History Main / AIRoulette

* Monsters in ''MonsterHunter'' do this on occasion (e.g. using close-range attacks when the player is far away), although it's not as jarring since most of them are supposed to possess only animal-level intelligence, and they usually do choose an appropriate action. However, their tactics are not ''completely'' random, and may sometimes come as a nasty surprise (roar to stun and immobilize the player, launch a normally easy-to-dodge beam which knocks off 2/3 of his health and sends him flying, follow up by charging him and stepping on him).

* In ''{{Adventurers}}!'', Eternion has an attack that allows him to nearly kill the entire party in one hit. After he declares his intent to use it again to finish them, he instead uses something else. When he expresses his confusion, Karn explains this trope to him.

** Graveler on the Victory Road in GSC have been known to blow themselves up rather than have to deal with a Bug/Poison type like Spinarak they have a 30-level advantage over. [[hottip:*:This message brought to you by Bait-And-Switch Pokédex Filling]]

* Enemies in ''FinalFantasyXI'' generally pick attacks and spells at random. Sleepga spells can render an alliance useless, and the mob could go to town on targets one-by-one... if they could only remember to not cast any damaging Area-of-Effect spell, which wakes everyone up. Sometimes they even use Sleepga after casting Poisonga, which makes sleep ineffective due to poison damage keeping people awake. Some Notorious Monsters, however, either have only one spell, spells of a specific element, or a very small set of spells that maximize the NM's performance. [[http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Shadowhand At least one]] NM is actually scripted to cast Sleepga 2, then [[OhCrap Thundaga 3 for massive AoE damage]].
** [[FinalFantasyX FFX]] suffered from this short cut as well. Although more commonly the bosses were a combination of AI and randomness. (IE random single damage attack followed random AoE attack followed by random buff, heal if low health) [[AnticlimaxBoss The final boss]] in that game has an attack that reduces your entire party to 1 HP. Potentially dangerous, but not if he uses it multiple times in a row...

** The most amusing case is with a mind-controlled Mage. Part of the time will be spent AoEing around themselves, and the rest will be spent swapping back and forth between the 3 self-only buff spells that a mage can chose between.

* Enemies in ''BookwormAdventures'' invariably use this tactic. And it's a good thing, too, because if they used their abilities intelligently many of them would be able to stunlock Lex.

'''Examples:'''

----
<<|VideoGameTropes|>>

[[Bong milk is good for the brain.:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/werewolf_9693_8856.jpg]]

One of the three methods an AI uses to perform moves and functions is to simply pick moves at random. For some [[SmashMook simple foes]], this is fine, as the player probably won't notice. But the more complex or varied the enemy, the more likely actions will be chosen that would ''never'' be performed by any intelligent and sane human, or any sufficiently advanced enemy AI.

Lower the player's physical defense? Let's use magic! Put them to sleep? Wake them up the next turn! Have victory one turn away? Run like a chicken! Even if an enemy possesses an attack that will effectively ensure defeat for your team if used first, it's perfectly possible that they won't bother to use it until it's too late, or even not at all.

Warning: AI Roulette occasionally can have a run of competent moves in the same way you can have long streaks of one color in true roulette, and for the same reason. AI Roulette is ''usually'' laughable, but if the AI is having a ''lucky'' streak when your party (esp. a beginning party) is fighting it, you'll stop laughing. In particular, some bosses are only vulnerable when they [[TacticalSuicideBoss perform a specific move]]; this trope can result in controller-tossing rage when the AI Roulette doesn't come up with this move.

There are several reasons that this trope may be in use:
* It takes less time. Complex AI routines would require a lot of coding for each individual creature to use its attacks most effectively, which increases the time it takes to create a new monster. In games with hundreds of different creatures (even if some are PaletteSwap creatures), AIRoulette is a reasonable alternative to writing hundreds of AI routines.
* The AI would be very predictable otherwise. No matter how sophisticated the AI, if the same situation always causes the same reaction the player will learn the pattern and anticipate it. A little randomness makes the game more challenging, in a way that cannot really be described as [[FakeDifficulty fake]].
* Execution speed. Online video games may be host to thousands of players encountering hundreds of thousands of computer-controlled entities at the same time. AI Roulette may provide a performance advantage because it keeps the server from being bogged down with conditional trees. Even simple additions to AI can result in doubling or tripling server load, and consequent game slowdowns.
* Keeping things somewhat fair. Computers don't make mistakes, and sometimes [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard have an unfair advantage]]; when monsters know your weaknesses or have devastating attacks, using the right skills all the time - using its strongest attack nonstop, breaking your best armor, going after your weakest characters, exploiting your elemental weaknesses, gaming the counterattack system - would result in incredibly frustrating difficulty.

