Hang on... was the combat AI always this bad?

xzar_monty

I'm having serious problems coming to terms with the party AI. I may have forgotten everything about my previous Icewind Dale experience ten years ago or whenever it was, but I am completely baffled by stuff that keeps happening all the time.

An example: one of the six people in my group is a dual-wielding melee fighter, and right now he's battling a group of three goblins in front of him. There's another two goblins with short bows some way off. One of these happens to hit him with an arrow. The next thing I see is that my dual-wielding melee fighter makes a beeline for the goblin who hit him with an arrow, completely disregarding the trio he was fighting a moment ago.

Variations of this happen all the time, in any combat, but particularly in the ones with both melee and ranged opponents. This causes many unnecessary death and other ridiculous or hilarious stuff, depending on your point of view.

The only way to avoid this that I've found is to turn the AI completely off. Which in turn means that I must give every single direction myself.

Was it always like this?

Shikao

I am experiencing the same in BGEE currently, though I am not sure how it was in vanilla games. It's also very annoying when you try concentrate on one target, cause they tend to be distracted by other enemies >.<

Pecker

I had the exact same problem. Are you using the "standard attack" script for your fighters? I found it to be dumb like that and too aggressive at times. Like when my fighter took damage and I told him to retreat, he would take a few steps back, then go back in and fight. Or sometimes I'd tell my fighter/cleric to cast a spell, and he'd re-aggro before starting to cast it. So annoying.

Try the script called "IWD Pregen" or whatever it's called. It seems to work quite a bit better for me.

kensai

I always have an AI Off so guess I can't spot a difference.

Wowo

The party AI is really terrible to the point that it turns off new comers to the game. I've been playing IWDee with a friend who is new to the franchise and his chief grievances are the AI and the way items randomly disappear.

xzar_monty

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, the AI is so bad that it's rather difficult to believe, actually.

In BG2, it's really quite good!

WoodMan

I've always played all Infinity Engine games with the AI off, played all the originals that way!

kensai

IMHO most frustrating is that not only party ai is bad but all iwd mages are dumb...

Belanos

If you want half decent AI you need to use some third party scripts, the default ones are very basic. While there's nothing specifically available for IWD yet, you can use ones like bpSeries that was made for the BG games, and simply copy the scripts over from that game. You can find them over at Spellhold Studios.

bob_veng

xzar_monty said:

An example: one of the six people in my group is a dual-wielding melee fighter, and right now he's battling a group of three goblins in front of him. There's another two goblins with short bows some way off. One of these happens to hit him with an arrow. The next thing I see is that my dual-wielding melee fighter makes a beeline for the goblin who hit him with an arrow, completely disregarding the trio he was fighting a moment ago.

what script is this?

Pecker

@bob_veng‌ I noticed the same behavior he described quite often using the "Standard Attack" script on my melee fighters.

meagloth

I never play with party AI on. It's a pain. Just turn it off and tell them what to do when you want them to do it.

sarevok57

if you play "fighter aggressive" ( or maybe it might be paladin aggressive now ) I believe that script will make it so you attack your foe until it is dead regardless who hits you and even though it might say paladin aggressive anyone can use it

OurQuestIsVain

I've noticed that none of the scripts work well. They never have worked all that well so I'm not blaming anybody for this. I usually play with AI off and have the game autopause when I've killed an enemy or cast a spell to make sure no party member is standing around zoning out. Unfortunately there is no autopause after casting from a wand.