SORCERY Realm

[Kaiku]

It was pretty late game, after 1418 or so. I had around 250-300 casting skill, and he... No clue, it seemed infinite. I chain-dispel waved his capital, hoping the recasting would offer me a breather, but the enchantments were back very fast, and he kept blasting on top of that. Yeah, he had Detect Magic up.

But I wasn't aware that Disjunction is a low priority spell for the AI and that they allow me to remove the Detect Magic. So, problem solved.

[Nelphine]

Yeah that's very unintuitive, since as a player, disjunction is very close to the top of the spell blast list.

May actually be worth putting a comment in disjunction that the AI specifically will spell blast it less than expected so that people are aware of that solution.

[Kaiku]

It is. I was so certain he'd blast my Disjunction too (since he even blasted worthless stuff) I didn't even bother trying it.

Must say that at least for me, this is an AI-only spell. I can't see myself with Detect Magic up checking what they're casting every turn in the hopes of catching something tasty. Most likely I'm casting my own stuff at that time as well, which I'm not going to interrupt. But for the AI it's perfect.

[Seravy]

The thing about Disjunction is the AI can't know whose enchantment it is going to target. Blasting the one that removes someone else's Armageddon makes no sense.

[Kaiku]

Well I'm glad they don't, or I'd be making an argument to remove Spell Blast from the game. I saw absolutely no option other than killing the wizard, all the while not being allowed to cast expensive spells - which isn't a very satisfying solution for dealing with an uncommon.

[Nelphine]

I actually use detect magic a lot. Tells me what summons I'll face, tells me if I need to cancel a long spell midcast to spell blast something important, tells me what my opponent has researched.

Seravy, since it isn't intuitive, ud like to formally request a note added to disjunction that the AI won't spell blast it with extreme prejudice. This is several players now who have reported not even considering using disjunction because they assume it will be blasted, which defeats the purpose of the solution.

[Seravy]

I don't think we have ever added information on how an AI uses a spell, even less how they react to it, to a spell's description. In fact, saying "Disjunction is not on the AI's 'must spell blast when able' list." would tell players there is such a list in the first place. And in an entry that does not even belong to Spell Blast in the first place.

I rather have this explained in Spell Blast in the mod documentation than the Disjunction help.

Heck, Detect Magic itself doesn't say it enables the AI to use SB, because we want people to figure that out on their own.

[Nelphine]

I understand where you're coming from, but this is a problem that generally comes up when you are often not sorcery. Its a problem that leads to extreme frustration (think about how long I discussed it, and it comes up periodically with other players).

The basic problem is that detect magic makes the AI use spell blast better. This is intuitive, although it will probably take players a while to figure out. But whether the human figures it out, the ai appears to spell blast everything (because by definition most of the nasty spells that the AI will auto blast, are also the spells that most often take more than 1 turn to cast AND are the ones the human wants to cast the most. )

The human then goes how do I stop this? They think about it for a bit.

If they don't figure out the detect magic, they are stuck, and get frustrated. An uncommon spell prevents a large amount of gameplay options. Best case, they read or talk to someone and find out that detect magic is the culprit.

Then the problem occurs. The human immediately reverses the situation 'if detect magic let's me stop any dangerous spell, then I would keep detect magic at all costs. ESPECIALLY when the cost of spell blast is super low.

So disjunction is obviously going to be spell blasted.
And worse - disjunction costs far more than detect magic ever will. At the point in the game that the human can cast disjunction, the AI can instant cast detect magic.

So the human goes 'disjunction on spell blast is not an option'. And the costs and benefits involved are so extreme that its not even something the human can experiment with. (And that's assuming the human doesn't know about AI overksbd cheating bonus. If they know that, it literally can be as bad as 'for something that costs me 300, and therefore 2-3 turns, and therefore 2-3 spell blast opportunities, my opponent can spend 1/4 that amount to redo detect magic, even if they somehow fail to spell blast in the first place.) If the situation were reversed, the human would gleefully cackle every time the AI disjunctioned detect magic, because of the cost difference. The human would still have detect magic every round, and enough casting skill left over to sell blast anyway, and the AI would have wasted far more casting skill disjunctioning it. Thats a win in every fashion possible.
So the human simply can't try to use disjunction, because its an extremely artificial design to let the human get away with it.


All of the careful balancing and cost pricing and AI priorities don't mean anything because the human won't even TRY disjunction vs detect magic in the first place, so they never get a chance to learn it works.

[Nelphine]

Its an extreme enough situation, you could even say something like 'the AI cannot use spell blast against dusjunction' to avoid letting the player know there is a specific list. (Though you'd need to implement that if you did so of course.)

[Seravy]

By that logic we need a "The chance of AI players recasting enchantments when dispelled varies for each spell" entry more. Seriously, if someone just looks at the spell and thinks "this is useless", their fault. Even more so if they don't even bother to look up a solution on the net. I'm not going to spoil the correct play for them in the game and there are other ways to get around spell blast anyway.

Besides, that's the worst case scenario. Less intelligent players might just reach the "yeah this works with detect magic so I dispel that, here goes...nice, it worked." More intelligent players might think "I'm supposed to dispel this while the AI is casting their big spell so it can't be blasted". The most intelligent ones might think "The AI wasn't using spell blast for a while and now it's using it a lot. The spell is obviously overpowered and unbeatable for an AI player with their resource bonus, so there must be some sort of hidden balancing mechanism in it. There have to be some spells that should be stopped but aren't. Hey, they added so much detail the AI actually uses Detect Magic to simulate the need to spy on my spells for using Spell Blast...no way they worked that much just for flavor when the AI ignores all other types of scouting so this must have a purpose, oh, I know, I'm supposed to dispel that, so disjunction is the spell that the AI won't stop!". Or they can just think "There is no way the AI will know this targets there Detect Magic when that other guy has Crusade. They won't Spell Blast it.".

'the AI cannot use spell blast against dusjunction'

This would be a lie, and we'd see a ton of bug reports. They can use it but it's not on their mandatory list. So it's up to random change, same as Earth Lore or Holy Weapon.