On the other hand, it can't actually be /that/ complicated can it? I mean to the people who made the game from scratch. It's not like we're asking for a major altertion to the GUI or to the way the game works.

Currently the game checks your research level against the level of the spell and says yes you can cast it or no you can't (ignoring other costs for the moment). All spells are simply given a required level, there's no 'I've been researched' flag. But you can restrict spells to nations and via modding (every turn) you can do it on the fly, provided the mod is loaded from the start. That means it's currently entirely possible to alter a spell so it's no longer available to cast (by resticting it to a non existing nation). The complication here is that different people will want different restricted lists and the AI will want nothing restricted at all. But again, that doesn't seem like something too hard for the coder(s) who made Dom3.

[PvK]

I think Sombre's idea is very good. (Happens to be I thought so since it occurred to me back before Dominions II ... ) I think it's been suggested to IW before, but it wouldn't hurt to re-suggest it.

[mivayan]

Manwich said:
I then researched into conjuration to allow my mages to pheonix fire and cast fire storm, or flame storm.

You'll never get them to start a battle with phoenix power(+1 fire), fire storm(Battlefield enchantment) without scripting. So that's one guy to script at least.

And no, giving mages way more gems than they need for the scripted spells rarely works.. need to hand out a few gems each important battle to the flame storm casters. Maybe the fire storm caster spends the whole battle unconsious so he cant waste gems?

You could make just one hotkey with phoenix power, flame storm, flame storm, falling fires, falling fires, and give it to all your mages to save time.

[Loren]

One point:

I doubt the game keeps track of what spells are researched. That's needless data, it can be recreated in an eyeblink from the list of what research levels have been reached.

I do agree the AI goes nuts with buffing. SP, I was trying to take down the last few LA Ryleh provinces. Sending armies against them just resulted in them being routed for no gain at all. I had gems to burn, I empowered/wished my pretender to all 10's and over 500 hp and sent him in. Routed, zero kills?!?! I view the battle--he spends ages buffing himself and then starts summoning garbage, none of which makes it through the enemy spells. At no point does either side ever cast a spell or take a swing at the other (except the summons)!

Every attempt to script him to do something useful failed until I finally simply told him to attack without casting any buffs first. He still routed after 50 turns but managed to accomplish something first. I never did kill any of the powerful units but I did manage to kill a few prophets and then my dominion could push through and kill him that way.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
Currently the game checks your research level against the level of the spell and says yes you can cast it or no you can't (ignoring other costs for the moment). All spells are simply given a required level, there's no 'I've been researched' flag. But you can restrict spells to nations and via modding (every turn) you can do it on the fly, provided the mod is loaded from the start.

The way I read it, that means there must be a "I've been researched" flag. That is, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the #startspell map command, which flags a spell as researched at the start of the game. So the tactical AI must be checking an explicit list of researched spells and not just school/level constraints, and that explicit list must be on a player-by-player basis.

Reportedly #startspell is broken at the moment, though.

-Max

[Sombre]

I was thinking #startspell probably just removes the check for level or somehow moves the required level to 0. I suppose that's similar to a 'researched' flag.

But no, I wasn't actually talking about startspell. When I say 'modding' I mean .dm commands, not map modding - if you create a mod and load it up at the start you can alter the requirements of spells whenever you want. But you do this only by changing their required level etc.

Even if startspell works, does it function on a player by player basis? If it does, that would seem to bode well for getting this put in a patch. I really think allowing us to grey out our spell lists would be a serious improvement to magic in the game and, to an extent, reduce micromanagement.

[MaxWilson]

The documentation says #startspell is #startspell <player> "Spell name", so yes. Unfortunately the spell goes away on turn 2 and never comes back, so maybe managing spells has changed under the hood since Dom3 and made this harder. (Maybe it is just checking researched school levels now.)

-Max

[Beorne]

PvK said:
I think Sombre's idea is very good. (Happens to be I thought so since it occurred to me back before Dominions II ... ) I think it's been suggested to IW before, but it wouldn't hurt to re-suggest it.

I agree with Sombre, the idea is very easy to implement and it is very good. Unfortunately, as PvK said, it has been around for years and IW don't seem intertested. A little more push ...

[MaxWilson]

Sometimes I don't understand the tactical AI's choices at all. For instance, I was attacking Solaris' indy province of Knights of the Chalice + Flagellants with a couple of Sauromancers and Shamans and some chaff. The Sauromancers were scripted to cast <Communion Master, Storm of Thorns, SoT, SoT, SoT>. Come battle time, the knights charge my lines, my mages cast Communion Master and then, when the knights are seven squares away, cast Storm of Thorns as scripted... at the flagellants 18 squares away! I was relying on SoT for its stopping power, and it's not like there was any danger of friendly fire. Totally baffling to me. It turned out all right, and in fact on the fourth round of battle my mages took some time out from shelling flagellants to tie up some knights, but there are times when I don't understand my mages at all. I'd have them executed for incompetence but there's no disband command...

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, I bet the AI was optimizing for damage output. Since Knights have high Prot, they hardly take any *damage* from the vines, so the flagellants look like a better target. I suppose next time I expect a situation like this I should script Tangle Vines instead even though it has a much smaller AoE.

-Max

[Jazzepi]

I think the biggest problem with Dominions 3 is the distinct inability to easily manage the troops.

What we need is...

1. A better system for handling mage scripts. A single set of 9 hotkeys is isn't very useful especially when you can't readily see what is stored in them without over writing some commander's commands. I'd like to see a graphical interface where you could drag and drop premade scripts into commanders. It would be great if you could create a library of them and give them names, taking them from game to game. People could exchange script libraries and such, or post juicy ones they really liked.

2. Longer scripting buffers, with the option to end in a "always cast this spell" mode. I'd say something like 20 actions instead of the 7-8 that are allowed now.

3. The ability to turn off the casting AI on individual leaders. I find this so irritating when my mages completely ignore what I want them to cast.

4. A better army setup screen. There needs to be a way to toggle between individual unit displays, and big stacks of them. It would also be nice to be able to use the mouse in this respect, to drag and drop after using a box to highlight instead of being forced to select the units then click on the commander. But really the thing that's desperately needed is a compressed unit view where you can drag hundreds or even thousands of chaff troops around at a time.

5. You should be able to limit mages on which spells they can cast in general without specifying. A little box that pops up and allows you to check or uncheck individual types of spells. A good example would be that the box has a selection for Buffs, Offensive, Defensive, Self-Buffs (making a distinction between buffs that improve troops and just the caster). Obviously the details would be a little complicated, but I think it'd be extremely useful.