Battlefield Spell-scripting bug?

[MrSafin]

I'm trying to summon a Lesser Fire Elemental with one of my EA Ermor mages, but strangely the mage totally ignores my order and casts other spells.

I've already checked multiple times that I have enough gems for the spell and the mage still ignores me!

Bug or something else?

[thejeff]

Probably the AI doesn't think the enemy is strong enough to waste gems on.

[NTJedi]

Also if you have the summon lesser elemental at the 3rd or 4th or 5th command then the mage might have already used the fire gem to reduce fatique for whatever previous spells existed.

[Finalgenesis]

Seems as good a place as any to ask this, can any vets share their observation on AI mage gem spending behavior?

Do AI stick to bare minimal gems to keep fatigue under 100? Generally I see the opposite, AI tend to use a lot more then I expected even when I plan for extra gems to cut fatigue already, resulting in me throwing my hands in the air and just dump a lot of extra gems on them. Trying to cast more then 1 big or 2 smaller gem spell seem to be all I could do economically gem wise. (eg. 3 gems on a caster that has just enough path to cast a 100 fatigue 1 gem spell and script to cast twice seem to work... usually)

Vaguely (I haven't paid much attention to it) I think I remember my mages sometimes using gem to cut fatigue even if the end fati stays under 100 after cast, is this true? If so, when generally will AI choose to use gem: >60 fati? >80 fati? size of spell?

I also recall mages using more then 1 additional gem over the minimum even if 1 additional gem can cut end fatigue to less then 100 already.

Anyway, any observations would be welcomed.

[Dimaz]

The simple rule is to assume that the mage will burn all the gems he can. So for example if I want to cast Relief, Mass Regen and Serpent Blessing with one n4 mage, I'll give him 9 gems (8 for Relief and Mass Regen, 1 for Serpent Blessing). That will be enough.

[MrSafin]

The weird thing is that my mage didn't use ANY of the gems I gave him. I told him just to cast that one summon spell. I even tried assigning him all 5 scripted-cast orders with that spell, and yet he didn't cast it. :P

[Gandalf Parker]

Believe it or not, its not a bug. Its a game feature.
The devs liked the idea that your pretender can give a pre-battle speech saying "I want you to do this, this, this, this, this" but the units might decide that distance, line of sight, the type of enemy units, etc etc makes enough difference to do something else. There are no absolutes as far as always-do or never-do

Try positioning your mage differently.

What is he doing instead? Buffing up his own defenses? They like doing that. Have you given the mage any self-defence type equipment?

If you are REALLY curious, you can turn on the debug logging and see the AI "thinking" about what to cast to try and get a clue on its logic.

[thejeff]

As I suggested above, this was most likely a case of the AI deciding not to waste gems on a weak enemy.
This is usually a good thing. It prevents a huge late game army from mindlessly following its script and burning through dozens of gems when attacked by a single scout. Especially important when you're storming a castle later that turn.

It's very rare these days, for the AI to override a script if the spell could be cast effectively. Not using gems is the main exception. Otherwise it will usually only override if there isn't a valid target in range.
To use Gandalf's terminology, if the pretender said "cast Frozen Heart", I've never seen that overridden by line of sight or unit type etc. The spell has a range limit. If there is an enemy unit who isn't 100% CR within range, the mage will follow the order.

There used to be a few spells that were bugged and would get priority over even scripted spells, Astral Shield and Arrow Fend, possibly others. Those have been fixed and I haven't seen reports of similar problems in awhile.

[MrSafin]

Ok, I guess that answers my question. By the way, my Ermor mage (I don't really recall the name...) is a F1 and a level 1 priest, so he ignored my spell and casted spells like Blessings and such!

Anyway, I'm satisfacted... I like the idea of some amount of randomness in my battles