Counterspell and Counterspell used by the AI

[unmerged(102954)]

One AI player has made it her special project to counterspell
Every. Single. Spell. I cast. (that cannot be completed in the same turn)
It is 100$% pointless to cast any "fun" magic like interesting summons, city buff, global enchantments...

Also, research has become pointless because all the "big" spells I would be researching now take 2+ turns to cast.

This takes most of the magic out of well... magic... so I suggest that Counterspell should have a chance to interrupt a spell instead of working with 100% certainty.


This is as broken as Unity.

 

[Yliardin]

Keep on casting spells. Every third or fourth spell comes through. Watch your mana though.

By the way, I would like to have a short overview on my main UI where I can see who is casting what. Right now I have to open another menu. It would make counterspell a spell I actually use, if I had not to open another menu each turn.

 

[Grubnessul]

Counterspell not working reliable on Unity would be horribly frustrating...

 

[unmerged(102954)]

Keep on casting spells. Every third or fourth spell comes through. Watch your mana though.

3 or 4?

After having 12 spells in a row counterspelled I quit the game. There was just no point.

 

[LTK]

Is it just one mage? You could try bribing them into making peace. If they don't want to, start conquering their cities until they become more willing. Once you have peace, cast Agile Mind, and suddenly all of those 2-turn spells are reduced to one turn or less.

I think it might also matter how often you're casting multi-turn spells. I only cast spells taking longer than one turn about once every 5 turns, and that makes it much less likely that they're counterspelled. Enemy mages will sometimes be occupied by casting multi-turn spells of their own, and you can take that opportunity to cast your own spells. If an enemy mage has nothing else to do, they will be more likely to decide to screw with your spellcasting.

 

[UncleJJ]

3 or 4?

After having 12 spells in a row counterspelled I quit the game. There was just no point.

I had that problem trying to cast Agile mind with one mage countering it 3 times at 350 mana (?) a shot. So I asked how much he wanted for peace and it was only 700 mana. At that time I had 5K mana stored and couldn't use it due Mr Counterspell... so I paid up They can't counterspell unless they're at war so Agile Mind was cast 2 turns after and then I could cast most of the other spells fast enough that I didn't need to worry about counterspells. We went to war again 10 turns after but it didn't matter.

Don't be afraid to use diplomacy to end a war even if you have to pay a load of mana. The AI over values mana by a huge amount. Gold is the really critical resource mana is useless after a certain point in the game (since you can only cast one or two spells / turn) but you can always find something useful to spend more gold on. If you check the AIs in the diplomacy panel on Impossible level if they are at war they will have a very little gold and several thousand mana, so giving them more is not helping them at all.

EDIT I took too long to write my post and LTK posted the same advice

 

[unmerged(102954)]

Yeh, "diplomacy" may have worked.
And yes, these were 12+ casts, back to back, of Earth Elemental to squash some pesky quest monster.
The AI player really had nothing better to do for that long...


In another game I had one enemy wizard left when I decided to cast Unity.

I started casting Unity. The other wizard threatened to go to war so... I just paid his demands of about 15000 gold and a few turns later 11000 gold.
Not like it was going to do me any good later on...

The "diplomacy" AI considers peace a perfectly viable course of action while another wizard is casting the spell of I-win.