Companions do nothing??
lotrofan15
Member Posts: 11
Hey, Im not sure if this is what the original Baldurs Gate did but do you have to micromanage every bit of your companions in the game? Because even when Party AI is enabled, the companions dont follow me, or they dont attack enemies that attack me until I am very close to them. WTF is that about? Is that a glitch? Or are you suppose to micromanage your party members? Even for just following you? Moving? Attacking enemies with spells and abilities? Yes I am new to Baldurs Gate, and the whole D&D concept so go easy on me. Are you suppose to micromanage your companions this heavily?
0
Comments
One caution: No matter what script you select, you will never get them to do very well based on AI alone. The short answer to your question, is, yes, you have to micromanage them if you want to succeed in the game.
http://www.gibberlings3.net/cirerrek/eseries.php
but yeah, think of the game like 70% RPG 30% tactical strategy game.
You do have to micromanage your spellcasters. Before getting too annoyed by this, keep in mind that the magic system in this game is based on memorized spells rather than a short spell list and a pool of mana/force. My advice is to have them equipped with a sling or darts so they can still do a bit of damage when they run out of magic.
This will cause the buttons in your toolbar at the bottom of the screen to change. Toward the left, you will see a sword icon. Left click on it, and your entire party will attack. Nifty, huh? Just make sure your "squishy" party members have a ranged weapon equipped (usually, sling, darts, bow, or crossbow. sometimes throwing daggers).
As for magic, this game uses what is called a "Vancian" casting system. (Named after a famous fantasy author.) Once you cast a memorized spell, it is gone until you can rest and meditate to restore the mystical words and gestures to your mind once again. In practice, this means that you do need to micromanage every spell cast. Magic is precious, and you must NOT waste it. Spells should only be cast during the "omg" moments when it is a case of use a spell, or everybody in your party dies.
Also, this just occurred to me: You can only have 5 party members besides yourself at any time, and if you decide to switch them out, you don't have a camp where they go and wait patiently for you to decide they will be useful again. I think they'll stay where you left them, but I am fairly sure they won't magically gain levels if, say, you drop Imoen off at the beginning because you're playing a thief then decide to run back and pick her up 5 levels later for some reason.
If you already knew these things, sorry for assuming you might not, but I remember being surprised at how easy KOTOR and Dragon Age made it to switch out your party and decided that might go both ways.
Succeeding on your first time through depends upon learning how to manage a party. This is very, very different from any game that has been produced and marketed in the last 10 years.
In "the golden age" of video game production, players usually had played tabletop Dungeons and Dragons face to face with their friends, and they wanted a strategic challenge in their computer games. Times were different during the golden age. Nobody wanted a simple, easy gaming experience.
"In our day, we walked to school barefoot, in three feet of snow!"
As for spells, the idea of fully automated spellcasters just isn't feasible in BG because of the way magic in general works. A mage throwing fireball or cloudkill whenever he pleases would mean sure death for the entire party, for instance.
You just have to prepare yourself for a different approach. You will be richly awarded in time.
The playing of a fantasy RPG that actually requires you to manage a party is alien to them.
Really though, you will find the game more interesting and satisfying if you do the micromanagement yourself.
0. use autopause when enemy spotted, but other than that, don't waste time pausing needlessly all the time (unless you have to of course)
1. use the select-all-characters button (and all the other buttons for character selection to minimize clicking)
2. always use formations (they're all very useful) and rotate formations so your front row is facing the enemy (the best formations are the following: 3x2 rectangle, rotated to the side so you have 3 in the front and 3 in the back, and the star formation which is the best when the enemies come from all sides)
3. position close to the enemy group, wait for enemies to come for you and when they come really close press the AI key to activate your fighter row and pulverize them - use the fighter agressive script for the front row, even if they are effectivey defending the back row, instead of charging at the enemies.
4. choose a target for a ranged attack from the back row manually (a passive script can work fine here as well IIRC)
5. while the battle goes on, you don't always have to pause to use spells and abilities, there are hotkeys for that too, for example, it's easy to select magic missile via hotkeys while unpaused and do so repeatedly for several spellcasters (takes a little getting used to, but it's still easy).
(*** always use healing during combat. keep the healer in the back row, and whenever somebody is hit, even for as little as 3hp, heal that character instantly. - don't play without a dedicated healer because that requires tons more micromanaging)
however, don't use spellcasting scripts, they look like they save you time and clicks but they just make you reload the game most of the time from my experience.
battles are quick in this game. even though you control the characters directly and have to use pause pretty often, there are no enemies with a retardedly high HP that take eons to kill like in many modern "RPGs". the better you assess the situation in the beginning the less micromanaging you'll have to do - when you play the battles shrewdly, the game becomes a much shorter and more condensed experience and probably more exciting and fun that most any other game you've played.
and another time saver - don't run away from large enemy groups and try to draw in enemies one by one. your party can handle everything. be smart and trust it.
For combat, there' some basic AI that goes into play, but you're usually better off pausing and treating combat like a tactical RTS-with-pause.
But keep an eye out for an updated SCS, which greatly improves AI (including friendly NPC AI).
A few people seem to be having a lot of distaste for the idea of controlling multiple characters at once. If you're a Mass Effect, or Dragon Age fan who has never played Baldur's Gate before, I'd like to stress this point. Do not expect Baldur's Gate to be anything like those games in terms of style and difficulty. Younger gamers might think that us older folks talking about old games being more complicated and difficult is just nostalgia, but in the case of Bioware games it is completely true. Baldur's Gate is much harder and more complicated than games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Your entire party can get killed at very early stages when you don't know what you're doing.
Something I'd bear in mind is that characters only really do stuff every six seconds (bar movement). You might have noticed a spell caster sit there doing nothing for a few seconds before it starts casting a spell. The game is pseudo round based, with a round lasting six seconds. You would only ever need to be giving one command every six seconds for your characters, and with the maximum of six characters this is only going to reach one command per second. This is extremely manageable if you ask me.