Can you have a look at the AI not summoning in tactical battles, or rather as may be, not summoning period?  Even if some kinds of summoning (such as strategic) are quite hard to program, monsters that can summon should be pretty easy to program because they are not using mana and they are much stronger when they summon (like the Ritualists summoning death demons).  But tactical summoning by AI players does need to be looked at, because a tactical summon can sometimes be the difference between winning and losing (at least in human vs. AI battles).  This summoning problem I see as the core weakness area that still needs to be addressed, in most respects the AI is quite okay.  Can you have a look at it?

-Steven.

The problem isn't the summoning part (that's easy).  Getting the AI to think that it's worth the casting time for that summons has been the hard part.  The AI tends to calculate that summoned creatures aren't worth it.  Which begs the question, is that true? are we summoning creatures because it's fun but not tactically effective OR is the AI miscalculating?

thanks for sharing frogboy.  As someone who has sunk many hours of life into playing this, I'd agree summoning by the AI is a pretty major missing feature towering over other minor complaints.

thanks for the good work

Summoning is definitely worth it, but it's highly situational.  It's probably a pretty big task to teach it positioning and timing.  When is that warg going to die after one attack, and when can you use it to smoke multiple units.

If they can't understand the role of the particular unit being summoned, I don't see much hope for it.  You'd summon something tanky to absorb damage and protect other units, while you'd use a fragile high attack unit to assassinate a dangerous ranged unit, or act as a second strike on something out of counters.

Doesn't the summoned unit die if the caster dies?  If that's the case with Ritualists, it wouldn't be much use to summon a Death Demon and then get killed.  Although with the low amount of damage the ritualist can do normally, it probably wouldn't hurt for it to start summoning the Death Demon at its first turn.  Also, the summoning artifacts (Burning Wraith, Air Elemental, Skeletons) could be used by the AI players, since they don't cost any mana, and when to use them is not so important, unless they are going to sell them.

I think Ritualists placing a higher priority on summoning Death Demons and AI players placing a higher priority in using summoning artifacts would help the game feel like the AI is not missing an important part of it, even if the AI can't cope with the rest of summoning that well.

I tend to ignore the summoning part of the game myself, though I might not in different circumstances, or if it was optimal to lvl up a 2nd hero.

Fantasy games tend to be 10 times as tough to make an AI for than space games due to terrain, spells, and other factors.

I do appreciate and admire your hard work with programing AIs. In GalCiv 2 for instance, I've seen the AI improve over many patches.

I probably should play FE more often. I don't because of a mix of I like sci-fi games more, and I don't like Steam.

With regard to the summon being worth it, I think perhaps there needs to be a chance to get a critical success on the summoning and get two or more creatures instead of one, or a more powerful creature, or one that takes a turn immediately.  Then the AI can weigh the possibility of the summoning turning the battle in their favour - as psychoak says, at the moment summoning is very situational.

Imho, casting summons is ALWAYS worth it if you're fighting a balanced or dangerous fight for your own settlement. A 40 mana summon is a much smaller price to pay than losing a settlement and its connected outposts. Most settlements at the very least have a shard connected to them any way.

In some ways, summoning is a bit like having a carrier which can launch a wave of fighters.

They have the advantage of being numerous, fast and presenting a smaller target. On the other hand, once they're launched the enemy can pick them off if they so choose, destroying that advantage.  You have to weigh the benefit of launching now versus the benefit of launching later, when you may have taken some losses of your own and need something to turn the tide of the battle.

I'd rather the AI spent time summoning, than buffing other units with useless spells during battle. Especially when they have high attack/defense and could actually be scary to fight. Also, no not every summon is worth it, but Earth Elementals etc. usually are, until very late game. 

(I somewhat fixed that problem myself by making custom sovereigns without magic paths, they were quite harder to fight than the vanilla ones)

Summoning is definately worth it.  It's a guaranteed tactic for me when I'm outnumbered.  Summon an elemental or some other reasonable hit point creature in the middle of the A.I.s army and most of their melee units will focus on it.  Ranged A.I. units still focus on my ranged units for some reason.  This gives my hero a few turns for spells and my units time to swarm and pick off enemy units one by one.  Can't remember the names, but Celestial Warrior and Wisp (Mage class options) are very useful to turn the tide of a battle not going your way at early levels.

As others have said summoning is very worthwhile, if only for the fact that it distracts some of the enemy and helps either delay them or at least delay some of them so that they arrive at your front lines piecemeal.

Of course that might not work as well for the AI vs the player but there are still plenty of reasons why the AI should try summoning.

As another sideline, Frogboy might want to adjust the A.I.s behaviour so that it doesn't react to summoned creatures the same (i.e. instant focus) as that would reduce summoning as a useful player tactic.  If it can make a threat assessment and say allocate one or a couple of units to deal with the summoned creature as apposed to its entire army.

Chiming in late, but I agree on what Sjaminei, Heavenfall and others have said. Summoning is worth it. All good players will rather summon that extra 'fighter' as MarvinKosh said then buffing a unit. The AI seems very fond of buffing. While buffing can be nice, summoning gives you an extra creature and thus extra attacker or diversion (aka cannonfodder). I hope the AI can adjust to that, cause with the great summoning mods out there, summoning is not only effective but fun too. I'm sure the AI would like to have some more fun too.