AI Behavior : Understanding how it works and how to make good use of it

This guide is all about AI Behavior in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. Learn what AI scripts are and how to make good use of them.

What are AI, AI Behavior and AI script ?

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence and affects in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire both playable characters and NPCs (Non Playable Characters).

An AI script is the order the computer will follow to do an action.
Each script contains:

• a Conditional: the condition required for the action to be done
  
• an Action: the action realised when the conditions are met
  
• a Target type: the type of target concerned by the action (Self, Ally, Self/Ally or Enemy)
  
• a target Priority: the priority followed to decide which target meeting the conditions will be targeted

Scripts have also two optional features. The first allows the AI to break engagement to realise the action (mostly used for vital actions to be performed at all cost) while the second sets a timer (in seconds) forcing the AI to wait for the time set before doing the same action again. This timer is mostly used to avoid cases of spam where the conditions required to perform an action are very easily met.

The AI Behavior is the gathering of all scripts from up to 2 different sets of scripts to dictate what behavior your character will have in combat based on his scripts.

As stated above it is possible to setup up to two sets of scripts at once. More details about the interactions between two different sets can be found below in this guide.

AI Behavior Menu

To open the AI Behavior menu right-click on the blue head icon in the bottom left of the screen. You can also access it via the Character Sheet below the portrait of your character with a simple click.




This it the AI Behavior menu. Let's see what each settings do first.


On top of the menu you can switch character by clicking on their portrait.
Below you find which AI Behavior are currently under use. Click on any to change to any other Behavior you may have made. On the right side you can click the cross to remove a currently used Behavior if you wish to have less Behavior used. It is highly recommended to use only one set of scripts (Behavior) to begin with and eventually use two when you are familiar with the system.

The Behavior Priority determines how the AI will decide on which Script to use in the event where two sets of Scripts are setup at once. It is worth noting before we get into the details of Scripts that actions are chosen in the order of the Scripts meaning that the conditions are checked for the first script, then the second and so on. This is important for some type of Behavior Priorities listed below, feel free to check the Scripts section to understand better this concept. The different priorities available are as follow:

• Random: the game will pick at random any of the two Behaviors for each action to perform and then check for any script for which the conditions are met to perform the action. This type of priority is good to have an AI that feels more unpredictable, more varied and less monotonous.
  
  
• By List Order: the game will first pick scripts from the first sets and then use the scripts from the second set only if none of the first have their condition met. This type of priority is interesting if you have many different sets of scripts and you wish to change which has the priority on which depending on the character or the situation. For example you can two identical sets used on two different playthrough but using one as the primary set on one playthrough and switch the two on the other playthrough.
  
  
• By Highest Power Level: the game will simultaneously check the conditions for both sets of Scripts and always prioritize the action between the two with the Higher Power Level. So if the conditions are met for a script in both sets at once the one with an action with a Higher Power Level is picked. This allow for strategies where the "most effective" is always prioritized. Many applications can be found using this type of priority and it would take an entire guide to detail more on this so let's just move on.
  
  
• Round Robin: the game will first do an action from the first set, then do an action from the second set and cycle between the two over and over. This can be used in many varied ways as all the other type of priorities with one application allowing for two spells of similar Power Level to be used alternatively with the same conditions. Filler spells easy to spam can be alternate this way.

Finally the Auto-Attack part makes it possible to change the conditions in which the character auto-attack when no order are given. Orders given by the players always take priority on auto-attack. It is worth noting that you can setup auto-attack without having any AI Behavior active which makes the characters auto-attack on their own (following the type of auto-attack chosen) without performing any other action on their own. The AI Script has to be toggled on for auto-attack to work just like for AI Behaviors.

The four types of auto-attack are: Passive, Defend Self, Defensive and Aggressive. The descriptions provided by the game are self explanatory though be aware that even on Aggressive setting the range for which your characters will attack (or even act according to AI Behavior) is not that big so be sure to check now and then during fights that no character is being lazy.

Behavior Editor

To open the Behavior Editor, click on the "Open Behavior Editor" icon in the AI Behavior Menu as shown below.

