*** i do not know coding, but having watched a video on how some games do their AI, here is my guess.
Do not think its complex, AI is often skimped out on by games because making proper Ai requires millions of dollars. If i had to guess how Larian does their Ai, it is the following.
1) check for player in PC cone of vision, once that happens set =1
2) roll a 1d20 for initiative, set movement order
3) enemy: roll variable: a,b,c,d [each pc]: move to hostile
4) roll a hit: 1/ all enemy abilities
5) roll a variable: e,f,g [shove, disengage, or bonus action]
6) turn done.
It would explain why the AI only targets the player it sees first, and any pc that attack from stealth will always roll a d1 for enemies and will never get targeted by enemies that already rolled an initiative roll. If my guess is correct, larian could fix this, by forcing a re-roll of initiative once a new PC joins combat instead of doing it as it is now.
Maybe also give Ai a perception roll after every stage 2, and change standing abilities [cloud of daggers, surfaces etc] as environment damage so that the AI can detect it with a perception check and avoid it.
If anything Larian "dumbed down" the AI compared to it's initial behaviour from release. At least in my experience.
They attack the targets closest to them ...after several patches. Initially they would always go for lowest hp/ mages.
Also they seem to change target quite often. If anything at no point I think Larian's AI suffers from lack of intelligence or capability to understand what's happening on the battlefield( If an archer decides to take the dash action, eat an opportunity attack to it's face only to run across the room because he recognized he has a high chance of shoving someone to his death it means they know very well what's happening. They can even ignore risk to get the higher"reward").
In the initial release two years ago on some rare occasions the AI was spending a long time (10-20 seconds ) to figure out an action. Every time it took them super long to decide they ended up doing some insane one turn party wipe combo.
So don't worry about that. Once in combat the AI struggles to find a way to NOT kill your entire party. That's his main issue. They just struggle to realize when they actually are in combat if hit by AOE attacks. Surprisingly.
Now that I mentioned it....I think it makes sense. The source of AOE attacks is the attack itself not the caster I guess. Which might explain why " Cloud of daggers(Or whaterver is the sorcerer AOE called) doesn't proc combat as shown in the recording.
