In a number of ways, I think the more complex you make an AI, often the less 'real' if feels. To borrow from Terry Goodkind, you often have to keep the "Wizard's First Rule" in mind: People are stupid. Sometimes the simpler your logic, the more intelligent it feels to the player.
A great example of this is the logic of the ghost in Pac Man (something I studied a good deal in my clean-room implementation of it in 3/8ths scale) -- it's simple, but they often seem quite smart... When it's really a DUMB algorithm made up of a few simple rules.
1) ghosts cannot normally reverse direction.
2) ghost cannot turn 'upwards' in four specific locations
3) ghosts have three modes, scatter, follow and flee.
4) When switching between most modes they immediately reverse course. (the only exception to rule #1).
5) Exiting 'flee' does NOT change their direction.
6) in scatter, each ghost tries to go to it's home corner.
7) Follow rules:
7a) Red Ghost aims for player. At 2/3 pellets remaining speed +5%, at 1/3 speed +10% and remains 'stuck' in pursuit. (fast pursuit blinky is called a "Cruise Elroy" -- nobody knows why)
7b) Pink Ghost aims 4 tiles in front of the player, an overflow bug in the code makes it to that if the player is facing up, It actually aims up 4 and left 4.
7c) Cyan Ghost is a bit more complex. It's target tile is calculated by taking a point 2 tiles in front of the player, making a vector from the red ghosts position to that point, and then using the exact opposite as the result.
7d) Orange Ghost is more than 8 tiles from player, aim for player. Less than 8 tiles, return to home corner. He's fickle. This actually makes the bottom left corner one of the hardest because if you're within 8 tiles of that corner, 'clyde' is gonna stay there.
... and that's really all there is to it. My own Pac Man ripoff mixes it up by adding a random 1 in 6 of ignoring rule 2, and a random 1 in 6 of ignoring it's normal pursuit rules at intersections. (ok, I've got a thing for 1d6).
That's actually pretty simple... and so good, that every time a new game goes and uses the same basic logic, it's 'praised' for it's AI. Take the original F.E.A.R. -- it's 5 mode (pursue, lead, cover, flee and scatter) using remarkably similar logic in terms of following or getting ahead of the player.
Scripted logic feels intelligent -- because it has a plan -- throw in just a hair of randomness to make it less predictable, and you're golden.
You also have to work off people's perceptions -- the smartest "lag pursuit" will often feel dumb as a rock because it can't actually hit you, while the dumbest lead pursuit AI can be really challenging because it's always aiming not for where you are, but where you're going. Learned a lot about that in ACM school at Eglin. If you were making a combat flight sim that actually had physics (sorry Airblast, but... no) having the AI ride the throttle to maintain airspeed in turns, keep it's energy high while maintaining corner velocity, using altitude to trade kinetic energy for potential and vice versa, turning not at the player but lead pursuit -- these aren't 'complex' concepts; easy to implement and could easily make serious threats to the human player.
Though a lot of times it comes down to NOT trying to hollywood it; because blazing along as fast as possible in a dogfight will keep you alive -- much less idiotic nonsense like "Bang the brakes, he'll fly right by"...
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