A quick note before getting into the details of AI Behavior: AI Scripts and Behaviors are saved globally and therefore can be used by characters on any playthrough you are doing on your platform. That way you can re-use your Scripts for characters through different playthroughs. This also means that any change made on a Script or Behavior is saved globally so if several characters use it at the moment they will all be affected by the change. This may seem like a detail but it's best to keep it in mind or you may have bad surprises at times.

You can find below the Behavior Editor screen with as example my Edér settings (click on the picture to see it full-size).

• 1: Class(es) that can use that Behavior; at least one of the two class must be the same to use a Behavior made from another class combination (A Fighter/Rogue can use any Fighter, any Rogue and any combination made from those two classes' Behaviors)
  
• 2: Edit the name: you can edit the name or behaviors as well as sets of scripts within a Behavior
  
• 3: Allow to break engagement setting: this is the setting which let the character break engagement to realise the action. By default this setting is deactivated.
  
• 4: Time (in seconds) waited by the character to try to perform an action within a set of scripts again. It is worth nothing that it is indeed working for the entire set of scripts so whenever any script is realise in the set all the scripts in that set will be deactivated for the time chosen.
  
• 5: Duplicate, Move Up, Move Down and Delete settings: those settings are pretty self-explanatory. The Move Up and Move Down settings are crucial because the game will check scripts in the order they are presented from top to bottom. So make sure to always put the emergency scripts on the top and the lowest priority ones at the bottom.
  
• 6: "Add another" icon: This icon allows you to add a new Behavior Set, a new Script within a Set, a new Action within a Set or a new Set (this one is located at the very bottom of your list of Sets/Scripts)

I have not listed the "Not:" setting within the Conditionals because it is visually obvious but don't forget about his existence as it can be extremly useful. The "Not" condition makes that the AI will perform the action if the said Condition is not met instead of being met. This is particularly useful because Conditions are often written only in positive or negative way. For example the "Target is below 90% health" conditional becomes "Target is not below 90% health" (which means has at least 90% health). This can be used in many ways and always keep in mind that any Conditional can be reversed if you need them to be.

Another important note is that you can set several Conditionals for the same action (or several actions). This means that the Action will be performed ONLY if ALL Conditionals are met. For example you can ask your character to cast Charge only if he has no enemy in melee range and at the same time has a melee weapon equipped.
If you set several actions within the same script set the first action will always be performed first when the conditions are met and the others will be used only if the ones above can't be used. This can be used at your advantage in specific situation such as a caster who would cast first his high power spells and then his lower power spells. To do that you would need to set your high power level at the top of the script; the weaker ones will be cast when the strong ones can't be (because your caster will run out of ressource for example).

In our example above Edér will cast:

• Second Wind on himself whenever his health goes below 25%.
  
• Unbending on himself whenever his health goes below 50% and then wait 15 seconds before trying to use it again.
  
• Mule Kick on an enemy target threatening anyone in melee, prioritizing the target with the lower Fortitude if several targets are available and then wait 10 seconds before trying to use it again.

As you can see I have placed Second Wind above Unbending because I want it to trigger below 25% while Unbending will be triggered below 50% of Health. This means that if Edér goes under 25% he will cast Second Wind, if his health is between 25% and 50% he will cast Unbending, otherwise he will keep going through his scripts to check which meets the conditions to be used.
I set up timers for Unbending and Mule Kick because they are ressource based and I don't want Edér to spam those two abilities over and over whenever the conditions are met. For example Unbending is a buff allowing Edér to regain health when damaged. If I had not set up a timer Edér would effectively spam Unbending until he is out of ressource whenever his health is below 50%. So remember to set up timers whenever needed or your characters will be stuck in a wasteful loop of awkwardness!

Here are other slightly more complex examples to show off the possibilities of the editor.

My character Xoti is a Priest that I tend to use in melee to both support my team and damage enemy targets. Here is how she would realise the scripted actions displayed above:

• When Xoti herself doesn't have any Consitution Inspiration she casts Prayer for the Body to any ally or herself by prioritizing the target with the Lowest Armor at that moment (there's a 60 seconds timer you can't see on the screenshot, sorry about that) and then wait 60 seconds before trying to cast it again. This script allows Xoti to help the character on my team with the lowest armor to resist a bit more incoming damage by giving him a buff improving his/her constitution. I could have set up Always true as condition but I tend to always put "Self: Has Inspiration" with the "Not" affix for any type of buff that is an inspiration (and similarly with any affliction when targeting enemies). This is in case somehow the target would already have that inspiration/affliction by another source.
  
