Question about an odd battlefield situation

by **Fizanko** » 13 Feb 2014, 21:28

I was testing a self made deck with 60 cards, in which i had 25 lands.
The AI was assigned a random deck, i didn't read which one it was.

I had incredible bad luck as i couldn't get my lands coming in my hands when i really needed them (and i thought 25 was too many

) , meaning i was nearly powerless for a while.

For the AI it was very different , he got the right lands and card to get quickly an offensive legion on his side. ( ignore the Common Cause card i played it was a mistake, i misunderstood the text of the card, as i thought only me needed the same color for my troops, not both the AI and me )

But to my surprise, the AI despite its overwhelming advantage wasn't attacking at all.

I know i played Ghostly Prison , forcing him to pay 2 mana for each creatures the AI would want to attack with, but still in the middle of the bunch there was a 17/17 Scute Mob (that got overpowered quickly in very fast succession of buffing).

And looking at the 5/5 and 4/4 other attackers he could have played too, my poor 0/1 Abu Ja'far (though it would have killed its killer) and my 4/4 Serra Angel would have resisted in any ways.

Sure my Righteous Fury would have then demolished the 2 remaining attackers, but after losing my poor defenses, what the AI had left would have done massive damage.

Any reason i am missing that could explain why he wasn't attacking (and for a lot of turns he really didn't attacked) ?

by **crazy9000** » 14 Feb 2014, 01:18

From what I've seen, the AI doesn't take the (pay X mana for each attacker) cards into account. It spends mana like normal, then the attack fails because it can't pay. I will go with that theory since all the AI mana is tapped in your picture.

Otherwise, it also gets scared to attack when you can kill it's creatures. It often waits until it can kill you in a turn before attacking.

by **Fizanko** » 14 Feb 2014, 02:33

It makes sense if the AI can't "think" a few more turns ahead, as indeed some of his best card will be destroyed, and even if that sacrifice will give it the win a few turns later, maybe the AI does not see that much, it may then only see that it will lose strong cards if it takes only that turn in account.

by **HarlequinCasts** » 15 Feb 2014, 07:30

Fizanko wrote:It makes sense if the AI can't "think" a few more turns ahead, as indeed some of his best card will be destroyed, and even if that sacrifice will give it the win a few turns later, maybe the AI does not see that much, it may then only see that it will lose strong cards if it takes only that turn in account.

From what I can tell, the AI does a very simply finite analysis of the board and tries to maximize its "presence" (meaning its board/game state) as best it can during its main phase, combat, and second main phase.

Basically, the AI is only ever concerned with "the here and now" of the turn it is currently in, and does not really "plan" things in advance ever. The AI can occasionally see some surprisingly deep combos during a turn purely by brute force, but for the most part, once you've played it for a while you will see that it performs quite sub-optimally over many turns.

This is most evidenced by the fact that the AI will always attack you if it can get damage in without unfavorable losses, even if it will immediately lose to a counter attack the very next turn.

by **Aswan jaguar** » 15 Feb 2014, 07:53

This is most evidenced by the fact that the AI will always attack you if it can get damage in without unfavorable losses, even if it will immediately lose to a counter attack the very next turn.

About this AI behaviour someone who have played the original game (the first edition updated till 1.25 without the updates-Spells of the Ancients and Duels of the Planeswalkers.) said it was not an issue and AI took into consideration what will happen in opponents next turn/attack from what there is on the battlefield of course.I have played the original game too but I really,really can't remember if AI played any different.

NOTE :If anyone has an old PC with windows 95 or 98 or has a virtual machine with such windows and can test this please do so it would be very important if we can check this and know for sure that AI indeed (took into consideration next opponents turn/attack)then maybe our devs can dig and find the solution.If the original Microprose MTG is the problem I have an installation that will probably run I can zip it and send it or upload it.