some observations on status staff AI in FE6

[dondon151]

this has been a topic of contention, with false information being pretty widespread. i think we've finally narrowed down our understanding of the FE6 AI with regards to status staff targeting to an applicable level, though. i don't claim all of this to be 100% correct, but if you've observed something inconsistent with the details below, please say so and provide evidence.

1. enemy berserk and sleep users will not target player units without usable weapons.

this works if either the player unit in question has no weapons or no weapons that he can equip (e.g., garret with a silver sword). essentially, you can let someone else hold weapons if there is a particular unit that you don't want to get berserked or slept, and a different unit can serve as a decoy.

2. enemy silence users will not target player units without usable staves.

this is similar to the rule above, but it's less intuitive and more easily abusable. magic-using units will not be targeted with silence if they aren't carrying staves. you could have cecilia with bolting and forblaze, but as long as she isn't carrying a heal staff, for example, she won't be silenced.

3. staff targeting priority seems to be in reverse deployment order with a certain hit threshold

this is possibly the most interesting and most novel observation. there have been numerous hypotheses about staff targeting, and i'll explain why each of them are false:

a. enemy AI targets the most "threatening" unit

usually, "threatening" means having the most atk, or highest MT weapon, or something. this is easily shown to be false by observing that sophia in chapter 14 is very high on the staff AI priority list, despite being incredibly weak.

b. enemy AI targets the unit with the highest/lowest defense, not resistance

units like zeiss and douglas tend to be the most frequently targeted units, which leads to the highest defense hypothesis. again, disproven by chapter 14 sophia. the same example disproves the lowest defense hypothesis.

c. enemy AI targets units in reverse recruitment order

this hypothesis was pretty consistent with my observations, except i observed when experimenting in chapter 18I that the berserk staff priest liked to target igrene instead of zeiss. units that are recruited later tend to be lower in the deployment lower (since they always appear at the bottom of the roster, and players like to keep the same core units from map to map).

so basically, enemy staff users in FE6 preferentially target units lower in the deployment roster. this is pretty consistent up until a certain point (from my experience, when the enemy has ~20 hit or less), at which point the behavior may change.

EDIT: one possible application of this last rule is to deploy fae in the last slot on hard mode maps (where druids have 25-29 mag) and have her sponge status staves at ~30 hit. she can probably decoy pretty well up until she gains a couple of points of resistance, but if you aren't using her, she could be great staffbait with her 26 base res.

Edited January 7, 2014 by dondon151

[aquamarin]

Nice work! What a lazy way to make staff AI lol.

It looks like Fae has another nice use. I think it's good enough to justify leveling her as late as possible (for ranks, not efficiency).

[VincentASM]

Very nice, I loved it when something in FE is crazier than you first expected.

Gotta try to abuse this whenever I get around to replaying FE6...

[Jedi]

This should help a lot for a future run of mine. Thanks dondon, I remember Toothache and I being so sure on that defense theory too haha

[X-Naut]

Well, that explains a lot, especially Niime being a high priority target in 19/20A and 20B despite her high Res.

[Nicolas]

Dondon, you're such pro.

[Toothache]

I knew I was missing something in the understanding of the AI priority, thanks for helping to clear things up