I play against the AI on Hard and occasionally Nightmare, and this is what I see (in bold):

*potions and scrolls: AI demigods will pick up these drops and typically will avoid Erebus's poison potions.

*fleeing, nearly dead DGs other than the one already being attacked: I have seen instances when an AI demigod could finish off another demigod (or me) with another blow or two, but doesn't and flees.  The problem is that the attacking AI demigod in question has low hitpoints, which triggers a flee routine.  So, if I have 10% of my hitpoints and the AI demigod has 25% of his, it will probably flee, even though it could probably finish me off.  What needs to happen is instead of fleeing based on its own hitpoints, the AI demigod should compare its hitpoints with the hitpoints of the demigod that its fighting and if it has a certain percentage or amount more, the AI should keep fighting the weaker demigod.  However, this is a bit dicey.  A sudden burst of damage--like UB spit & grasp, Erebus bats & bite, etc.--could kill even a slightly stronger AI demigod in a fight, so it is probably better for the AI to run when its hitpoints get low, especially when fighting against a human player.

*nearby friendly DGs who need a heal: I don't recall ally  healing by AI demigods (Sedna), but AI QoT has cast a Bramble Shield on me before.

*when fleeing, will run back toward the citadel even if a friendly healing crystal is closer: This would only apply to Exile and Mandala, since no other maps have healing crystals outside of the citadel.  I may have seen the AI use these crystals on Exile, but I'm not sure.

*will often chase a fleeing DG into towers and suicide: I rarely see the AI do this.  At one time (before I bought the game), I think that this was a problem.  However, in my experience, the AI knows when and how to avoid towers.

*assisting in capturing flags - sometimes the AI will fight just outside of cap range for no good reason: I haven't seen this too much. The AI tends to cap pretty well in my games.  If the AI is fighting another demigod, it wouldn't be able to cap anyway until one of the demigods left the area of the flag.

 

In contrast, there are a few other things the AI does *very* well

*cast interrupts: yes

*maintain ranged attack distance: yes

*harass an enemy DG if it switches targets: yes

 

Ryanheart, I typically do not answer semi-literate posts from random people like you on forums.  (And I really do hope that English is not your native language.)  Anyhow, Blue88 asked for opinions and I gave him mine.

Edit: Are you perhaps drunk?  That would somewhat explain your nonsensical post.

More to the point of the OP...

The AI's have often chased me into a tower trap, making it easy for me to drink an HP potion and quickly kill them.

I have also seen AI's commit suicide by trying to knock towers down/capture enemy flags (the gold flags on Cataract, esp.).  They don't turn tail fast enough.

I have the sense (though I don't know) that AI's pick items pretty well.  They seem to overspend a bit on certain Citadel upgrades (going for Level 2 and 3 of tower health/damage, instead of getting Currency 1 or Reinforcements 1 for example).

-- NAc

That was a post made at 6:30am AUS time, yes the last sentance didnt make to much sense, my point of the post was trying to imply that you, the_hunger, must be playing  a game other then Demigod to give those answers you gave. If you ever decided to play the ONLINE MULTI PLAYER game ONLINE, i'd hate to have you on my team casue you dont seem to have much of an idea.

There are many reasons why it is worth our time (and GPG's) to continue thinking about AI routines. 

1.  If modding AI becomes a possibility, this kind of feedback will help modders make targeted improvements.

2.  Many people continue to suffer from connection problems, ping spiking, etc. and any improvements to the single-player experience would be welcome to these folk.

3.  New players begin with the single player experience, and a more challenging AI will better prepare them for the online environment.  You can beat "Hard" AI's and tournaments, feel confident about yourself, and then get beat up pretty bad online.

4.  Perhaps most importantly:  it would be nice if a competent AI could replace a player who dropped/disconnected from a game, so that the rest of that player's team didn't feel immediately doomed.  Furthermore, if you had 3 friends but wanted to set up a 3 v 3 against each other, you could sub in one AI per team and not feel worried about it.

I fully support continuing work on the AI and encourage other players to offer constructive criticism.

I have some critique on the AI, I'd love to post about it but apparantly according to some players here I am not allowed because it's a multiplayer game, and I'm not allowed to enjoy it in SP.

That is the most important one, but AI != loss.  You can sometimes win if you babysit it well enough.