History ArtificialStupidity / SimulationGames

* [[VideoGame/TheSims Sims]] tend to get stuck at a doorway, unable to decide who goes through first for several minutes. In the original game, this bug used to strand entire groups of Sims at the top of staircases. Sims have been known to ''starve to death'' because they couldn't take turns. Interestingly though, Sims actually do have good pathfinding when it comes to things less complicated than, urm... doorways. Try building a maze, for example, and the pizza boy will walk right through.

* Sims are pretty dumb on the macro level as well, as anyone who's ever played ''VideoGame/SimCity 4'' can attest. The stupidest is definitely pathfinding, where for various reasons, Sims always take routes in a manner that tends to create absurd traffic jams, particularly at the city limits. The good news is that there is a mod that fixes this. On ''VideoGame/SimCity2013'', however, the modders were never really able to fix this completely.

*** Dwarves have been known to steal the clothes from a comrade who burned to death. While said clothes are still on fire. People have lost a whole fortress to that one.

** In an example of IfYouDieICallYourStuff taken to the extreme, the infamous ''{{LetsPlay/Boatmurdered}}'' LetsPlay features dwarves rushing to loot the possessions of their fallen comrades ''in the middle of an elephant invasion'' and getting trampled to death, only for additional dwarves to rush for their loot...

** The Main Street visitors in ''New Leaf'' are programmed to say certain lines, depending on their personality type. One of the things a Snooty visitor can say is complaining about how crowded Main Street is. She'll say this even if there's nobody around besides her, or if you find her by herself in a museum room.

** In the second game, hungry animals can't find food that's too far away from them, meaning they may starve even if they have total access to food. You're supposed to pen them in to prevent this.

** The various boat rides on RCT2 have a habit of making all the boats cluster around the docking station, blocking each other out of it, with none of them able to enter.
* And talking of Chris Sawyer... the AI in ''VideoGame/TransportTycoon'' was legendarily incompetent at the art of building railroads, frequently levelling entire mountain ranges ([[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard and suffering no ill effects]]), and often spiralling stations several times over while trying to get the ends of a line to meet up. Reportedly, this was due to a compromise between processing time and AI lookahead. Having the AI build from both ends at once, effectively meaning both are aiming for an unpredictably moving target, probably didn't help either.

* In all ''VideoGame/MechWarrior'' simulation games, the campaigns pit you and your lance of Mechs against waves of other Mechs that ostensibly follow the exact same gameplay rules as yours. The only reason you can win against these apparently overwhelming odds is that their pilots follow this trope; if they did the same strategic attacks and targeted shots you do - if, in other words, they fought you at even odds - then any mission that lasted longer than a couple minutes would see you [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomped]] in short order. This trope is the only reason this doesn't happen: the AI is balanced such that it'll do ''some'' damage, but only in semi-random attacks often made with less-than-ideal weapons and at a much slower rate of fire than their heatsinks should allow. This is most obvious in ''[=MechWarrior=] 2'', where enemies spend most of their time walking about while looking at you sternly, and only occasionally let a couple shots loose. Fortunately later games in the series have made it less obvious, but sometimes it still gets really difficult to ignore.

* In all ''VideoGame/MechWarrior'' simulation games, this is the only reason the player can win most matches that aren't against [[SuicidalOverconfidence much weaker opponents]]. While you do strategic attacks against specific parts of enemy Mechs to reduce their threat rating in the shortest amount of time and consuming the least heat possible, they'll randomly spray you with often-poorly-chosen weapons at a much slower rate of fire than their heatsinks should allow. This was most obvious in ''[=MechWarrior=] 2'', where enemies would spend most of their time walking about while looking at you and only occasionally letting a couple shots loose; fortunately, later games in the series have made it less obvious (though still difficult to ignore).

* For some reason, the titular ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' sure do ''love'' to drown themselves when you try to cross a bridge with them.

** In ''Rogue Leader'', you also have [[FanNickname Darth Bob the Suicidal TIE Pilot]]. You could be minding your own business and then suddenly '''BOOM''' collision with a TIE fighter out of the blue, and you never saw it coming.