  
• When no enemy is melee range (i.e. less than 1, so 0) of Xoti and she is above 75% Health (i.e. not below 75%) she casts Toxic Coils on enemies and tries to target as much enemies as possible and then wait 60 seconds before trying to cast it again. This spell allows Xoti to teleport to a distant location and leave a toxic cloud wherever she lands. This script makes it so Xoti uses it to close the distance with enemies and start getting in the thick of the fight but only every 60 seconds (essentially once per fight) and only if she's not too hurt before hand (to avoid her being endangered). In addition she tries to hit as many enemies as possible to maximize her damage output by using this ability. All the actions below will then be combat/melee focused while all the actions above this one are all her supportive/healing actions. This means that she will prioritize healing from a safe zone and then jump in the fight whenever healing or support is not required.
  
  
• Whenever an enemy is below 50% health Xoti will cast Blessed harvest on the enemy prioritizing the enemy with the Lowest Slash Armor and then wait 15 seconds before using it again. This is a basic "Execute" script used to down an enemy already in great danager. This script is used with Blessed Harvest as it is an ability doing extra damage on targets below 50% health. The 15 seconds timer is there to make sure she doesn't use too much ressources on this ability so she still has ressources for healing and lastly the Lower Slash Armor priority is set to maximize the damage output as this ability deals Slash Damage.

Why how and when using AI Behavior ?

AI Behavior may not be for every type of player or for any moment. You can use it differently depending on what type of experience you like or what type of encounter you face.

• For example you can deactivate AI Behaviors and auto-attack entirely and micro-manage every single action yourself.
  
• You can activate only auto-attack to micro-manage only spells and abilities.
  
• You can set up just a very few scripts within a Behavior to have some basic actions covered (such as self healing, buffing, execute moves, debuffing etc.).
  
• You can set up everything for just a few characters and play others (for example play the Watcher and have the 4 other party members entirely automated).
  
• You can go nuts and let the AI do all the fighting and be proud of your extremly complex scripts you managed to set up.

No matter what type of player you are I strongly recommend you take the time to understand the possibilities behind AI Behavior, try to tinker with it and see what benefits you can or cannot get from it.

Script Examples

Here are some other examples to see what AI Behaviors can do and get inspiration from.

Some Rogue mobility


This first one shows some Movement Scripts for my Rogue character.

• When the character is near death (below 25% health) he teleports to the Ally in his range with the Least Threats using Shadowing Beyond (which also turns him invisible to make sure enemies don't follow at all). Note that I have set up a 30 seconds cooldown to make sure that the character don't spam this ability in a loop (because the conditions is only to lose health and nothing else so as long as he is below 25% health he would spam the Spell otherwise).
  
• Secondly the character jumps on the enemies if he has no enemy in melee range and has currently a melee weapon equipped prioritizing enemy Spellcasters. This time the 60 seconds cooldown is setup to avoid my character wasting too much Ressource on this ability (as it shares the same Ressource pool as many other of his offensive abilities). Though the Conditionals aren't met all the time the character would be teleporting everytime an enemy is not in melee range making it very costy and causing my character to never be able to attack with abilities past the first enemy.

Some Monk rotational damaging attack


Here is an interesting Script of my Monk. This Script causes my Monk to use launching Kick only when she has no enemy in melee range and at least 5 Mortifications available. This Script is tailored to mostly engage a fight and do some decent damage while also making sure that a decent amount of Mortification is kept for other abilities further down the AI Behavior list. I setup the priority as Greatest number of enemies to make sure that my Monk hits as many enemies as possible while using this Script to do optimal damage.

