Sebek: Haha youre right about that, but IMO it's a bit better in BG2 though. There's an option for enchanced pathfinding and you can increase path search nodes in the config, which pretty much fixes completely that issue.
I was playing BG1 via Tutu, so it already was so-called enhanced, and by the looks of things it's exactly the same behaviour in BG2 so far. It's a long way from ideal unfortunately. If I could set the search nodes to 4 billion I would, but somehow I don't think that's the main problem. They mostly find their way okay, it's the bumping into a party member and turning back, into a neighbouring corridor to step over traps or land into the lap of nasty foes that is a problem.
They simply act like retards too often to count, and the biggest challenge isn't the enemies but to make the damn NPCs do what you intend when you order them around. Very frustrating. At times I've just given up after 5+ reloads and had to order them around 1 by 1 a short distance at the time. As you can appreciate, that gets boring very quickly.
Small spoiler for the first area in BG2 here.
One example was the heavily trapped area in the starting dungeon, the one with terrible traps all along the floor. Had finally found them all and figured out it was pointless to try to disarm them, so had lined up my guys to enter that door and fight the fiend. Even ordering them one by one was hopeless as it's too narrow for them all to get up and shoot at her, cause when she moves away it all goes hay-wire. So the people furthest back turn and run out, and naturally over the many traps there. Also had to move them into the room very carefully 1 by 1, cause they would bump into each other, turn around and happily embrace traps' death. In the end I just sent in Minsc with a mace and that did the trick. Must have reloaded about 8 times. Of course, afterwards my face was red when I found out all those traps could be disarmed with certain items we found earlier, but hey ho... :D :D
So the main issue isn't really the path finding part of the algorythm, but that as soon as they bump into each other they turn around and run away to find an alternate way, which in warrens and dungeons and such often mean death, sometimes instant. Artificial Idiocy.
I desperate hope this can be fixed in BG:EE, because it is without a shred of doubt the biggest annoyance in the BG-verse, IMO.