** The first game's handling of low needs occasionally results in some serious SkewedPriorites. Sometimes they'll go to sleep, only to wake up to yell at the player that they're sleep deprived. Likewise, a Sim whose bladder meter has hit rock-bottom might get off the toilet to wet themselves.

** Remove the ladder out of the swimming pool and you'll eventually end up with dead Sims.

** Sims have sometimes been known to go to sleep, and wake up to yell at the player that they're sleep deprived.

*** In the ''Sims 1'' Sims will almost always take the path with less doors to get to their destination, even if the destination is on the other side of a door ''right next to them''.

** Ranger Jeeps often get stuck trying to navigate past buildings or other obstacles. It can be faster to just take control of the thing yourself and steer them around the obstacle OT just do the whole task manually.

** Ranger Jeeps often get stuck trying to navigate past buildings or other obstacles. It can be faster to just take control of the thing yourself and steer them around the obstacle OT just do the whole task manually.

** Marksdwarves have been known to disregard their ammo or the fact their weapon is made to shoot rather than bludgeon to charge into melee range with threats and get slaughtered in order to kill something. Stationing them instead is a must, and even then they've been known to ''leap over fortifications and off their shooting towers, no matter how high up they are'' in order to melee enemies rather than shoot them, forcing you to install floors above fortifications so they won't do suicide leaps to charge into suicidal frays. This combined with the ammo use bugs makes them almost not worth it.

** When dwarfs are digging trenches or building walls, they had a universal preference for which side of the wall or trench they stand on while doing their work. For example, they prefered standing on the west side of the tile if that space is available. So one had tgo be careful about construction orders were set up, or the dwarfs would wall themselves up and eventually die of starvation or thirst.

* This is the biggest complaint people have had about ''VideoGame/FromDust'', where the villagers' pathfinding AI can be a pain in the ass to manage. Most of the time, even the slightest obstacle will cause them to either take a massive detour, or [[MostAnnoyingSound start begging you for help]] while they stand still in bewilderment. Walking straight into streams of lava doesn't help either.

** When dwarfs are digging trenches or building walls, they have a universal preference for which side of the wall or trench they stand on while doing their work. For example, they prefer standing on the west side of the tile if that space is available. So one must be careful about how you set up your construction orders, or the dwarfs can wall themselves up and eventually die of starvation or thirst.

* [[VideoGame/TheSims Sims]] tend to get stuck at a doorway, unable to decide who goes through first for several minutes. In the original game, this bug used to strand entire groups of Sims at the top of staircases. Sims have been known to ''starve to death'' because they couldn't take turns.
** Ironically, Sims actually do have good pathfinding when it comes to things less complicated than, urm... doorways. Try building a maze, for example, and the pizza boy will walk right through.
*** It should be noted, though, that ''Sims 1'' Sims will almost always take the path with less doors to get to their destination, even if the destination is on the other side of a door ''right next to them''.
** Sims are, however, known for such suicidal stunts as, when both hungry and tired, waking up to go eat, then passing out from exhaustion, waking up because they're too hungry to sleep, then passing out because they're too exhausted to eat, in a vicious cycle that generally ends in sim ghosts.
*** However, that's not the AI's fault, but the oversimplified needs system.

** And let's not forget the Sims who whine about being exhausted, then decide there's no better time for a swim.
** Try giving your Sims more than one kitchen (especially on different floors) and watch as they dart between the two in order to prepare a single dish. Alternatively, make the only food preparation area available an outside barbecue, and occasionally the AI will have a sim go for a midnight snack — so, having no other option, they will go have a cookout in the middle of the night.

*** Happily, as of ''Sims 3'', the AI has improved immensely, and Sims are entirely capable of handling the basics of living.
*** Well, to some extent. Give a home with two adults and a child only one bed, and anyone left without a bed will complain at those using them. There is no check for the appropriateness of doing so, so the husband may find his wife and daughter sleeping in the only double bed, and order the ''wife'' out of it. Thankfully, this never goes [[ParentalIncest where it sounds like it’s going]].
*** Oh, and ''Sims 3'' sims will happily sit and eat their dinner on the toilet if there isn't a spare chair. Hey, if you can sit on it, it's fair game, right?

