I haven't really had a long conversation and multiple topics in one bot, so I don't have much experience in manipulating the bot's behavior.
I would suggest adding a reminder on the character's Reminder Message to steer the AI's response. Another would be using the /ai <reply instruction>
method in which you instruct what the AI would reply. You could also probably try to edit the Memories and summaries that the AI generated that it uses in generating the reply and you could check the memory that pushes the AI to reply that way by clicking the brain icon that show up upon hover in the message on the bottom right.
There are a lot more people knowledgeable in telling the AI what to do in the #ai-character-chat channel in Perchance Discord.