@Maximuuus I admire your efforts to make this game better. However I am not sure the reason why things are not moving, comes from Larian's view on what is balanced. I am convinced that the combat AI desperately needs those "larianisms" to show some activity. From there it's not that much about providing the player with some "cheese", it's more about giving the AI some elements to demonstrate some abilities and to show a pseudo intelligence. That is not tactically impressive but its adaptative nature allows players to play and replay several fights with a different experience (potentially boring) each time. In the whole EA part of the game, I am not aware of any fight where the AI would perform well on a flat ground with no interactive object, just relying on the DnD features of the npcs. If they don't do it at low levels, I am afraid they won't do it at higher levels when the number of combinations explode.
I think the above comment says it all. The AI is completely built around the arcade “cheese” mechanics. Start a battle from the top of the tower in the goblin camp and sit back and watch as several goblins just stand around and talk trash while you fill them with arrows round after round. I am pretty sure that every battle needs to be planned in advance for it to not completely break the AI. If you do something truly unexpected, such as retreat to the other side of a bridge instead of rushing head long into the throng or seizing the high ground, the AI doesn’t seem to know how to respond. I don’t think there is any fixing this I am afraid.
In many ways this game is Baldurs Gate: Monty Python. It seems to me that Larian has adopted the concept that fantasy games are not meant to be taken seriously. The original Infinity Engine games often had adolescent humor in the dialogues, think of the Melium the Masterful encounter or two psycho girls on the ship in the city, but the combat was always deadly serious. Cheese tactics were possible, i.e. wand of cloud kill and project image, but they were certainly not core to the experience. Larian seems to have taken the opposite approach. Conversations are all deadly serious with little humor, but the battles are meant to look like a Michael Bey film.
I have spent the last few weeks playing Pathfinder Kingmaker and I am struck by how it is superior in so many ways (although I think the devs were kind of a prick at times). For instance, there is no need to click 50 times in a room to loot things. This is so nice from a quality of life perspective. There is no eating of pigs heads for healing. Rest is regulated by supplies. There is an actual sense of urgency. Last but not least it is actually fun to use character abilities. I have enjoyed playing BG3, but I think they are going to lose people by about mid game if the mechanics and immersion aren’t improved. Once people realize that there are abilities (such as throw) that produce instant victory, they won’t be able to stop themselves from using it. It would be like giving a kid a test with the answer sheet and telling them not to use the answer sheet until it is time to grade it. Once you know the optimum way of getting from one point to the other, it is almost impossible to not take advantage of it.