Not related to XanatosRoulette or {{AI is a Crapshoot}}. Compare ArtificialStupidity
----
'''Examples:'''

* Enemies in ''FinalFantasyXI'' generally pick attacks and spells at random. Sleepga spells can render an alliance useless, and the mob could go to town on targets one-by-one... if they could only remember to not cast any damaging Area-of-Effect spell, which wakes everyone up. Sometimes they even use Sleepga after casting Poisonga, which makes sleep ineffective due to poison damage keeping people awake. Some Notorious Monsters, however, either have only one spell, spells of a specific element, or a very small set of spells that maximize the NM's performance. [[http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Shadowhand At least one]] NM is actually scripted to cast Sleepga 2, then [[OhCrap Thundaga 3 for massive AoE damage]].
** [[FinalFantasyX FFX]] suffered from this short cut as well. Although more commonly the bosses were a combination of AI and randomness. (IE random single damage attack followed random AoE attack followed by random buff, heal if low health) [[AnticlimaxBoss The final boss]] in that game has an attack that reduces your entire party to 1 HP. Potentially dangerous, but not if he uses it multiple times in a row...
** Of course this was somewhat offset by so many of the big boss level enemies in FFXI having moves that are essentially "You lose if I use this attack". Being randomly woken up after being slept by a low damage spell means you get to live at least as long as it takes for the AI to decide to give the wheel another spin.
** Bard enemies are funny. Lower level ones are more prone to use songs that are useful, since that's all that is available to them. Higher level ones can waste an entire 8 seconds casting a MP restoring song on themselves. Which they are incapable of using.
*** This is mostly due to a flaw in Bard monsters and enemies with MP in general: Bard enemies pretty much ''never'' have a subjob that uses MP(Not even White Mage, which is what player Bards are ''expected'' to have), and any monster that has MP has MP reserves so ginormous that MP restoration is a moot point.
**** Although some strategies for soloing certain things not intended to be soloed (such as Genbu) involve running them out of MP eventually. But compared to players, mobs have at ''least'' 10 times the MP, and bosses can have innate MP regen that makes trying to run them out physically impossible.
** In fact, that's how most enemies in the entire series act, though some bosses would be subjected to certain rules (such as only being able to use a devastating effect every 5 turns with combat messages warning the player).
* Enemies in ''DragonQuestVIII'', even bosses, paid little attention to the state of the fight. They'd use a special move removing all effects on the party, even when there are none. They'd cast buffs on themselves when they're about to die anyway. They'd call for backup even when their party is already full, and other pointless actions.
** That is, in fact, emblematic of the entire ''DragonQuest/Warrior'' series.
** In the original ''DragonQuestIV'', this also applied to your ''allies''. In order to represent that everyone aside from your hero was an experienced warrior by the time you recruited them in Chapter 5, the player only got to directly control their HeroicMime. All the other heroes had their own AI, which... didn't work out that well in practice. Such as having [[TheMedic team Cleric]] [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Cristo/Kyril]] constantly casting his [[UselessUsefulSpell rarely-hitting insta-death spell]] against ''bosses''. Thankfully, they added a manual command option in TheRemake.
*** Even the original NES version had a GameGenie code that allowed manual command.
* In ''{{Pokemon}} Red and Blue'', your very first battle against your rival essentially comes down to luck, as they can either attack or use a status lowering move. Whether you will win comes down to how much they will use their non-directly damaging move.
** Well, not really, since you could take out a Potion from your computer and heal, an option which isn't mentioned at that point making it a GuideDangIt.
** As the game progresses, certain moves are appropriate only in the rarest of situations, such as Gravity. At other times, the 'Rock-Paper-Scissors' elemental weaknesses prove this trope. For instance, when the opponent's Fire-Ground combination Pokémon decides to square off against your Rock-type, he's just as likely to use a Fire move (which does little damage to you) rather than a Ground move (which will probably KO you quickly).
*** Interestingly, Gym Leaders are smart enough that any attack that is weak against the opponent is removed from their roulette.