Some Druid protection and healing


This Ability is used by my Druid if his target (self or ally) has below 90% of Health and at least one ally nearby. This is because I am using it on a Spell (Moonwell) giving a defensive buff in an area on top of healing over time so I prefer using it when the battle has already started (because at least one character has lost at least 10% of health) but not too late in the fight because its effect are better used over time and pre-emptively. Nearly all Druid healing spells have a similar feeling of pre-emptively protecting the team and healing over time so it is good to have similar Scripts that take the need to wait for the effects to be applied into considerations. If I set conditions such as having health below 50 or 25% the healing over time may apply too slowly if the target has too much pressure on him/her and the spell may come too late. This obviously highly depend on the survivability of your party and the type of strategy you use. The 20 seconds cooldown is there just to avoid my Druid spamming this spell so he can use his other spells sharing the same Ressource pool as I tend to dislike having my characters using only very few spells and prefer them to use each of them for a very specific situation and have a decent chance to actually use them in battle.

Tips for each Classes' Scripts

This section is meant to give you a few tips to make Scripts tailored for each Class. Those tips are overall general but especially useful because of how unique each Class plays. Some Classes can have very specific Scripts to use or simply be specific in the way they have their Scripts organized to be effective in battle. The section may be repetitive among each Class in order to allow people who are checking only 1 or a few Classes to have all the information needed.

• Barbarian: be careful with the Barbarian as its playstyle is very aggressive and has some defensive drawbacks. For example try to have Scripts that don't make you use Frenzy at any time but instead only when your character is healthy and not too threatened. Also try to avoid to "overkill" enemies by using abilities very strong on enemies about to die already.
  
  
• Chanter: thanks to its chants and phrase generation Chanters can spam invocations quite reliably. Be very careful on the conditionals of your actions or your Chanter will simply spam the same action over and over. The key is to have very specific conditionals for each of your actions and make sure that the order in which they are put is carefully thought out.
  
  
• Cipher: similarly to Chanters make sure to setup your Ciphers scripts very carefully both in terms of Conditionals and the order in which you put your Scripts. This is because Ciphers can generate focus constantly so if you put very wide Conditionals your character will end up using the one same ability in a loop whenever possible.
  
  
• Fighter: the wide range of actions available to the Fighter forces you to make sure that the order of your Scripts is perfect. Try to put your movement and buff Scripts first and to put last your damaging abilities with at the very bottom of the least the "filler" abilities you want your character to use only when he or she has nothing better to do.
  
  
• Druid: as a very hybrid character Druids are not the easiest characters to have AI Behavior setup properly. Make sure to know at what range each spell can be used and what area they cover. As an example some healing and defensive spells are used on the Druid and his surroundings while others can be used from a distance so be careful about your Conditionals or you may end up with your Druid doing some very funky useless actions. Also note that Shapeshifting can be used only once per battle so try to have a good Conditional for your shapeshifting action if you setup any. Shapeshifting are counted as melee weapon equipped when it comes to Condtionals (except for the ranged one), this can be used to your advantage to setup some Scripts used only when Shapeshifted if your Druid normally uses ranged weapons.
  
  
• Monk: the one particular element of all Monks is their double Ressource Pool. Remember that Mortification is a finite ressource refilling only at the end of each battle while Wounds can be gained during battle. Make sure to check which ability uses which Ressource and to put appropriate Conditionals accordingly. Also be careful with your Wounds abilities conditionals or you may have your Monk using only one Ability over the others whenever he or she has enough wounds (setting cooldowns or very specific Conditionals can help).
  
  
• Paladin: the Paladins are actually pretty easy to make Scripts for as their abilities all serve a very unique purpose already making it clear what conditionals can go well for them. Make sure that you know the range of your abilities (such as Lay on Hands being very short range for example) so your Paladin can actually use his abilities. Also you may want to try to setup the option for your Paladin to break engagement to use some of his abilities for emergency situations. If you do so make sure that those actions have Conditionals that check the good health of your Paladin to avoid unnecessary death (I recommend putting Self health below 75 or 50% with the Not toggle ON).
  
  
• Priest: Priests can have many different type of actions available at once (healing, damage, buff etc.). Be careful that you put your Scripts in the right order of priority for you depending on what Priest you have on your team. And double-check the range of your Spells as some are used only around the Priest or in a cone shape so you need appropriate Conditionals if you want to target allies for example.
  
