Ai Recovery Moves

[ArcticPrism]

Has anyone else encountered the problem where the AI simply refuses to use recovery moves? For example, most of the time the Pokemon I give recovery too almost never use it. They prefer to keep doing 20-30% of the enemy Pokemon's HP while receiving the same amount of damage. Instead of healing, even when they are almost dead they still prefer to attack.

I haven't been able to figure out why this is. Some Pokemon have no problem using recovery moves and will use them often. It feels like the higher their attack/special attack is the less likely they are to use a recovery move.

[Bond697]

i know the game does lots of damage calcs to see what move it should use and i think it takes into consideration how much damage it can do vs what recovery would do for it. if they can use recover and you attack, then they're roughly right back where they started anyway. i don't think they know what you're going to do next, just (possibly) what you have done, so they're not evaluating it against your next move, just different odds. it makes complete sense that the higher the attack stat, the more likely they are to attack. it gives better return on investment.

[ArcticPrism]

Even if they are doing not very effective damage and doing barely anything(and barely taking anything in return) they will won't heal themselves. The AI seem to like pain split, but probably only because it deals damage. They also like Rest. I'm unsure what the threshold is but it seems a Pokemon has <80 atk/spatk they are more likely to heal.

[Bond697]

i would imagine they have different ai "scripts" for different types of pokemon. an attacker wouldn't be as worried about healing as something bulky meant to sit there for awhile, etc. so they're given different weight depending on the ai "program" meant for that type of poke.

[ArcticPrism]

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nature#Battle_style

This section was interesting to read. It made me wonder if that is relevant for ai battling in general in BW2. Probably not since it does mention this not having an effect outside of those zones and it's a different game.

[Bond697]

i'd guess not since it's using gen 3 mechanics. everything has gotten quite a bit smarter since then.