*** In Generation I, this was taken a step further; pokemon used by high level trainers are programed to use whatever move has the best type advantage above all others, even before considering whether or not that move actually does damage. This was especially noticable with the Elite Four, where you'd see their pokemon use nothing but nondamaging psychic moves, such as Agility, Amnesia, and Barrier, simply because you brought out a Fighting or Poison type.
** Trainers in the first generation with certain Pokémon, such as Spearow or Kadabra, would use Whirlwind or Teleport, despite the fact that auto-flee moves don't work in Trainer battles. Whirlwind eventually gained a Trainer battle effect that's more annoying than anything.
** Truth is, this varies from game to game and trainer to trainer... among the AI trainers. However, wild Pokémon will ''always'' use an AI Roulette. This is probably justified by the wild Pokémon not having the decision-making skills of humans.
*** And it falls apart again when you realize that some Psychic-types are supposed to be as smart or smarter than people, but still use the Roulette when wild.
** Graveler on the Victory Road in GSC have been known to blow themselves up rather than have to deal with a Bug/Poison type like Spinarak they have a 30-level advantage over. [[hottip:*:This message brought to you by Bait-And-Switch Pokédex Filling]]
** The Roulette that AI trainers use prevents them from using moves that will be not very effective... which can make them even dumber than if they just used random moves. In Yellow Version, Giovanni has a Nidoking and Nidoqueen that, when faced with a Grass/Poison type like Bulbasaur, will only use Leer or Tail Whip due to what their other moves are. When you don't understand the Roulette, seeing them beat your Pikachu in one hit and then be taken down by a level 10 Bulbasaur is utterly baffling.
* The battle system in ''EarthBound'' relies on this to make fighting some enemies easier. Many enemies (with few exceptions) have "do nothing" type actions in the list, such as furrowing one's brow or falling down. These are chosen from an enemy's list of attacks just as often as their regular attacks are, so it's possible to get lucky and have an enemy spend several turns idling.
** Given the atmosphere of the game, this practically falls under the "RuleOfCute", if there were such a thing.
** Then there's the [[http://starmen.net/mother2/ebdb/enemies.php?enemy=145 Clumsy Robot]] boss, which has one devastating attack and so many "do nothing" moves it could be considered a {{lampshade}}.
*** Of course, this also means that if you get unlucky and Clumsy Robot uses the missile, say, four times in a row, even the rolling HP meters won't save you.
** There are also some enemies that use a set pattern to attack, such as the Robo-Pump and Final Starman.
* In the Microprose ''{{Magic the Gathering}}'' game, the AI has a particular talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because it randomly selects its moves. It's particularly amusing to see it countering its own spells. It is rather obvious to anyone who plays that the AI does not understand the game.
** Worse, the game also includes cards with random effects that do not exist in the regular card game. These cards are so badly designed (being fundamentally unreliable) that no sane person would put them in his deck. But of course the AI does, most notably the final boss. The only reason the boss stands a chance is because he has twenty times as much HP as you do.
** The game-exclusive cards are, like a lot of older Magic sets, a mixed bag. But [[MookMaker Necropolis of Azar]], Aswan Jaguar, and Rainbow Knights are actually decent.
* A common issue with ''CityOfHeroes'' and ''CityOfVillains'' mooks and bosses, especially later in the game. Rikti suffer horribly, as Mentalists will spam sleep powers on Heroes stuck in poison gas, Guardians will heal allies at full health and shield almost dead ones, and Drones can spend a lot of time running from characters with accurate ranged attacks. The Praetorians and the Freedom Phalanx tend to suffer from this, too, especially Numina and her evil counterpart. They'll beat you to within an inch of your life, turn on an invulnerable force field, and then run away.
** The force field used by Numina and her evil counterpart is used when at low life for a certain duration whenever the cooldown is up. It's predictable.
*** This is added in deliberately for an allied NPC during the battle with Ajax. The NPC [[spoiler:A Flawed Clone of you]], has both a random combination of powersets (meaning that it's quite possible for it to have [[StoneWall no offensive moves]], or [[AttackAttackAttack nothing but them]]), and a deliberately downgraded AI. Whether or not the [[spoiler:Flawed Clone]] will actually be a help is a LuckBasedMission. Even if you do end up getting an ally with a functional power combination, there is a very real chance they'll spend the entire fight doing the chicken dance.
* In ''Crisis Core: FinalFantasyVII'', you will run into enemies on the harder missions who outnumber you 5 to 1 and have the AI roulette. Example: One of the Wutai missions pits you against 5 Silver Wutai Soldiers, who have a move called "Death Missile" that kills you in one hit unless you have that rare item that makes you immune to Death. They seem to like this move a lot.