[[AC:VideoGame/DwarfFortress]]
* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress''. Strangely enough, part of the game's charm has to do with the fact that your dwarfs are [[TooDumbToLive utter idiots]]. However, they make some choices that lead to... odd happenings. Given that Dwarf Fortress is still in development, many of these stupidities have been or will be fixed.
* If an executioner doesn't have a weapon to kill a prisoner with, they don't let that bother them, and kill the prisoner anyway. ''By biting them to death.'' (Fixed.)
* Similarly, hunters who run out of bolts will gladly bludgeon the animals to death. And if they somehow lose the crossbow, they will gladly (and oddly successfully) ''wrestle'' muskoxen and elephants to the ground.
* Then, there's sieges. The most common kind, goblin sieges, may leave players overconfident because the average goblin siege charges right into your traps and lets themselves get slaughtered. Eventually, you face human sieges where they, well, do a proper siege. They sit right outside of your crossbow range and wait for your dwarves to run out of food and water and/or tantrum and start slaughtering each other. Any attempt to foray is met with a withering storm of bolts and arrows which, because DF averts AnnoyingArrows, is very deadly indeed.
* [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34188.0 An odd combination of stupidities leads to hilarious results]]: "Ignis promptly starts to spar and get a punctured lung. Instead of being a good wounded dwarf and staying in bed, he promptly walks around the fortress falling unconscious, refusing any medical care whatsoever. This I could tolerate because it meant the idiot would be dead soon and no one would care. After traveling to my royal dining hall in just under a year, he proceeds to grab a plump helmet stew from my nearby food stockpile. He then promptly falls unconscious again and drops his food in the hallway. The stew proceeds to rot and create a gigantic amount of miasma and there is nothing my dwarves can do about it since the stew is owned by Ignis. After waking up half a season later, Ignis, seeing his stew has rotted, proceeds to the stockpile once again to grab some cat biscuits. You can see where I am going with this."
** In situations like this, it's recommended you simply [[ShootTheDog lock them in their rooms and leave them to starve]]. It's not pleasant, but it gets the job done.
* When there's a siege or other such hazard present on the surface, you can order your dwarves to "stay underground" to keep them safe. The way the dwarf AI does this is to continually check "am I aboveground?" and if so, cancel whatever task they were doing. The jobless dwarf will then pick a new task from the list of available tasks... which is often the very task they just cancelled. The result is known as the "entrance dance", where a huge crowd of dwarfs winds up clustered around the entrance constantly jumping back and forth through it and announcing cancelled jobs. Most players will have to design their fortress with an outdoor courtyard of some sort to keep these idiots safe. (Fixed with the replacement of the "Stay Underground" order with the burrows system.)
** A variation is when you have a dwarf or two outside doing a job when an enemy of some sort shows up near the door, but without being able to reach your dwarves, i.e. because you have a walled-in courtyard. Dwarves are dumb enough to run away from any enemy they can see, even if they can't reach them, so they will cancel their job and run away, most likely into the corner of your keep rather than back inside. The job cancellation causes another dwarf to pick up the job, which will take them outside, where they see something scary and run away, cancelling their job in the process. Repeat until your entire fortress is panicking in the far corner of your completely protected, walled-in outdoor keep.
* Siege engines such as ballistae are operated by civilian crews, not military dwarves. That means that if you order your civilians to hide inside while your military fends off a siege, and the ballistae are outdoors, they'll abandon their posts. They'll also abandon their posts and flee if they ''see'' a hostile enemy. Doesn't matter if the enemy is across a moat and through an impenetrable fortified wall, and that they're currently manning a contraption that can slaughter them all in a single shot...
** Which is why it is a good idea to [[ViolationOfCommonSense use blind dwarfs as operators for siege weapons]].
* When dwarfs are digging trenches or building walls, they have a universal preference for which side of the wall or trench they stand on while doing their work. For example, they prefer standing on the west side of the tile if that space is available. So one must be careful about how you set up your construction orders, or the dwarfs can wall themselves up and eventually die of starvation or thirst. (Fixed, at least for the most part.)
* Nobles have an unfortunate tendency to mandate the production of items your dwarves have no hope of producing, e.g. windows in a location without sand. Their stupidity frequently leads to beatings and imprisonment for skilled dwarves who lack the raw materials to work with.
** In previous versions, a (now resolved) bug could result in mayors ordering themselves beaten for failing to satisfy their own mandates.
* In an example of IfYouDieICallYourStuff taken to the extreme, the infamous ''{{LetsPlay/Boatmurdered}}'' LetsPlay features dwarves rushing to loot the possessions of their fallen comrades ''in the middle of an elephant invasion'' and getting trampled to death, only for additional dwarves to rush for their loot...(Arguably fixed, as players can set objects of dead dwarves to be automatically forbidden when they die.)
** Dwarves have been known to steal the clothes from a comrade who burned to death. While said clothes are still on fire. I lost a whole fortress to that one. (Again, arguably fixed.)
** "[[IncendiaryExponent Being on fire sure makes you thirsty for a good beer.]]"
* From an older version's release notes: "stopped people from giving quests to kill themselves." (Obviously, fixed.)
* Prior to the Adventure Mode overhaul, you could receive quests to slaughter demons who had risen from the depths of the Earth and taken control of a civilization. From your quest-giver's civilization, usually. Doing the deed would make said civilization your enemy, including the one who had given you the quest in the first place. One better, the involvement of your companions or the demon attacking other peasants may well start a "loyalty cascade" where everyone starts killing everyone for killing anyone.
* Since the ability to target specific body parts was implemented, there have been many cases of units fruitlessly punching, kicking, or biting their enemy instead of using their weapons because they randomly get some moves (involving a random kind of attack and body part) very high chances of connecting without factoring in if it could even do any damage.

