[0981 AI] Does Faction AI Ever Cast Offensive Strategic Spells like Freeze or Pillar of Flame?

No, i have tried different difficulties, but the AI has never cast an offensive strategic spell at my units.

In theory, it should. But it's almost always running very low on mana. It's something I've been working on.

Yes indeed it is.

I've never seen AI upgrade their shard improvements. Maybe that's why?

Thanks, Brad. Further food for thought:

• Using tremor as an example, if the AI has enough mana they could effectively stun lock a player stack in their domain. This could be countered with an appropriate cooldown phase (in game currently) or the ability to dispel the negative enchantment (currently not in game). I personally believe there does need to be some kind of dispel of negative overland enchantments (with appropriate balanced mana cost and/or cooldown) which would benefit both the player and AI.
• In my current game I have the highest faction power rating which means all other AI players were hesitant to declare war. I then was able to choose the time/place to declare war and gobble up weaker factions, and have my military strategically placed to counter their initial push. The AI is predictable here - declare war, move forward, they move their existing stacks (which are pre-positioned at certain rally points), and I bash them to a pulp, especially once they enter into my domain (by using freeze, tremor, etc if needed). They throw everything they got at me in one giant wave and once that's countered, the player can just roflstomp through the AI domain - they have no unit reserves, they spent everything in the initial push. To improve this, I propose the AI begin to use the overland spells (topic of this thread) coupled with some kind of counter via cooldowns/dispels, and consideration of reserves. Furthermore, I propose when a player or faction is obviously gobbling up weaker factions (by prepositioning and then declaring war), the remaining factions begin to at least ally and group up on the player/faction.

In my current game, if the AI was using the proper overland spells to "slow my roll" and they allied/grouped up, it would have completely changed the game. My front was huge and I had only 2 proper stacks - if all 3 remaining factions decided enough was enough and I needed to be dealt with, I would have had my hands full with gaps in my lines all over the place.

Thanks for listening and responding! Diggin' the progress.

[Edit] Can the current dispel be used to remove off overland stacks or is the dispel mechanic only to remove negative city enchantments? I'll need to look at that next time I load up a game.

I run the AI with 1000+ mana and have never been hit by any strategic spells. 

Back in beta 4 I was Freezed once and they also cast the spell that increases unrest in a city. There were no warnings for that though, so it was a rather poor experience. I ended up attacking an enemy city then getting shot to pieces because all my units had 1 movement for some reason.

I verified the currentl dispel enchantment spell is at least described as city only - not for unit stacks. Makes sense to me that the spell could be changed to dispel a negactive city OR unit/stack enchantment.