* ''FinalFantasyVI'' presents a unique scenario for this trope: the Coliseum, wherein the player chooses a single champion from the active party to fight solo against the enemy. The AIRoulette will then take over this character. The problem is, the more abilities (or spells) the character has, the more likely it is to perform something useless (like trying to cast Imp at Siegfried for ten turns in a row, or using Remedy or Float on oneself) or downright harmful (such as Meltdown, summoning Crusader, or Self-Destruct.) Many a player has gone into the Coliseum with [[GameBreaker a fully-leveled up Sabin, armed with a Genji Glove and a Master's Scroll/Offering]], expecting to kill the enemy in one shot, only to see him cast [[HeroicSacrifice Soul Spiral]] and kill himself on his first turn.
** The most painful situation possible, however, is if the AI controlled Terra chooses to Trance herself. For some bizarre reason, whenever that happens the AI will simply sit there, letting Terra soak up whatever the enemy chooses to throw at her, for up to a ''minute'' at times. This is a triple-whammy: It wastes the precious MP points Terra uses to stay in Trance mode, it essentially ruins the battle for you, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and it's boring as hell to watch if the enemy can't kill her quickly.]]
* ''TheLastRemnant'' for the Xbox 360 is an unusual case in that you, the player, are subject to partial AIRoulette just as much as the enemies due to the battle system. Though you still have command over your units, the available list of commands you can pick from turn to turn (as well as depending on the enemy you target) is determined entirely by the AI. Sometimes the commands available are entirely logical and normal, sometimes they're nothing near what you need (i.e. no healing commands when you could certainly use some), and sometimes they give you access to your uber attacks for trash enemies.
* In ''{{Adventurers}}!'', Eternion has an attack that allows him to nearly kill the entire party in one hit. After he declares his intent to use it again to finish them, he instead uses something else. When he expresses his confusion, Karn explains this trope to him.
* ''WorldOfWarcraft'': Bosses (and mobs) that mind-control your character will then use your powers against your teammates. Druids can be forced to cast Teleport:Moonglade in a dungeon that was on another ''continent''. Hilarity ensued.
** There is one major exception: If you get mind controlled, expect the AI to use your longest cooldown skills just to deny your their use at a moment where they would be helpful.
** The AI also seems unable to cast targetable [=AoE=] attacks properly and always casting them on itself.
** The most amusing case is with a mind-controlled Mage. Part of the time will be spent AoEing around themselves, and the rest will be spent swapping back and forth between the 3 self-only buff spells that a mage can chose between.
** For that matter, mobs generally use their abilities at random as well. Bosses tend to be less random but some of their abilities are still used more or less randomly with a cooldown limitation preventing them from spamming the party to death.
** Other particularly hilarious times are when the boss will force you to use a move that will break the mind control.
** Most mind-controlled caster classes will spend a large amount of time feebly whacking their teammates with their staff or mace.
* An [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality accepted break]] in the already NintendoHard ''ShinMegamiTenseiNocturne'', where some bosses could outright kill you in one round if they used the strongest attack twice. The BonusBoss is a LuckBasedMission.
