AI spell casting priorities

[VedalkenBear]

For myself, I can think of at least one instance where summoning elementals during a 'rout' could be useful; that is, summoning air elementals to hit the rear to cause more casualties. However, this would be contingent on summoned elementals attacking the rear, and only really applies to air elementals.

I'd like to second _any_ spell that causes creatures to go berserk is very unhealthy.

[vfb]

Sombre said:
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I personally think all spells which require gems (other than blood spells) should be 'script only'. The only problem there is the AI nations obviously wouldn't cast any combat spells requiring gems, which is a pretty big problem I admit.
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Oh, that would be *so* nice! Then you could actually give your Antimagic caster 3 pearls when he is supposed to storm a castle, and he'd actually cast it in three battles (magic/break siege/storm), instead of blowing all the pearls in the magic battle phase.

Armies of the AI nations could be allowed to use gems unscripted -- the game knows which nations are AI and which are human.

[cleveland]

cleveland said:
Marble Warriors seems to take priority over Army of Gold, strangely.

So I wanted to get to the bottom of this, which just cost me, albeit only marginally, in a current game: I outfitted an E1 mage with Earth Boots (now E2), who casted Summon Earth Power (now E3) in round 1 (Exhibit A), and who had 4E gems in stock, scripted to cast Army of Gold next.

[Exhibit A]


As mentioned, the guy cast Marble Warriors instead, which offers less protection to far fewer troops.

I did the Dom3 -ddd switch, the relevant debug code is below:

Celarim cast spell (favspell Army of Gold) (mayusegems 1)
...
comp_castspell: eval Army of Gold result -1
...
castspell: cnr1007 spl394 (Marble Warriors) vis3 x8 y13 spldmg65536

So the game didn't even think my guy could cast it, which is extremely odd to me. It's a E4 spell, requiring 3E gems, so 4E should be enough to boost him to cast it, or to at least evaluate it. The previous turn I was able to get an E2 mage with Earth Boots (now E3) to cast Summon Earthpower (now E4) in round 1, followed by Army of Lead in round 2, with the same 4E gems in stock; hypothetically this is an identical scenario.

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img]?
Edit: Not a [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif[/img]! Can't use more gems than your current path level!

[johan osterman]

You can never spend more gems in a turn than you have in the path. So to cast a spell that have the same path requirement as gem cost you must have that same path value before the gem boost

[cleveland]

johan osterman said:
You can never spend more gems in a turn than you have in the path. So to cast a spell that have the same path requirement as gem cost you must have that same path value before the gem boost

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... It all makes perfect sense now. Thank you for the very prompt & thoughtful reply.

Manual: A mage can only use as many gems as his current skill level in that path.

For whatever reason, I interpreted this to mean "After spending one gem to temporarily boost me to level X+1, I can spend an additional X+1 gems to cast this spell." But the current, more aesthetically pleasing paradigm is that Boosting & Casting are fundamentally inseparable. Very cool.

I'm editing my posts above to reflect my newfound wisdom.

Edit: New question...Since path bonuses received from being a communion master don't actually increase your base magic path totals, communion masters do not see increased max gem expenditure, correct? For example, had I made an E2 mage the master of a 2 slave communion, he could NOT cast an E3 spell requiring 3E gems, right?

[Twan]

Edit: New question...Since path bonuses received from being a communion master don't actually increase your base magic path totals, communion masters do not see increased max gem expenditure, correct? For example, had I made an E2 mage the master of a 2 slave communion, he could NOT cast an E3 spell requiring 3E gems, right?

No. Communion (as other boost spells) increase base level of the master, there is just one display bug, so it's not shown.

[DonCorazon]

In addition to the limit on not using more gems than your current path level, would the AI use one of your gems on the Summon Earthpower to reduce fatigue of casting the spell, thus leaving you only 3 gems - not enought to both boost and case the Army of Gold? In your case, you would clearly not want the AI to use a gem to reduce the fatigue of casting the Summon EP spell.

btw - would anyone be so kind as to point me to an FAQ or something that explains how to use this "-ddd switch" if one exists. Many thanks.

[Saulot]

DonCorazon said:
btw - would anyone be so kind as to point me to an FAQ or something that explains how to use this "-ddd switch" if one exists. Many thanks.

Sure. (Since strangely, this isn't listed in the FAQ, and it's not in the manual index either)

-d is a commandline switch which triggers Dominions to run in debug mode.

During the debug mode, a log is created of everything that happens in the game. If you want to just see the details of a battle, just load up the dominions in debug mode, and then view the battle, and then quit. This is the most common use of the debug mode. The second most common is likely to examine conflicts or problems in mods.

The level of debug desired, can be changed by the amount of d's used. So, -ddd would be more thorough than just -d

I've seen -dddddd used, but that's rather extreme, and shows a LOT of information, most of it difficult to make out and unnecessary. Remember, logs can become huge.

As to how to load up a commandline switch, since I'm a windoze user, I'll explain the two common windows methods.

1. Is to use dos, by loading up run 'cmd' to get a dos prompt. From there, get into the dominions directory, and load up dom3 with 'dom3 -d' (no quotes)

2. Is to use the dom shortcut most windows users are familiar. Before you click on the shortcut, right click on it, go the shortcut tab, and where it says target you should see something like "C:\Games\Dominions 3\dom3.exe"
Change it so the end of it looks like: dom3.exe" -d

Of course, if you use method two, you should remember to change it back after you've finished the debug run.

The log is located in your dominions folder.

I hope that answers your question fully.

[DonCorazon]

wow, thanks saulot.

i also got some tips from cleveland who mentioned pasting the log text into excel, which made it easier to read in my test run.

i had almost forgotten my dos commands.

[NTJedi]

Kristoffer O said:
Hi,

Seems like some spells might be too popular.

I've heard about:
Astral Shield
Arrow Fend (recently heard of this, so I'm not sure how bad it is)

Any others since last patch?

I think I found another spell too popular during battle. It's happened multiple times for underwater battles.

This is specific for underwater battles where level_1 astral mages are casting blink... over and over and over. Randomly blinking around on the battlefield every turn is not useful and risky.