B2 mage can't cast Life for a Life?

Baalz · #1 August 28th, 2008, 02:44 PM

Life for a life, requires B3 and 1 blood slave. Why is it my B2 mages refuse to cast it using a second blood slave? Plenty of blood slaves, several valid targets, spell is scripted....why can't they cast it?

K · #2 August 28th, 2008, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baalz

Life for a life, requires B3 and 1 blood slave. Why is it my B2 mages refuse to cast it using a second blood slave? Plenty of blood slaves, several valid targets, spell is scripted....why can't they cast it?

I find that mages often won't cast spells that would give the mage more than 200 fatigue in one shot. Life for a Life is 199 fatigue, and then spellcasting fatigue is added in, so you are looking at more than 200.

People have tried to tell me differently, but my experience with casting Blood and high-path Air spells has shown this to me over and over.

thejeff · #3 August 28th, 2008, 03:11 PM

Standard question: What does debug tell you?

ano · #4 August 28th, 2008, 03:28 PM

I did cast Life for a Life with B2 mages many, many times so probably it is specific problem

K · #5 August 28th, 2008, 03:58 PM

What was your opposition like? The AI, in it's infinite wisdom, might have decided that they didn't need to cast high fatigue spells and so went with low fatigue stuff.

Baalz · #6 August 28th, 2008, 04:52 PM

Demonbred, flying frantically to the front to stop the neverending onslaught of Pythium angels. Yes! I finally got to life for a life and can stop the fire immune slaughter. Set several clever ambushes and catch half a dozen raiding angels (in 4 or so separate battles, 1 or 2 angels per fight. Harbingers and Angels of Fury). No! No! Stop with the damn imps! :/

K · #7 August 28th, 2008, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baalz

Demonbred, flying frantically to the front to stop the neverending onslaught of Pythium angels. Yes! I finally got to life for a life and can stop the fire immune slaughter. Set several clever ambushes and catch half a dozen raiding angels (in 4 or so separate battles, 1 or 2 angels per fight. Harbingers and Angels of Fury). No! No! Stop with the damn imps! :/

Yeh, it sounds like the AI decided that the battle wasn't important enough for high fatigue spells.

I'd bet death gems to donuts that if you had communioned them in a simple two-slave communion you'd have been fine.

Baalz · #8 August 28th, 2008, 05:38 PM

Here's the relevant parts of the debug log. Looks like mayusegems was true, not sure if this is different than the high fatigue eval you're suggesting K.

com Shapash cast spell (favspell Life for a Life) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 37
.
.
.
Eval: Summon Imp score 477 (fat 50)
comp_castspell: eval Summon Imp result 477
best spell so far Summon Imp (score477)
.
.
.
comp_castspell: eval Life for a Life result -1
.
.
.
castspell: cnr276 spl698 (Summon Imp) vis2 x49 y12 spldmg303

How frustrating!

K · #9 August 28th, 2008, 06:43 PM

I'd be very interested in finding out how the Eval module works. It says "(Fat 50)", so it is making some sort of judgment about fatigue when it looks at Summon Imps (and since it is a B2 casting a B1 spell with 100 fat, the total is fat 50).

I suspect that "mayusegems=1" is a test for whether there are gems in inventory (which is probably an initial test for whether the spell can even be cast since it requires gems).

It doesn't look like it is a test for whether gems SHOULD be used because of weak opposition.

thejeff · #10 August 29th, 2008, 10:32 AM

I think mayusegems is the should test. There's something else for not enough gems. And I don't think that test even applies to blood mages? I've never seen blood mages just refuse to cast and all (almost) Blood spells use gems.

The -1 result for Life for a Life looks like what it usually gets when it can't find a valid target. Nothing should be immune and it's range 100, so that shouldn't apply. So it has to mean not high enough level to cast, but that doesn't explain why not to use the second slave?