Help Needed: Mage NPCs Not Using Shouts Consistently!

[Giovanni1285]

I’ve been working on creating mage NPCs in the Creation Kit, but Skyrim’s AI for mages is the dumbest thing i've ever seen. To make these NPCs more dynamic, I’ve given some of them unique “ultimate” abilities — basically powerful spells that should only be used occasionally.

The problem I encountered is that if I add these ultimates directly to their spell lists, they’ll ignore their basic spells and spam the ultimate, annihilating everything in sight. To fix this, I turned their ultimates into shouts, which have built-in cooldowns, and added them to their spell lists.

However, now the issue is that while the NPCs do use the shouts, they do so very rarely, even when the cooldown is ready. They’ll often shout once at the start of battle and then go the rest of the fight without using the ability again, making the ultimates feel almost pointless.

What’s odd is that years ago, I created similar mage NPCs with shout-based ultimates, and they used their shouts much more reliably — right after the cooldown was up. Unfortunately, I can’t remember how I made that happen back then, and I no longer have access to those old NPCs.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

   Assigned a custom Combat Style to prioritize shouts, setting the shout multiplier to 10.0 (the max).

   Increased the shout’s damage to make it more appealing than their basic spells.

Nothing seems to work. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get these mages to use their shouts more frequently? Ideally, I want them to shout as soon as the cooldown is over, and I’ll handle the balance by tweaking the cooldown timer. Any ideas would be much appreciated!