AI and how it works

[petesmisc]

Can someone explain how and what AI is supposed to do> I'm playing on RTwP
and:

I'm not using turn based mode and I have to do everything myself! the healers don't heal, my toons don't use healing potions when equipped in the belt or any potions for that mater, am I doing something wrong, the AI is turned on for each toon but if I don't direct them they don't do what their supposed to do on their own!

I have the priest who came with a sword, the fool would charge in and get himself killed so I equipped him with a light crossbow to keep him away from melee but hes not healing or doing anything except firing the crossbow!

Is there something I need to turn on in options?
Getting a bit frustrating

[InEffect]

It's RTwP. The "wP" part stands for "with pause", which is what you evidently don't use enough. There are options to make pausing automatic if you prefer that, but I just do it manually.
And yes, the game doesn't play itself, which is a good thing.

[Saler]

Unless you give them orders (click their portrait to choose them, then pick an ability to use), characters keep attacking with their equipped weapon. There is an option to have them use a spell by default, but it's probably impractical with anything other than cantrips.

[Hasefrexx]

Given that everything comes in limited supply (including abilities limited in per rest use), you can't really have an AI that works without disrupting the player's plan. So it has to be that way.

[Drake]

Yeah there is no AI, just the option to custom the auto attack option. You have to do everything yourself, there is no gambit system like in pillars or dragon age nor programmable lua scripts like in infinity engine games (baldr's gate etc.).

Which doesn't matter because this is a game where you don't want an AI deciding what to do for you, the situations are usually to complex for an AI to make a good decision. Depending on the difficulty, using a potion to early or using a spell onthe wrong fight will cripple you in the long run, as this is not a game where you can spam the rest button to get your spells back (time managment and all, depending on the situation, you might want to do a dungeon without resting so that you don't miss a timed quest).

[petesmisc]

sounds like I'm better off playing turn based on the hard fights.

[Adeptus Stark]

RTwP in these games based on turns doesn't really do the game favors in my opinion. With the turn based mod you can use your 1 round abilities to effect, AoE spells become useful again and you can actually be tactful in your combat instead of everyone just running around spamming a base attack and no hard earned abilities without constantly pausing the gameplay.

No matter how good you are in RTwP, you will have many wasted rounds of characters just base attacking while you were concentrating on other characters.

So like people have said, RTwP for fodder battles with a bunch of low level enemies and turn based for the rest.

So glad this game gives both options.

[dukftuf]

I really enjoy playing the game turn-based myself. An excellent good time.

[petesmisc]

Originally posted by dukftuf:

I really enjoy playing the game turn-based myself. An excellent good time.

well, I'm not playing turn based, just pause and giving commands as needed, I tried the turn base and it didn't deem like it was turn based!
In turn base, each toon gets a urn and you do what you do with /him/here and the enemy also get their turn and they do what they do. When I turned on TB, it did not behave as I expected, (I have played DOS1 and 2 and 3) the enemy just kept on bashing my team as if nothing changed, maybe I did it wrong? I just clicked on the sand glass icon.

[Zamza]

To turn on TB, you click on the chess piece icon. The hour glass icon is to pause the RTwP. If you're talking about why enemies have so many attacks per turn then that's how the table top version works. You get more attacks if you don't move and do a full attack at higher levels.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Originally posted by petesmisc:

Originally posted by dukftuf:

I really enjoy playing the game turn-based myself. An excellent good time.

well, I'm not playing turn based, just pause and giving commands as needed, I tried the turn base and it didn't deem like it was turn based!
In turn base, each toon gets a urn and you do what you do with /him/here and the enemy also get their turn and they do what they do. When I turned on TB, it did not behave as I expected, (I have played DOS1 and 2 and 3) the enemy just kept on bashing my team as if nothing changed, maybe I did it wrong? I just clicked on the sand glass icon.

You didn't turn TB on then.

[marcelvdpol]

In my opinion, the Turn Based implementation is far superior to the Real Time with Pause. Remember that the original Pathfinder rules are meant for TB combat, not RTwP; secondly in the Pathfinder TT-RPG you usually only play ONE character, not SIX. The RTwP combat is MORE DIFFICULT than the TB combat due to:

