For me, the AI is one of the most crucial aspects of the game. I'm hoping as a continuous thread, this can be passed to the modding community or picked up by devs to see where the biggest areas of improvement are. Not looking for an AI bashing thread. Rather an AI tweaking thread. There's thousands of 'little' tweaks that could rapidly improve the game in my opinion.

1) Alert Mode - If AI takes damage, the 'alert' phase should be increased to 600 seconds. I believe it's currently on about 20 seconds at the moment. This is a ridiculous concept with an arrow sticking out of someone. "Must have been my imagination..."

2) Dead body in the streets - Questioning by the guards. Anyone 'lurking' around they should be interrogated. Then it should be based on a 90+% Persuade, 5% intimidate, 5% fail (Guard arrests)

3) NPC's should be given random scripts that come into play. Imagine a probability wheel.
NPC 1) 70% chance of carrying on with normal script routine. 10% chance to need to speak to (random NPC to be decided), 2% chance to 'need' to acquire new weapon --> seeks out vendor and purchases. 3% chance of needing to eat (visit local tavern/inn) etc.

For me this one should be assigned differently to each NPC. i.e. 1 NPC has a 50% of carrying out, whilst the next has a 90% chance. If it's broken into 5 sub-divisions
* Carry on
* Eat/drink/sleep
* Talk to
* Purchase something etc.
This would create the random living world that we all wanted.

I\m not sure how possible this is in the modding world? But quite frankly adding parameters to a random script matrix would create realism. I don't think it'd take the much coding.

4) ?

4 ) Random [censored] civilian NPCs shouldn't go charging dragons.

Exactly!!

I love a good probability.

'Guard status' = 90% chance = attack, 10% chance flee
'Civilian status' = 10% chance = attack, 90% chance flee

Could even be done by armour rating? i.e. the higher the armour rating the more likely the person is to have taken on creatures before and will attack.

10 minutes? What's the difference with staying "alert" (searching for you) 10 minutes and never quitting this mode?
That would be like Oblivion and that would be annoying. The timer should be in function of the noise/sight. If you hurt someone, they should search longer than if they just hear steps behind a wall.

Well after 10 minutes most would think whatever it is has moved on. Just certainly better than the current 20 seconds!