History Main / AIRoulette

* Enemies in ''VideoGame/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 ''[[VideoGame/DragonQuest DragonQuest/Warrior]]'' series.
** In the original ''VideoGame/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 ''VideoGame/Okami'', all enemies are this. The most prominent example is Yami's slot-machine form, where, if you don't Powerslash it or use Mist, it will just pick random moves. Another good example is the boss fight with Lechku and Nechku.

* 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]].

* 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.
* A combination of the above. Many RPG's have monsters that are impeccably strong, but use a random AI to keep that strength in check. It's easy to make a stupid AI (takes less time) with high stats (keeping things fair). However, these sorts of enemies can easily turn into a LuckBasedMission, since the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] essentially determines whether your party is smashed into goo or walks away unscathed.

Not related to GambitRoulette or {{AI is a Crapshoot}}. Compare ArtificialStupidity

* A speedrunner named Cosmo, while attempting a world record speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, ran into this with the Fire Temple boss, Volvagia, during one of his most promising runs. Due to the specific sequence break he was using, he had a limited amount of time to defeat Volvagia before the game auto-killed him, which would waste too much time to catch up to the world record, meaning he would have to start over an HOUR's worth of gameplay over. So of course, Volvagia, only being vulnerable when the AI Roulette lands on certain moves, proceeded to perform anything but those moves until Cosmo's run was ruined. This happened repeatedly.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', 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. Getting the potion from your PC turns it from whether you're lucky enough to win or lucky enough to keep your potion to use later.

*** 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.

** Before, ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' had this with Donald, making him very unreliable if summoned. He basically had no set pattern, and would cast random magic spells. On some occasions, he woudl be quite useful such as when he casts Thundaga several times and fries the screen for you. However, he could be just as unreliable and do things like cast elemental magic on enemies who absorb them or waste Curaga when Sora is already at full health.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', after some plot events, Rinoa gains a new LimitBreak ability ''[[PowerGivesYouWings Angel Wing]]'' which sends her into a unique berserk state: the player loses control of her actions but she gets boosted speed and magic power, (limited) status immunity, and continuously casts magic at no cost. Sounds great at first, but since berserk Rinoa selects spells entirely at random based on what she has available, she's as likely as not to cast [[EnemyScan Scan]] and [[StandardStatusEffects Silence/Sleep/Confuse]] over high-level damage-inflicting magic. With a full stock of spells, AIRoulette therefore makes Angel Wing all but useless - but [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer when all she has is]] [[AwesomeButPractical Ultima]] [[GameBreaker (or Meteor!)]] well...

* In ''FinalFantasyVIII'', after some plot events, Rinoa gains a new LimitBreak ability ''[[PowerGivesYouWings Angel Wing]]'' which sends her into a unique berserk state: the player loses control of her actions but she gets boosted speed and magic power, (limited) status immunity, and continuously casts magic at no cost. Sounds great at first, but since berserk Rinoa selects spells entirely at random based on what she has available, she's as likely as not to cast [[EnemyScan Scan]] and [[StandardStatusEffects Silence/Sleep/Confuse]] over high-level damage-inflicting magic. With a full stock of spells, AIRoulette therefore makes Angel Wing all but useless - but [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer when all she has is]] [[AwesomeButPractical Ultima]] [[GameBreaker (or Meteor!)]] well...

* ''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 is 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.

* A combination of the above. Many RPGs have monsters that are impeccably strong, but use a random AI to keep that strength in check. It's easy to make a stupid AI (takes less time) with high stats (keeping things fair). However, these sorts of enemies can easily turn into a LuckBasedMission, since the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] essentially determines whether your party is smashed into goo or walks away unscathed.

* A combination of the above. Many RPGs have monsters that are impeccably strong, but use a random AI to keep that strength in check. It's easy to make a stupid AI (takes less time) with high stats (keeping things fair). However, these sorts of enemies can easily turn into a LuckBasedMission, since the RNG essentially determines whether your party is smashed into goo or walks away unscathed.

* In Okami, all enemies are this. The most prominent example is Yami's slot-machine form, where, if you don't Powerslash it or use Mist, it will just pick random moves. Another good example is the boss fight with Lechku and Nechku.

** 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).
*** The only boss that can easily be seen to run on a pre-programmed pattern is [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Safer Sephiroth]]. The only parts in which he varies are his stat caps and when he replaces his seventh attack with Heartless Angel on low health.

* ''VideoGame/{{Liero}}'''s AI is ''entirely'' random. Even in tweak programs the only things that can be changed about the AI are its actions' probabilities. Needless to say, it was pretty dumb.
** Worse yet it can force you to have to quit. This is the reason I only ever allow explosive weaponry from the start with more than one or two CPU players, because they will get locked in place trying to shoot through walls directly with plain ol' shell weaponry. At least if you give them explosives they will sometimes kill themselves with the explosions.