1. Pathing issues [characters just walk into monsters / other npc's without noticing their path is blocked and only look for an alternative route once half the initiative order has already passed, costing them valuable actions; characters don't put in any effort to avoid traps even after being spotted; characters don't switch to attacking an alternative monster / npc after noticing that the original cannot be reached].
2. Identifying what is going on. Due to everything happening all at once, identifying what is going on in the complete chaos of spells being cast, both characters and monster moving at the same time, monsters using abilities etc is very difficult. I ended up pausing pretty much every second to see if my battle plan was still succeeding and what the enemy was doing to counter my plans. At that snail-pace you are better off using TB.
3. The Character AI is abysmal and doesn't deserve the name. It does nothing more than "whack monster with weapon / cantrip", period. It even attacks with a ranged weapon when the enemy is standing RIGHT NEXT to you [causing a to-hit penalty] without trying to move away.
4. No way to tell when a character will actually activate that special ability or cast that spell you clicked. The turn order is there and you rolled initiative but cannot tell where a character is in the initiative order. If I click "cast that spell" now, does that happen NOW or does he stand there picking his nose for another 5 seconds BEFORE attempting to cast the spell? Since you cannot tell, you have no way of knowing what the situation will be at the moment the spell is being cast.
5. Realtime movement but turn-based activation. Because movement happens in realtime while activations [such as spell casting] are NOT realtime [meaning that you can click "cast this spell now" and nothing will happen for another 3-6 seconds] Area Effect spells such as Fireball are very difficult to use properly. You have to aim when you GIVE THE ORDER to cast the spell, not when the character is ACTUALLY casting the spell [which depends on his place in the initiative order]. This means that you do nothing for 3-6 seconds AND have to wait another 3-6 seconds before the spell has actually finished casting; by the time the spellcasting has finished the battlefield has changed dramatically, meaning your fireball will end up hitting NOTHING. B

When this game was just released, I played it for several weeks in RTwP mode [the only mode available at that time] before I deinstalled the game due to the frustration of RTwP combat. I kept loosing a key battle due to above described issues. I only started playing again once I learned a Mod implemented turn-based combat [apparently the rules were implemented in the engine but not used in the game]. Baldur's Gate had the exact same issues with RTwP combat; I don't understand why developers opt for RTwP combat rather than the far superior TB and don't even give users a choice of which one to use. This game is the first game where the player is offered the choice between RTwP and TB.

[InEffect]

RTwP is better because the game doesn't require much precision and it saves you time. There isn't any competition, since spending twice(or more) the time on every encounter is a terrible proposition.
I guess if you have some sort of disability TB is a life-saver, but other than that and using in-combat switch to get free move actions as the devs intended to go through A1 faster - it's just a net negative.

[marcelvdpol]

Originally posted by InEffect:

RTwP is better because the game doesn't require much precision and it saves you time. There isn't any competition, since spending twice(or more) the time on every encounter is a terrible proposition.
I guess if you have some sort of disability TB is a life-saver, but other than that and using in-combat switch to get free move actions as the devs intended - it's just a net negative.

I disagree. Less precision due to RTwP means you loose more resources [spells, hitpoints etc] in a combat compared to TB; a rather crucial consideration as they are limited especially if you are in a dungeon of some sort where uninterrupted rest is hard to come by. Next to this, resting takes time and while you are resting your kingdom is in trouble.

I don't know what the Dev's intended; I do know that in RTwP I end up almost never using spells / abilities. This makes TB [where I do use spells / abilities] superior imho.

[InEffect]

No, you don't, just aim the spells at the line of engagement and you won't miss. And exactly because you want to conserve resources hands-on approach every turn is not needed. RTwP is the same thing, except faster and abilities not worth using in RTwP are exactly the same that aren't worth it in TB. Except for sleep in the prologue since you'd be dead before finishing casting it in RT, which isn't a good thing either cause it trivializes half of the hardest part of the game.

As to if the devs intended getting more actions than you supposed to by switching back and forth to and from TB - if they didn't, they would fix it or removed the in-combat toggle.

[marcelvdpol]

Originally posted by petesmisc:

Originally posted by dukftuf:

I really enjoy playing the game turn-based myself. An excellent good time.

well, I'm not playing turn based, just pause and giving commands as needed, I tried the turn base and it didn't deem like it was turn based!
In turn base, each toon gets a urn and you do what you do with /him/here and the enemy also get their turn and they do what they do. When I turned on TB, it did not behave as I expected, (I have played DOS1 and 2 and 3) the enemy just kept on bashing my team as if nothing changed, maybe I did it wrong? I just clicked on the sand glass icon.

It seems your Turn-Based is not Turn-Based. In Turn-Based, combat automatically halts when its a party-member's turn to do something [such as move, attack, cast spells etc]. Turn-based has an Initiative Order in which each participant on the battlefield will get its turn [depending on implementation groups of identical monsters are usually grouped together in Initiative as well]. Did you use a Mod for this or the game's built-in TB combat?