* A dwarf got a small cut on his arm, which needed to be cleaned and bandaged by a medical dwarf. A second dwarf with no medical experience was drafted to take care of it. The newly minted doctor looked at the small cut, diagnosed the patient as having rotten lungs, and performed surgery to remove both lungs. The patient did not survive the operation. ([[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89877.msg2483388#msg2483388 Source]])
** It counts as a subversion as it is an implemented, deliberate stupidity. However, dwarves — even with no medical experience — should be able to tell that A) their lungs were not in immediate medical need, B) they just had a cut that need patching, and C) lungs are vital for patient survival. That still goes too far, even for inexperience.
* Dwarf tries to "attend meeting" with siege operator, stands on ballista set to "fire at will," gets injured.
* Goblin leaders have been known to turn up riding on tamed giant toads, which is mildly unnerving... until the toad hops into a murky pool and the goblin drowns.
* When crossing a river, the AI only considers how deep the water is, and ignores how fast the water is flowing. Due to a quirk in how liquid flow is simulated, water is only leg or ankle deep at the lip of a waterfall. Thus, everyone tries crossing there, and gets swept over by the current. ("Fixed"; Natural waterfalls no longer have ramps in places that allow dwarves to traverse the lip.)
* Mothers carry their babies with them everywhere... even into battle.
** There's a reason some players call babies "[[BlackComedy self-made ablative armor]]".
** If said mother loses their weapon, they are prone to begin hitting the enemy with their own baby.
* If an invading army spots one of your pet cats wandering around outside, they ''will'' make sure that cat is killed, even if doing so requires that they ignore your fortress as the entire army spends days on end chasing the single cat around. Usually, this only happens if no other targets are available, but it's still questionable prioritization.
* It's very possible for a brewer to completely ignore the fact that the entire fort is dehydrating to death because the caravan that you bought all the cloth and leather off just left. It's also possible for said brewer to stop brewing to throw a tantrum ''because he's thirsty''.
* Vampires will try and frame another dwarf for the death of someone they just drained dry. Problem is, their parameters for picking someone to take the rap were originally a little odd, ending with them accusing babies or even livestock of murder. That particular bug has been fixed, but they still aren't very good at working out the plausibility of their accusations, sometimes leading to them accusing a dwarf that, by the game mechanics, cannot ''possibly'' be a vampire, such as one of the starting seven.
** Actually, it is possible for the starting seven to become a vampire from drinking water contaminated with vampire blood, so this isn't quite as impossible as it might seem.
* If the pack animal a merchant is leading falls unconscious, the merchant will drag it along the ground instead of stopping. And if the animal was rendered unconscious by a bandit, the bandit will keep beating the animal as it's being dragged, instead of attacking the merchant.
* While dwarves used to take to the hospital until you died of old age, now they favour a model where they get up and start working as soon as everything is sutured and splinted, even if they're suffering from acute blood loss and will die within days.
* Dwarves in taverns seem to have a problem with realizing they have booze in their cups. They've been known to drink from the barrel with a perfectly drinkable cup full of wine in their hand, then ''put the cup back in its container, dumping the booze in the process''. Or occasionally just carry it everywhere, repeat the process with two cups, and end up with their hands full.