* A speedrunner named Cosmo, while attempting a world record speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, ran into this with the Fire Temple boss, Volvagia, during one of his most promising runs. Due to the specific sequence break he was using, he had a limited amount of time to defeat Volvagia before the game auto-killed him, which would waste too much time to catch up to the world record, meaning he would have to start over an HOUR's worth of gameplay over. So of course, Volvagia, only being vulnerable when the AI Roulette lands on certain moves, proceeded to perform anything but those moves until Cosmo's run was ruined. This happened repeatedly.

** 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.

* 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 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.

** ''StrangeJourney'' may not have ''Nocturne'''s Press Turn system that allows enemies to mercilessly destroy you if they hit a weakness, but this trope is still the only thing keeping you alive, especially against certain bosses. In particular, if the final boss of the Law and Neutral routes spammed her [[OneHitKill 100% accurate, unblockable instant kill]] or even [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou specifically targeted the protagonist]], she would go from merely [[ThatOneBoss hideously unfair]] to actually impossible.

* ''VideoGame/{{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.

* Intentionally done example: in ''KingdomOfLoathing'' the Quiet Healer opponent will occasionally heal the player instead of hitting him, "by force of habit".

* 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.
*** Also from IV, Juza, who also acts as a BeefGate boss. If you're not leveled high enough for at least one party member to have Gires (which is referenced specifically in a cutscene soon after the fight), he will spam Forceflash, a high-damage ability guaranteed to turn your party into chunky salsa in a few rounds. If someone does have it, the AI Roulette takes over, and he will use other attacks between Forceflashes.
* 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]]?
* The bonus boss of VideoGame/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.

** 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.

* 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.

* In the [[SonicTheHedgehog Sonic spinoff game]] ShadowTheHedgehog, the Egg Dealer is LITERALLY this. Its attacks are decided by hitting buttons (using a homing attack) on a slot machine that's on its front.

* 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 ''VideoGame/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 ''Webcomic/{{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 is 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.
** The AI for the Pet Battle system introduced in ''Mists of Pandaria'' is definitely this. It can spam its most powerful attacks and defeat you easily -- especially in the trainer "boss" battles, or it can cast buffs on itself repeatedly while you beat it up.

* 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.

* Spellcasters in ''VideoGame/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.

* The TabletopGame/{{Dungeons And Dragons}} 3.5 edition book Tome of Battle include the Crusader class, which gains access to randomly selected known abilities each turn.
* VideoGame/{{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 VideoGame/{{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.

* 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 behavior) 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 ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' 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.

* ''VideoGame/{{Liero}}'''s AI is ''entirely'' random. Even in tweak programs the only things that can be changed about the AI are its actions' probabilities. Needless to say, it was pretty dumb.
** Worse yet it can force you to have to quit. This is the reason I only ever allow explosive weaponry from the start with more than one or two CPU players, because they will get locked in place trying to shoot through walls directly with plain ol' shell weaponry. At least if you give them explosives they will sometimes kill themselves with the explosions.
* 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 [[CycleOfHurting stunlock]] Lex.
* An interesting very early racing game example in the days when the player was the only one capable of making mistakes exists in Sega arcade game GP Rider. While you're tasked with completing a race, much less winning it, the single-player version has you racing against a rider named "Wayne" instead of the second player. On each race, Wayne behaves differently: sometimes having good races, sometimes having bad races. This was in 1990. The ports were created in 1992. Wayne isn't a dynamic AI of the type that are in most racing games, especially simulations, due to the fact that he essentially picked "good" or "bad" riding habits uniformly in each race.
* A speedrunner named Cosmo, while attempting a world record speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, ran into this with the Fire Temple boss, Volvagia, during one of his most promising runs. Due to the specific sequence break he was using, he had a limited amount of time to defeat Volvagia before the game auto-killed him, which would waste too much time to catch up to the world record, meaning he would have to start over an HOUR's worth of gameplay over. So of course, Volvagia, only being vulnerable when the AI Roulette lands on certain moves, proceeded to perform anything but those moves until Cosmo's run was ruined. This happened repeatedly.
* While a standard problem in turn-based strategy games, Steel Panthers used to really take the cake, as going harder WIDENS the roulette. It's not unheard of for a king tiger to suddenly turn around to fire at the crew of a destroyed tank while the entire enemy army is lining up on it, or to overrun a position just once, then drive harmlessly away if it doesn't succeed. In short, mid-tier difficulties were the hardest, as easy is colossally stupid, and expert-level difficulties afflicts the enemy WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity as they will pound you into gravel, then randomly give you a game-winning opening, provided they haven't blown up all your guns or chased off your tank hunters. Also the AI's support vehicles have a tendency to get 'stuck' and drive in circles until they finally decide to flee giving you a LOT more time to get to them and shoot them. Sometimes you will even see such insanity as an enemy transport getting its passengers killed because it spotted 'soft targets' before the 'hard targets' and it will attempt to charge up and engage your recons with SMG fire despite the fact there is a tank or AA gun one hex over, [[TooDumbToLive all while forgetting]] to let the soldiers onboard disembark. The remake World at War fixes a lot of that, but not all.

* 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.

* * 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).

** [[VideoGame/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 [[HPToOne 1 HP]]. Potentially dangerous, but not if he uses it multiple times in a row...

* 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.