  
• Ranger: the main component of any Ranger is his pet but sadly pets abilities can't be setup as Scripts. This is a big problem at the moment and will require you to micro-manage your Ranger and his pet if you want to have more impact out of it no matter your situation. For all the Ranger-only actions though you can setup very effective Scripts as each of the Ranger's abilities are very specific for a situation. Try to avoid Conditionals too easy to apply or setup cooldowns to avoid your Ranger using all of his Ressource on the first enemy during a battle (Mark the Prey is an ability very easy to spam and waste Ressource on for example).
  
  
• Rogue: Rogues tend to be pretty straightforward no matter the type of build they run so setting up Scripts for a Rogue should often be easy. Having some mobility Script or escape option depending on the build can be interesting but be aware of what the Conditionals you decide are. If you don't your Rogue may end up using the same ability over and over until he or she runs out of Guile.
  
  
• Wizard: the huge varitey of Spells available to the Wizard is a very big problem to setup Scripts with the current system offered by the game. The Wizard suffers from the lack of Conditionals when it comes to offensive Scripts and you may have to setup only a few spells within your Scripts and cast the rest of your spells by yourself to have an optimal Wizard use. The one key factor to keep in mind is to check which Spell belong to which Power Level Tier to avoid having one spell using all the Ressources from that specific pool making the others of that pool impossible to use afterwards. Heavy use of Cooldowns and extremely restrictive Conditionals can help but this is still limited. Another option if you are expert with AI Behaviors is to setup two Behaviors at the same time and have specific rules to decide which Behavior is picked to perform actions to have even more sophisicated AI partner. But even this option stays limited because of the lack of Conditionals.

Random notes

• THE AI BEHAVIORS GIVEN BY THE GAME BY DEFAULT ARE GARBAGE, DO NOT USE THEM MORE THAN A MINUTE TO SEE HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
  To make it short this is because the basic AI Behaviors given by the game tend to cluster a million actions within the same conditions and very few different conditions. This means that your character will essentially cast very few different spells and spam them to death which makes for very poor characters in combat.
  
• All classes are not equal when it comes to AI Behavior use. This is because of how Ressources are different from class to class. So be very careful with how you set up your actions and remember which Ressource they use. Martial classes have only one ressource for all their abilities so try not to waste all of it by letting the AI spam a random action when you need ressource for something else. Casters have a very limited pool of ressource per Power Level tier so remember which spell belong to which tier before setting up your scripts to make sure that some script can even be done.
  
• Wizards are especially hard to make AI Behavior for. The problem is that they tend to have a huge amount of spells using the same ressource and many spells which can be used in fairly similar conditions. Hopefully developers will add more conditions to solve that issue (such as: target is Immune to Damage Type X, Target's lowest Armor Type is Y etc.).
  
• You can use AI Behaviors to have some absurd strategies that are terrible but potentially fun if you want to. Make your party members spam spells like there's no tomorrow or have your wizard target as much allies as possible if you want.
  
• Remember that scripts are saved globally and not per save-file. So try to make specific Behavior sets for each character unless you want some global archetypes you want to re-use accross several characters/save-files.
  
• Your commands always take priority over scripts, you can both use AI Behavior and micro-manage if you don't setup too many scripts (or at least don't have conditions constantly met).
  
• Some specific spells can't be used via scripts (the Hunter's pet spells for example are oddly missing).
  
• Remember that any Conditional can be reversed via the "Not" toggle. This is really key to have advanced Conditionals.
  
• Don't mix up Conditionals and Prioritize By. Conditionals are the conditions required to use the action while Prioritize By just sets the rule to choose which target is best suited for the action. I say this because some "Prioritize By" options are quite different from Conditionals (such as lowest/highest armor type, lowest deflection etc.) and can't be used at all as Conditions.
  
• Remember that by default characters will never break engagement to do the scripts. You can disable that on a per-script basis if you want specific actions to be performed "at all cost" but be careful because you can end up killing your characters with such script if they try to hard to disengage the entire planet to cast a random spell.
  
• Mobility and summoning spells can also be used for Scripts and can be cast on any type of target. This essentially means that you can tell your characters to move to any ally or enemy's location with movement spells or summon creatures on any target too.
  
• Always double-check each of your scripts before going in battle when you just made new ones. More often than not the UI will have selected a strange type of target for example and your wizard may end up targeting allies instead of enemies or you may end up having scripts with conditions nearly impossible to meet.

