I've found the AI to actually be mostly decent for pals in base, some occasional rescuing needed but I mostly chose decent spots. One tip I will give instead is to try and find a cul-de-sac or plateau or something, don't pick the wide open crossroads. You want to try and funnel attackers in to better terrain for them to get AoE'd up by, as midgame raids can start getting a little mean with what they send and if you're leveling up reasonably quickly, your base Pals aren't going to keep up while the Raid enemy levels may choose to pick on your character level instead.

Anyway, the game itself is -shockingly- fun and playable and well designed as they dropped it. They most assuredly got lucky that this blew up but this really is something good as is, and they're already patching and continuing to fix bugs.