** This is an understatement. If it wasn't for the roulette, Back Attacks would invariably kill you ''every time''. And enemies that could use multiple elements would decimate your party over and over again, becoming [[DemonicSpiders Demonic]] BossInMookClothing.
** This is also the case in the ''Persona'' subseries, and is the ''only'' reason ''{{Persona 3}}'' BonusBoss The Reaper can be killed without resorting to Armageddon. The key to surviving this fight is that it likes to waste turns using element Break spells and then refuse to exploit the new weakness. The hardest part of the fight is actually the end - once the Reaper is almost dead, the roulette shuts off and its AI goes to "NukeEm" mode.
** Speaking of ''Persona 3'' (As well as 4 and 3P if you leave Tactics on), this can be applied to your Party Members. Granted, you can tell them to favor certain tactics, and they will listen to what Fuuka has to say once she finishes her EnemyScan, but that won't stop Mitsuru from using [[UselessUsefulSpell Marin Karin]] at the worst possible time. In their defense, once something not mentioned by the scan doesn't work, they won't repeat it for the rest of the fight; the downside is that their AI can't ''remember'' it won't work.
* Intentionally done example: in ''KingdomOfLoathing'' the Quiet Healer opponent will occasionally heal the player instead of hitting him, "by force of habit".
* The AI in ''CompanyOfHeroes'' does this to a degree. While the AI will still use reasonably effective tactics (how effective depends on difficulty, of course), the basic plan seems to be based largely on AI Roulette. IT should be noted, however, that the AI will, on higher difficulties, still be able to completely fuck you up no matter what he does.
** This is because TheComputerIsACheatingBastard. At all difficulties. The most important thing the difficulty choice affects is how much the opponent cheats.
* Beholders in ''BaldursGate 2'' tend to spam their attacks mostly at random. This can be convenient when they paralyze you then hit you with their AntiMagic eye to dispel it, but just pray an Elder Orb doesn't decide to cast Imprisonment on your main character, because WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou, even for long enough to counter it.
** Mages also have an AI flaw that can make them seem a bit like this, although they actually adhere to a pretty strict pattern. Summoned demons register as hostile and will attack you unless you cast Protection from Evil on yourself. So they summon a demon, cast the protection, then spend all their energy attacking it because it still looks like an enemy.
* Monsters in ''MonsterHunter'' do this on occasion (e.g. using close-range attacks when the player is far away), although it's not as jarring since most of them are supposed to possess only animal-level intelligence, and they usually do choose an appropriate action. However, their tactics are not ''completely'' random, and may sometimes come as a nasty surprise (roar to stun and immobilize the player, launch a normally easy-to-dodge beam which knocks off 2/3 of his health and sends him flying, follow up by charging him and stepping on him).
* Spellcasters in ''NeverwinterNights'' can be just ''embarrassing''. Casters with access to powerful damaging spells will instead start casting 0th level protective spells like Virtue or Resistance, and target you with Daze, a spell with a 5% chance of very briefly incapacitating you. Then randomly they'll take off half your health in one hit, before going back to casting Dispel Magic on someone without any spell effects on them.
* {{Golden Sun}} has this with ''all'' of its bosses.
** Not quite. Dullahan, the BonusBoss of The Lost Age, has a set attack pattern of 24 moves that he cycles through, starting the battle at one of three specific points in the cycle. Presumably this is to stop him from using Charon three times in the same turn, or worse, [[OhCrap Djinn Storm followed by two Charons]].
** And again in ''Dark Dawn''. He has a fixed pattern, but starts at a random point in it. He does skip two attacks in the command if certain criteria are not met, which allows for some permutation of his command queue. If you can manipulate the turn queue properly, or start at the right place already, you can use Doldrum or Ivy to lock out Djinn Storm. The rest of his attacks, however? [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Good luck.]]
** Most of the other bosses, though, have a chance (however small) to show you precisely why summon rushing without precautions is risky by occasionally curbstomping the party in two turns. The rest of the time they put up little to no resistance to the tactic.
** Downright painful for mooks, since they're already severely underpowered. There's a point where you just feel sorry for enemies using their non-damaging defense lowering move on your weakest character for two turns (which is actually a good idea), then attacking your strongest character the third turn, right before dying and having done practically no damage at all.
* Lashiec from Phantasy Star IV will have you praying he attempts to cast Possession, which may or may not put one character to sleep, instead of casting Anothergate, which deals a LOT of damage to everyone. Same goes for Dark Force [[spoiler:II]], with Evil Eye and Lightningshower.