What is being added for AI in the 1.1 version of the game ?

The update 1.1 of the game adds several features to AI behaviors that were mysteriously missing from the base game. Here is the list of all new things that can be performed thanks to the update:

• Attacks can be used as an action in a Script
  
• Weapon Set swapping can be used as an action in a Script (each weapon set has its own action instead of having an action swapping back and fort between sets)
  
• Modals can be used as actions in a Script [IMPORTANT NOTE: as of when I write these lines modals can ONLY be ACTIVATED by AI Scripts but not deactivated so be aware of this! It makes them pretty useless to use as AI Script at all at the moment]
  
• Stances, auras and similar spells can be used as actions in a Script (it only activates them but this is not really a problem as they don't have downsides and the activation of one deactivate any other previously activated so you can make clever use of stances and auras as it is)
  
• Consumables (via the quick use slots) and other miscelaneous items spells can be added as actions in a Script

(The UI also gained in clarity as Conditionals have been grouped up in clever categories to easily find them, sadly priorities or actions have not)

The update effectively brings most of the missing features for AI Behaviors but the current way modals and weapon sets work may bother some people as especially for modals it's almost impossible to make a decent use of them aside from telling the AI to constantly activate them (or manually deactivating them at the end of each battle every single time). Hopefully developers will fix that so there is a way to have toggle-actions that are dynamically switched on/off depending on if the Conditional(s) is(are) met.

Please report any info you find within the guide that contradict this section of the guide as I may have forgot to remove some outdated information from the guide which became irrelevant with those additions.

Conclusion

To conclude AI Behaviors can be used to spice up your combats in any way you want. Whether it is to make it less focused on micro-management, to allow you to control only specific characters, to help you keeping up some key buff/debuff or simply to have some wacky random mayhem AI Behaviors can be very useful.

I hope this guide helped you to better understand the possibilties offered by AI Behavior in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. My hopes are that developers will improve even more the system by adding more conditionals and make the UI more responsive and enjoyable to use.

If you have any questions about AI in game in general or the Guide or if you simply want to comment on the Guide feel free to leave comments in the section below.

Have fun in game with your automated characters!

[TheOne320]

I just is weird that there is no place to share scripts. The game even has an export function for that.

[Myst Leissa]

@TheOne320, I mean the guide does provide examples...maybe not the most useful, but definitely examples.

[Myst Leissa]

@Cheeto Fingers, then control ALL your toons manually, the guide is well written and goes into detail about the situational use of scripts (which when you boil down the conditions/priorities/targets/etc is all the AI Really consists of; It's old school AI, not that new fangled chat-bot AI...)

[Cheeto Fingers]

Too complicated for my fish brain

[TheOne320]

Does someone know of a Website with a comprehensive collection of example AI scripts for different party members? I learn this stuff easier by looking at examples.

[Fritz]

I want to make my rogue use blinding strike on his current target if it is not blinded. I do can check if my target is blinded, but I don't know how to target my attack on my current target. Best i could find is "current engager" which might work, but that wouldn't be a solution for a char with a shield.

[Rin Palora]

@Sombrero should have specified I need it for Turn Based, which for some reason doesn't have the AI Behavior menu hence why I was asking for a way to do it outside of the game and replace the default one.

[Sombrero]

I believe if I remember correctly that you can import/export AI scripts but I might be confusing with another game with similar features. If it exists it's in the menu and fairly obvious.

[Rin Palora]

Is there a way to edit the Default AI Behavior outside the game?
Supposedly it's the one the AI of the rest of the crew that isn't in your party during boarding use and I'm sick of seeing them be either utterly useless or actively detrimental (fireballing 4 of my guys to hit 1 enemy).

[Schutzengel]

The AI Editor rulez, but the game sucks. I wish I could copy/paste this AI Editor over to games like Pathfinder: WotR. Together with FF12's Gambit system this forms the standard / pinnacle of party AI automation but unlike PoE2, FF12 was a good game too.

I remember taking hours for creating a set of 2 working Wizard Behaviours for my MC which ruled any encounter but never made it past the intro areas up until first visiting the capital town. When I think Id like to play PoE2 again, install then boot it up, I immediately exit again. The game looks soo good but its also somehow completely alienating any desire to play it.