AI's method of choosing abilities

[Dormin Jake]

When you encounter an enemy unit in battle, how exactly does the game determine what skillsets and abilities that unit carries?  Does it come with a random amount of JP that the AI can then spend on random abilities within the unit's base and prerequisite classes or what?

The reason I ask is because I'm curious if lowering the JP costs on all the abilities in my personal patch will allow for more diverse enemy skillsets.  I'll likely restrict my own ability selection so I'm not hurling Ramuhs, Earth Slashes, and Wiznaibuses (Wiznaibi?) at the first Dorter battle, but I would like to see enemy Wizards able to cast spells in excess of Fire 2 by midgame, if at all possible.

Any thoughts?  I'm trying to avoid playing with the ENDT.  I'm comfortable knowing my limitations.

[Zozma]

it depends on what jobs they have available and how high the job level is set to, plus jp cost is a factor, they sure will have more skills if jp is lower, however each skill also has a priority on what the ai will choose to learn first. for example if you have two skills Fire2 and Ice2 available for the ai to choose one, if Fire2 is set to 75% learn rate and Ice2 is set to 25% learn rate theres a much better chance of seeing more enemies using fire2 then ice2.

this learn rate also affects the success of learning blue magic like ultima is set to 100% so ramza will always learn it if hes hit by it as a squire.

[Austin]

You really, really should consider altering the ENTDs seeing as that's the easiest way to alter how much jp the enemy gets. If you look to the right of the job unlocked part of the ENTD editor you can set the enemies job level from 1-8, giving them however much jp is listed under the job levels part of the patcher. Most enemies in the game have a job level of less than 4 which is one of the reasons why they never have any decent abilities (the learn% is the other reason).

[Dormin Jake]

Austin, you're right, the ENDT would be the best way to go here.  Blargh, it seems the closer I draw to a close on this patch, the more things I find I want to add, and these things are getting progressively more time consuming.  I'm not sure why I was irrationally avoiding the ENDT before though, it all looks very straightforward and there are so many new options it creates for me.

And thanks for the learn percentage advice, Zozma, I hadn't fully realized what that percentage meant outside of its use for blue magic style learning.

[Zozma]

well i had assumed before that it only affected your chances of learning blue magic but it seems to work for priority too... lower jp helps (like i lowered the cost of learning phoenix down because of course that is a very useful ability.