** As well as the biggest BigBad, which may use Cancellation on you, removing the effects of your protective techniques. Resetting your party's magic defenses (if you even care about them) is far less costly than recovering from a group-damage attack.
* The {{Dungeons And Dragons}} 3.5 edition book Tome of Battle include the Crusader class, which gains access to randomly selected known abilities each turn.
* {{Iji}}'s [[FinalBoss General Tor]] is a partial aversion. It starts off as straight AI Roulette, but the probabilities adjust to favour attacks that have already hit you as the fight goes on. Fortunately, this doesn't apply to his [[TacticalSuicideBoss charged shots]] [[PlayingTennisWithTheBoss that you can reflect]] ForMassiveDamage.
* A few fortunate spins of the AI Roulette is your best chance of defeating Werdna in {{Wizardry}}. Amongst his devastating attack and spells is...Zilwan, a "kill undead" spell. Since you don't have any zombies in your party, you'd better hope he decides to Zilwan you three or four times in a row, because you're not surviving much else.
* In SpongebobSquarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, there are robot boss versions of some of the characters which follow this trope. Robot Sandy can do her clothesline move 15 times before she shows her weak spot move!
* There are several situations in DragonAge where most characters, and even parties, can be wiped out if the enemy mages randomly cast the right spells unless the character is specifically built and equipped to have massive generic spell resistance. This isn't a completely bad thing because there are several fights in the game that would be impossible to win if the AI was intelligent.
* * The entire SaGa series has this in droves, especially SaGa Frontier. While a few have a powerful move that they activate only after certain circumstances, they typically spam their moves indiscriminately. Battles devolve into [[LuckBasedMission games of chance]] in the hopes that they don't choose their most powerful attacks. It doesn't help that many of the bosses get multiple turns. Even some of the most innocuous low-level enemies have sort of party decimating attack they may or may not do that can result in an impromptu Game Over. [[ThatOneAttack MagneticStorm, any one]]?
* Sports games in general are notorious for their AI Roulette, although it is much more visible in games that let you choose the difficulty (the higher the difficulty, the lower the chances of dumb AI behaviour) and team-based games (where an error by a single player or an especially smart move by one out of X guys can mark the difference between humiliating defeat and amazing victory).
** Pro Evolution Soccer is one of the most known Sports franchises to feature this: while on the easiest difficulty sets the AI controlled players are brain dead zombies letting you do all the play and occasionally defending, on the hardest difficulty settings it's nearly impossible to predict if the opponents will leave a huge opening (even bigger than the ones on easy difficulty), perform amazing saves and shots or simply cheat with extra speed and stamina.
* The Tag Duel gameplay style in recent {{Yu-Gi-Oh}}! games tends towards this. To explain, a Tag Duel is you and (usually) a computer ally against two computers with 8000 Life Points and one playing field per team. You each have your own decks and hands and can use your team member's cards to your advantage when it's your turn.
** An example: after the player has used [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Nightmare_Wheel Nightmare Wheel]] on an opponent's face-up [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Oracle_of_the_Sun Oracle of the Sun]], his computer ally proceeds to use [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_Vortex Lightning Vortex]], ruining the nice set-up the player had just put into place.
* The bonus boss of EtrianOdyssey subverts this. It has three elemental attacks, any one of which will wipe out your entire party if not blocked by the specific, one-turn-only anti-elemental technique. The only way to beat him is to memorize the entire set 50-turn-long sequence of attacks he uses so you can counter them at the appropriate time; so strictly speaking (barring an insanely defensive tactic), he's only ''beatable'' because he subverts this trope.
** Similarly, the bonus bosses of the second and third game follow a similar pattern, only the second game's bonus boss plays this straight if you attack him at night. The third game's bonus boss also plays it straight after losing only 1/4th of its hitpoints. Since all of its moves are lethal, both common tactics for beating it involve simply shredding it in a single turn using one of the game's two most broken moves.

