Shandalar - Program Bugs

[Korath]

Did you observe it casting any other Auras besides Instill Energy, or did you just assume it does?

Was it before or after combat?

This behavior is nonsensical from the programming side, too. The AI doesn't assess the relative value of what it's done until the aura would already have zapped off, so it should correctly rate this the same as paying G to discard the Instill Energy.

Best guess? My current tentative reading of what the AI will try to do spontaneously - that is, not in response to the human putting something on the stack - is that it only has a search depth of three actions. So when it's considering casting the Instill Energy, it saw

1. Cast Instill Energy on Assembly Worker.
2. Tap Assembly Worker to pump itself.
3. Activate Instill Energy to untap Assembly Worker.

After casting it, it either saw that the action wasn't beneficial, or didn't find the sequence again - the AI considers random actions, rather than exhaustively considering everything it can do, then everything it can do in response to that, then everything it can do in response to that.

It's unlikely I'll be able to do anything about this. I won't even consider forbidding the AI from enchanting temporarily-animated permanents; besides being like swatting the proverbial fly with a sledgehammer, it's more effort to detect that than you'd think. I can maybe add an AI adjustment for when an Aura falls off an illegal target for any reason, though I doubt it would make enough difference to affect the above scenario.