Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26564894-20150901103909/@comment-25400375-20150902113156

Mystic Monkey wrote: I believe there could be branches if intelligence. Such as creativity, general intelligence and common sense.

Dr. Eggman is perhaps superior in creativity over Tails given he creates series of robots and is resourceful enough to build cities all by himself.

Tails seems to lack this creative drive, or the very least it hasn't been proven how creative Tails is. He is capable of building machines but his resourcefulness can only go so far.

As for general intelligence, they are on parr with one another given in Sonic Lost World, Tails was able to reverse the Extractor. He is familiar with Dr. Eggmans machines and programming to the point that Tails openly mocks Dr. Eggman on the quality of his skills, but again Dr. Eggman also saved Tails from one of his own errors of judgement with Cubot and a broken crabmeat Badnik.

Finally, for common sense, well Dr. Eggman has two flaws in his common sense and that is his persistance and pride. while pride and persistance are normally a good thing, Sonic and Dr. Eggman has been duking it out since 1991 and Eggman still doesn't know when to quit. He constantantly looses and has to spend lots of money and resources just to start all over again. Tails is never depticed the villain so it's never shown if he would be as persistant as Dr. Eggman, or realise that his efforts would be useless. Even in the comics, Mammoth Mogul manages to manipulate Sonic into releasing him from jail and giving his powers back just for Mogul to admit that no matter what, Sonic will find away against his odds to beat him and resolves it be easier to let time be rid of him than pursuit the feud and simply leaves. Dr. Eggman cannot resolve differences with Sonic and continues his conquest to the degree of boading Sonic. In sense Dr. Eggmans painful failures with Sonic are now to the point self inflicting.

Another thing about common sense that Dr. Eggman is weak against is that (while purely for gameplay purposes) there is always a weakness for Sonic to exploit. For example in Sonic Adventure, Sonic's battle against Chaos 6, it would of bee absolutely impossible for Sonic to defeat Chaos 6. But Dr. Eggman insist on helping by throwing down freezing sattelites. It was these sattelites that Sonic used to freeze Chaos 6. Dr. Eggman realised what Sonic was doing but persist to throw down freezing items that Sonic could easily use. It is these fatal flaws which shows that while a genius in robotechnology, Dr. Eggman can be a right idiot to allow Sonic to exploit flaws to the point of welcoming.

Dr. Eggmans behavior shows has intense narcissism, histrionic behavior, underlying egomania. But he may also suffer from Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, which can be the case why Sonic can easily exploit flaws in Dr. Eggmans machines. Dr. Eggman may intentionally give Sonic these advantages as he is the central trigger of his many personality disorders. Dr. Eggman is well aware his actions and motivations are evil and comfortably accepts his role as "villain", in which Sonic drives his passion in conquest, for without Sonic in his life he knows he would be a bored villain. He can take it all with little resistance but Sonic will not be there to give him a satisfying challenge. Dr. Eggman does indeed hate Sonic, but his subconscious knows he needs him and thus makes explitable weaknesses so that their rivalry can continue. (So it's more of a Kismesissitude than genuine rivalry.)

At least this is what I perceive of Dr. Eggmans intelligence. Perhaps he is more intelligence than Tails but it's his own craziness that puts him second to Tails. Tails lacks resources but also emotional and mental baggage that Dr. Eggman has to think more rationally and make more potent devices and machines. Makes sense to me. Especially the part about them being like Batman and the Joker.