----
<<|VideoGameTropes|>>

As ArtificialStupidity says, one of the three methods an AI uses to perform moves and functions is to simply pick moves at random. For some [[SmashMook simple foes,]] this is fine, as the player probably won't notice.

But the more complex or varied the enemy, the more likely actions will be chosen that would ''never'' be performed by any intelligent and sane human, or any sufficiently advanced enemy AI.

Lower the player's defense? Let's lower our attack! Put them to sleep? Wake them up the next turn! Have victory one turn away? Run like a chicken! Even if an enemy possesses an attack that will effectively ensure defeat for your team if used first, it's perfectly possible that they won't bother to use it until it's too late, or even not at all.

Sometimes this is justified by having the computer [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard not follow the game rules]], but most of the time, it's just groan-worthy.

Warning: AI Roulette occasionally can have a run of competent moves in the same way you can have long streaks of one color in true roulette, and for the same reason. AI Roulette is ''usually'' laughable, but if the AI is having a ''lucky'' streak when your party (esp. a beginning party) is fighting it, you'll stop laughing.

Sometimes, bosses or other enemies are only vulnerable when they [[TacticalSuicideBoss perform a specific move]] (eg exposing their weak spot to prepare a laser), which, combined with AI Roulette (it usually is), can turn the fight into a LuckBasedMission. Controllers will fly when the boss makes a dozen attacks without giving the player a chance to land a single hit.

The usual reason that developers use AI Roulette rather than a more complicated AI system is that it takes less time. Complex AI routines would require a lot of coding for each individual creature to use its attacks most effectively, which increases the time it takes to create a new monster. In games with hundreds of different creatures (even if some are PaletteSwap creatures), AIRoulette is a reasonable alternative to writing hundreds of AI routines.

Another reason for using it is that the AI would be very predictable otherwise. No matter how sophisticated the AI, if the same situation always causes the same reaction the player will learn the pattern and anticipate it (of course, they can be combined; an enemy with an attacking and a healing spell can be programmed to never heal itself if not damaged, and use spells randomly otherwise). A little randomness makes the game more challenging, in a way that cannot really be described as [[FakeDifficulty fake]]. Also, this is usually indispensable for enemies that have ''one'' powerful attack and the {{Mana}} to back it: How could you beat an enemy that keeps spamming its mightiest spell at you?

A third reason for using AI Roulette is execution speed. Online video games may be host to thousands of players encountering hundreds of thousands of computer-controlled entities at the same time. AI Roulette may provide a performance advantage because it keeps the server from being bogged down with conditional trees. Even simple additions to AI can result in doubling or tripling server load, and consequent game slowdowns.

A fourth reason to use an AI Roulette is to keep things somewhat fair. If the AI had the ability to know what abilities or equipment you had and could form a way to get around them every time, it would frustrate players to no end to see that their counterattack ability would never be used because the AI would find a way to not trigger it or having to keep reloading a last save because the AI wanted to steal or break a [[LostForever rare and powerful piece of equipment you have]] in order to severely weaken you. It could also result in a GameBreaker if the AI knew what abilities or other specialties you have, but would literally do nothing in order to not suffer a counterattack if it had no ability to get around it.

Not related to XanatosRoulette or {{AI is a Crapshoot}}.

** [[FinalFantasyX FFX]] suffered from this short cut as well. [[AnticlimaxBoss The final boss]] in that game has an attack that reduces your entire party to 1 HP. Potentially dangerous, but not if he uses it multiple times in a row...

* In one of the SpongebobSquarepants videogames, There are robot boss versions of some of the characters which follow this trope. Robot Sandy can do her clothesline move 15 times before she shows her weak spot move!

** Most of the other bosses, though, have a chance (however small) to show you precisely why summon rushing is an incredibly stupid tactic on a long-term scale by occasionally curbstomping the party in two turns. The rest of the time they put up little to no resistance to the tactic.

* The bonus boss of EtrianOdyssey subverts this. It has three elemental attacks, any one of which will wipe out your entire party if not blocked by the specific, one-turn-only anti-elemental technique. The only way to beat him is to memorize the entire set 50-turn-long sequence of attacks he uses so you can counter them at the appropriate time; so strictly speaking, he's only ''beatable'' because he subverts this trope. Needless to say, it's still painful.
* Downright painful in GoldenSun, especially since the mooks are already severely underpowered. There's a point where you just feel sorry for enemies using their non-damaging defense lowering move on your weakest character for two turns (which is actually a good idea), then attacking your strongest character the third turn, right before dying and having done practically no damage at all.

*** But not the Elite Four, in Gen. I at least. Lorelei's Slowbro was apparently quite prone to using Amnesia, and Agatha's Haunter/Gengar always used Hypnosis/Dream Eater combos...which meant that a Poké Flute at the right time made the second attack fall flat.

Lower the player's defense? Let's lower our attack! Put them to sleep? Wake them up the next turn! Have victory one turn away? Run like a chicken! Even if an enemy posesses an attack that will effectively ensure defeat for your team if used first, it's perfectly possible that they won't bother to use it until it's too late, or even not at all.

** In fact, that's how most enemies in the entire series act, though some bosses would be subjected to certain rules (such as only being able to use a devasting effect every 5 turns with combat messages warning the player).

*** Of course, this also means that if you get unlucky and Clumsy Robot uses the missle say, four times in a row, even the rolling HP meters won't save you.

