AI Moves That Give You Pause!

[Bog Wraith]

The three incidents I am posting here are not bugs, but are examples of some of the ways that playing an AI opponent still leaves plenty to be desired.

First off i want to say that Forge is the best & most consistently good AI driven MTG game I have ever played. The only one's that might be on par or at times a bit better are the recent versions of WotC's own Duels of the Planeswalkers, but they are coded with a minuscule amount of cards as compared to Forge. For the amount of cards playable that Forge posses, even given that the AI has problems playing a certain percentage of all those cards, IMO, Forge is unmatched in how good it plays as an AI opponent!

Ok, now that the bouquets' have been tossed, here is an example of when Forge isn't on the ball & does things that remind me of ManaLink type behaviour.

In a recent match, during two successive games, the AI cast Cursed Flesh on it's own creatures, thus penalizing itself on 3 separate occasions.

The first example shows Carnophage being enchanted. The second example shows Carnophage & a Soltari Lancer enchanted with it, when clearly the AI should have enchanted my Dungeon Shade with one of them, thus removing it from play. Added to this the fact that Soltari Lancer has Shadow and thus the enchantment is even more unnecessary.

The third example was from the very next game when yet again, the AI casts a Cursed Flesh on his Carnophage which he did AFTER my Craven Giant was on the battle after having been cast on my preceding turn .

Now I'm pretty sure that the fact that "Fear" or what is now called "Intimidate" which is part of what the enchantment does, might effect the logic chain that the AI uses to determine which creature(s) to cast it on. That might lead to these erroneous conclusions on it's part, but since there are black creatures on its opponents side of battlefield in some of those examples, it makes those choices even more baffling.

I'm sure things like this have been discussed here in the forums many times over the years, but I just wanted to point out these head scratchers as an example of how far AI controlled opponents have yet to go to play at a truly competitive level on a consistent basis. It is something we all hope to see achieved one day and is the goal that we all strive for.

It also shows just how much more difficult programming an AI to play Magic at A Pro Tour "Finkel" level is, than it is for Deep Blue to play Garry Kasparov in a world class chess match!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue ... y_Kasparov

All this also points to one thing as well, given the incredible complexities & myriad of card interactions that a game of MTG entails, it shows just how lucky & blessed we all are in having the marvellous talents and dedication of the developers for this app that we all love!

[KrazyTheFox]

A lot of the current issues with the AI is something I'm attempting to tackle in my Traversable Game State topic. These problems are due to the fact that in Forge we can't really do proper look-aheads and can't rewind the game. There's a tremendous amount of work to do to get a traversable game state into Forge, but the goal is to eventually have AI that simulates future moves and picks the most beneficial ones, likely behaving very similarly to how you describe in this topic.

[Bog Wraith]

Yes I can see that.

It's also evident that you are one of those people I am referring to in my post in showing the quality & dedication you guys have for moving the AI forward in it's development.

We are all damned lucky & privileged for those efforts.

Thank you for doing so!