** A related bug causes them to never consider drinking directly from the barrel when there's mugs around. Not too troublesome until they lose their ability to grasp, leave for the booze stockpile with a mug they cannot pick up, and just stare at the booze until they die of thirst because they couldn't think of anything else.
* With the emotion overhaul, dwarves can feel vengeful about their friends, or fellow citizens in general, being attacked or killed. Unfortunately, this applies to monstrosities like werebeasts and titans, which means anything that killed your citizens close to a burrow will get mobbed by LeeroyJenkins' extended family, turning a tragedy into a genocide.
* With BonsaiForest's aversion and addition of enormous, climbable trees, creatures have acquired a tendency to reenact the CatUpATree scenario with annoying frequency, climbing into the tree without a single problem then being unable to come back down until they starve. Chopping down the tree usually works, at least, though with risk of someone getting bonked in the head by a log. This can go from just your livestock to your dwarves, being especially stupid in the latter case.
* An old one related to the above is the fact pathfinding for flying creatures is utterly ''borked''. Creatures regularly [[ForgotICouldFly forget about the fact they can fly]] if there's no ground path to their new location, and will be just as stuck as any other if left with no pathfinding options. Until you actually make the ground path, at which point they ''fly the actual path they should've taken before'' like nothing was wrong.
* Building destroyers will always seek out buildings to topple above all else. It doesn't matter if there's twenty steel-clad dwarves chopping away at their limbs. It doesn't matter if there's a giant gauntlet of foes they could be taking swings at. It doesn't matter if the building in question is constructed entirely of indestructible artifacts. It doesn't matter if they're undercover and should be acting friendly and not commit any hostilities. It doesn't matter if they're ''actually friendly'' and the structures they want to demolish belong to an ally or even ''their own civilization''. They will not fight the compulsion to knock everything down. The Building Destroyer tags should therefore be handled carefully, because intelligent creatures that can join forts and have them will bring no end of chaos until you tire out and murder them.
* One so insidious it wasn't really noticed as stupidity until ''after'' it was fixed: The coup-de-graces. Pretty much everything and everyone after the combat overhaul aimed at the head whenever their enemies passed out completely. It took several versions and more than one year for them to realize that, just maybe, they should take off their enemy's [[ArmorOfInvincibility ☼Steel Helm☼]] or other such protection ''before'' trying to club them to death, and thus tended to tire themselves out trying to kill the enemy through it, wasting entire days in particularly bad cases.
* Marksdwarves have been known to disregard their ammo or the fact their weapon is made to shoot rather than bludgeon to charge into melee range with threats and get slaughtered in order to kill something. Stationing them instead is a must, and even then they've been known to ''leap over fortifications and off their shooting towers, no matter how high up they are'' in order to melee enemies rather than shoot them, forcing you to install floors above fortifications so they won't do suicide leaps to charge into suicidal frays. This combined with the ammo use bugs makes them almost not worth it.
* Overall, in the same way ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' is sometimes described as a "hat simulator with gameplay on the side", Dwarf Fortress can probably be reasonably described as a "stupidity simulator with gameplay on the side".