* ''TheLastRemnant'' for the Xbox 360 is an unusual case in that you, the player, are subject to partial AIRoulette just as much as the enemies due to the battle system. Though you still have command over your units, the available list of commands you can pick from turn to turn (as well as depending on the enemy you target) is determined entirely by the AI. Sometimes the commands available are entirely logical and normal, sometimes they're nothing near what you need (ie, no healing commands when you could certainly use some), and sometimes they give you access to your uber attacks for trash enemies.

** The most amusing case is with a mind-controlled Mage. Part of the time will be spent AoEing around themselves, and the rest will be spent repeatedly swaping back and forth between the 3 self-only buff spells that a mage can chose between.
** For that matter, mobs generally use their abilities at random aswell. Bosses tend to be less random but some of their abilities are still used more or less randomly with a cooldown limitation preventing them from spamming the party to death.

** This is because TheComputerIsACheatingBastard. At all difficulties. The most imortant thing the difficulty choice affects is how much the opponent cheats.

* In the original ''{{Pokemon}}'' game, your very first battle against your rival essentially comes down to luck, as they can either attack or use a status lowering move. Whether you will win comes down to how much they will use their non-directly damaging move.
** Well, not really, since you could take out a potion from your computer and heal, an option which isn't mention at that point making it a GuideDangIt
** As the game progresses, certain moves are appropriate only in the rarest of situations, such as Gravity. At other times, the 'Rock-Paper-Scissors' elemental weaknesses prove this trope. For instance, when the enemy Fire-Ground combination guy decides to square off against your Rock guy, he's just as likely to use a fire move (which does little to you) rather than a ground move (which will probably KO you quickly).
*** Interestingly, gym leaders are smart enough that any attack that is weak against the opponent is removed from their roulette.
*** But not the Elite Four, in Gen.I at least. Lorelei's Slowbro was apparently quite prone to using Amnesia, and Agatha's Gengars/Haunter always used Hypnosis/Dream Eater combos...which meant that a Poke Flute at the right time made the second attack fall flat.
** Trainers in the first generation with certain Pokemon, such as Spearow or Kadabra, would use their Whirlwind or Teleport abilities, despite the fact that auto flee abilities don't work in Trainer battles. Whirlwind eventually gained a Trainer battle effect that's more annoying than anything.
** Truth is, this varies from game to game and trainer to trainer... among the AI trainers. However, wild Pokemon will ''always'' use an AI Roulette. This is probably justified by the wild Pokemon not having the decision-making skills of humans.
*** And it falls apart again when you realise that some Psychic types are supposed to be as smart or smarter than people, but still use the Roulette when wild.
** Gravellers on the Crystal Victory Road have been known to blow themselves up rather than have to deal with a Bug/Poison type like Spinarak they have a 30 level advantage over. [[hottip:*:This message brought to you by Bait-And-Switch Pokedex Filling]]
** The Roulette that AI trainers use prevents them from using moves that will be not very effective... which can make them even dumber than if they just used random moves. In Yellow version, Giovanni has a Nidoking and Nidoqueen that, when faced with a grass/poison type like Bulbasaur, will only use Leer or Tail Whip due to what their other moves are. When you're a kid who doesn't understand the Roulette, seeing them beat your Pikachu in one hit and then be taken down by a level 10 Bulbasaur is utterly baffling.

** And again in ''Dark Dawn''. He has a fixed pattern, but starts at a random point in it. He does skip two attacks in the command if certain criteria are not met, which allows for some permutation of his command queue. If you can manipulatethe turn queue properly, or start at the right place already, you can use Doldrum or Ivy to lock out Djinn Storm. The rest of his attacks, however? [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Good luck.]]

* ''FinalFantasyVI'' presents a unique scenario for this trope: the Coliseum, wherein the player chooses a single champion from the active party to fight solo against the enemy. The AIRoulette will then take over this character. The problem is, the more abilities (or spells) the character has, the more likely it is to perform something useless (like trying to cast Imp at Siegfried for ten turns in a row, or using Esuna or Float on oneself) or downright harmful (such as Meltdown, summoning Crusader, or Self-Destruct.) Many a player has gone into the Coliseum with [[GameBreaker a fully-leveled up Sabin, armed with a Genji Glove and a Master's Scroll/Offering]], expecting to kill the enemy in one shot, only to see him cast [[HeroicSacrifice Soul Spiral]] and kill himself on his first turn.