Another instance of AI cheating?...

[Curio]

So we all know the AI gets massive income bonuses to recruit and build everything they need. I thought that was the extent of it, but then this happened.

So I'm playing the 4 FFA map Subterranean Treasures on Hard difficulty. I'm laying seige with the one massive army I've amassed against the AI's massive army (his one of many... ) stationed in his Dungeon castle.

I've got a ton of spell points, near to 400, and I found that ring that halves the casting cost of spells. Nur, the enemy heroine, has about 300.

We decimate each other pretty badly. She endlessly Puppet Masters and Lightning Bolts me, but hey, I figure I can weather the storm with my 4 mana Ressurect spell...she'll run out of mana before I do, and then I'll just bring my hard earned troops back to life.

Half an hour into the battle, I'm down to 200 mana, and I figure, hey, she's about done. I r-click her character...and I see she has 230/270 mana or so left. o_O

Something was up. On her next turn, she casts another bolt on my poor Treants. I check her mana again...and she has 232/270!! In fact, every time she cast Lightning, she gained back 2 mp. Maybe she has the Pendant of Conflux? (For every 2 mana I use, she gains 1, so the 4 I use to ressurect...?).

So I skip my spell, and she does it again...another +2. And quite bothered, I finish her off, and consequently loot her artifacts. She didn't have that Pendant (not that it would have explained anything anyway with my skipped spell). What the??

Also, my dead stack of Silver Unicorns disappeared from the floor, and I couldn't resurrect them. I could hover the cursor over the spot, and it'd say, "Resurrect Silver Unicorns!" but the cursor was a big red NO, rather than that glowy spellbook.

[Curio]

Sorry, a thought...

Is there some rare, crazy skill path Wizards can take that nets back mana after casting spells?...

Actually, just saying that tells me probably no, it'd be too powerful? After all, Nur was only lvl 17....

[Raspyn]

Nur's special ability is that she regenerates mana in combat

http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/he ... roes.shtml

[Rapier]

First of all, the inability to resurrect the unicorns comes from a bug where corpses get removed if someone stands on them. (they reappear but are no longer targetable when the spot is cleared). It's not an ai cheat, and can be used to stop them resurrecting too.

Nur has a speciality where she gets mana back during combat just by herself. Which may explain the amount of mana she was managing to get. On top of that I believe that Ai spell costs are reduced in some way automatically, I've had AI heroes at no mana casting spells (But only low-level ones) they could do that on heroic.

I haven't tried using Nur myself, I don't know the rate of mana regen for player's or per level.. I think her mana should have still been going down.. on the other hand if she had sorcery, and erratic mana costs + mana regen, maybe it was possible for her to cast a cheap lightning bolt and then get more mana back on that turn than she used...

My guess is it's a bit of AI cheating combining with another effect, and becoming more powerful than intended. (For instance, Ai gets cheaper spells, and improved specials to help them compete, which in this case combines in a bad way).

[Curio]

Yah, I thought maybe standing on the spot would prevent resurrect, so I moved.

The four tiles where the unicorn's body was supposed to be was still empty, and I was still unable to cast on the spot, though the interface claimed I could resurrect that friendly stack.

And just because I suspected it, I consoled Nur's spell points to 0 for experiment's sake. She still cast stuff left and right, blind, puppet master, forgetfulness, what have you.

So I figure I'll load and amass an even larger army, if it's even possible to keep atop of the AI in this respect...

It's just...annoying, to put it lightly? This is definitely a unique...quirk...among the HoMM titles. You could even squeak a win very rarely on Impossible difficulty in the H 3 days, provided you could get forces up and going. When enemies reached 0 mana, they stopped casting, simple as that. After legitimately building everything up to be on par with the AI on a harder setting, least a player could have are standard rules when fighting and such.