Project Firemind is back

[mike]

Yeah C15 might take a little longer to add than I thought.

C14 however is now in the database and you should be able to submit your card script.

[PalladiaMors]

I have a request - for the players this time, instead of the developers.

The Firemind queue has been often empty recently. That's a waste of resources. One of the best short-term ways of increasing the AI strength I can think of is finding decks that suit it better. Mike's made a massive effort in that regard, creating I believe a couple hundred or more decks in there. I've put together a few dozens as well. At this point, I've really stretched my repertoire: every now and then I remember something I haven't tried yet with the currently implemented cards and try it, but it would be really important to have more people trying new ideas over there.

So if you're a Magarena player and want to help the AI get a little bit stronger quickly, please go to http://www.firemind.ch, create an account and try to get some decks to the top of the rating lists. From player feedback, it seems like the top Firemind decks are used a lot by players trying to increase the level of challenge in the game. Some formats, like Standard or Vintage, currently have very few decks and I'm sure some can be found that would be played a couple hundred rating points higher by the AI.

Getting a deck to the top of the list in Firemind can be a fun challenge. It's not easy to do at all. I've created a bunch and only a couple have managed to get there. What I've found out after some experience is that you really want to try simpler decks, those are the ones the AI handles better. Something that involves complex strategy, too many decisions or precise timing will probably not perform very well. Also, most of the current decks were created when Firemind was running the Vegas AI. This was recently changed to MCTS, so better fits for this specific AI are surely waiting to be found.

So please help if this interests you at all. Maybe later I'll do a metagame breakdown to see how things have changed since the last time I've made a clumsy attempt to do that. Again, if we could reach like a thousand decks per format, I've no doubt this would net a significant rating gain for MCTS while playing with its best fitting decks, and I doubt there's too many other ways of getting a comparable improvement as quickly. Sign up! It's really quick, and can be fun to try out!

[PalladiaMors]

Better late than never! New cards in version 1.61 with a 4+ Gatherer rating:

White: Balance, Orim's Chant, Weathered Wayfarer, Glory, Myojin of Cleansing Fire, Eternal Dragon, Soul of Theros

Blue: Fatestitcher, Wipe Away

Black: Bloodsoaked Champion, Phage the Untouchable, Sudden Death, Salvage Titan

Green: Krosan Grip, Wall of Roots

Red: Incandescent Soulstoke, Goblin Bomb, Sudden Shock, Sulfur Elemental, Magma Phoenix, Slumbering Dragon

Multicolored: Icefeather Aven, Stitch in Time

Colorless: Hand of Emrakul, Soul of New Phyrexia, Grim Poppet

[PalladiaMors]

I got a failure message in this Firemind duel. It still managed to complete the duel anyway, but I thought I should mention it?

Code: Select all

Failure Message
java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
   at java.util.LinkedList.checkElementIndex(LinkedList.java:553)
   at java.util.LinkedList.get(LinkedList.java:474)
   at magic.ai.MCTSGameTree.first(MCTSAI.java:849)
   at magic.ai.MCTSAI.findNextEventChoiceResults(MCTSAI.java:163)
   at magic.headless.HeadlessGameController.getAIChoiceResults(HeadlessGameController.java:50)
   at magic.headless.HeadlessGameController.runGame(HeadlessGameController.java:33)
   at magic.firemind.FiremindDuelRunner.runDuel(FiremindDuelRunner.java:176)
   at magic.firemind.FiremindDuelRunner.main(FiremindDuelRunner.java:77)


[mike]

I set the system up to re-try duels up to 5 times if they fail because of client errors. Apparently I forgot to have it clean up the failure message from the previous failed attempt.

[ShawnieBoy]

Just something I've noticed, but the Legacy and Vintage pages have no tool-bar link for them. You can access them directly, but they seem to be orphaned pages:

Legacy
Vintage

[PalladiaMors]

List of new cards with a 4+ Gatherer rating in version 1.62

White: Wingmate Roc

Blue: Floodgate, Homarid Spawning Bed

Black: Street Wraith, Helldozer, Ashling, the Extinguisher, Dusk Urchins

Green: City of Solitude, Hooded Hydra, Avoid Fate, Greater Good, Alpha Status, Momentous Fall, Waiting in the Weeds

Red: Viashino Heretic, Dragon Mage, Storm Entity, Crater's Claws, Destructive Urge

Multicolored: Gilder Bairn, Rhys the Redeemed, Coalition Victory, Dune-Brood Nephilim, Grim Feast, Prime Speaker Zegana, Orzhov Charm, Cruel Ultimatum, Mercurial Chemister

Colorless: Mirror Universe, Nightmare Lash, Geth's Grimoire


Worst card in this release (per Gatherer): Zephyr Spirit

[PalladiaMors]

Anticipating a bit this time to try & catch people who show up for the release...

This is a list of new cards in the 1.63 release with a Gatherer rating of 4 stars or greater. This is intended to filter the new cards lists for cards that should have a higher chance to impact the metagame in Firemind.


White: Noble Purpose, Eye of Singularity, Rolling Stones, Imperial Mask

Blue: Thirst for Knowledge, Strategic Planning, Invoke Prejudice, Mana Short, Browse, Tolarian Winds, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Shifting Sky, Forbidden Alchemy, Arcane Denial, Seasinger, Mark of Eviction

Black: Gravecrawler, Tainted Æther, Volrath the Fallen, Knight of Dusk, Wrench Mind

Green: Call of the Wild, Early Harvest

Red: Rimescale Dragon, Insurrection, Goblin Snowman

Multicolored: Mundungu, Rubinia Soulsinger, Cromat, Phytohydra

Colorless: Razormane Masticore, Vedalken Shackles, Orb of Dreams, That Which Was Taken, Scrying Sheets


@Mike! At this point Firemind is >500 cards behind Magarena, not to mention missing all the recent tiny AI improvements. This is definitely worth updating for when you have some spare time! Thanks a bunch!

[Lodici]

Anticipating a bit this time to try & catch people who show up for the release...

How about posting these updates in the actual release thread then?

[PalladiaMors]

Well I kind of thought that, since Melvin posts the full list of released cards on that topic, perhaps it could maybe look for some people like, I don't know, maybe this list has an idea like "only the high rated cards are relevant" or something of the sort, which is something that I definitely do NOT think. It's definitely something to consider, though!

[mike]

@Mike! At this point Firemind is >500 cards behind Magarena, not to mention missing all the recent tiny AI improvements. This is definitely worth updating for when you have some spare time! Thanks a bunch!

I'm actually updating firemind.ch with every official magarena release. Currently it should be running 1.62 and I'm planning on upgrading it to 1.63 once it's being released.

I started using a branch of my magarena fork on github for the version I deploy to firemind.ch so if you want to know which one is currently live have a look here https://github.com/firemind/magarena-cs ... e/firemind

[PalladiaMors]

I noticed that the cards that got the Cast with AI upgrades recently may not have been updated in Firemind. For example, check Pyroclasm or Overrun.

In the other hand, cards that got casting restrictions a long time ago did get the improvement, see Diabolic Edict. I believe these are small improvements that could affect the results and make them a little bit more consistent.

Pretty sure >200 cards got these things in the last few months, it could be useful to update the previously available cards that got them, although I've no idea how much trouble that would be. Please consider doing that when possible! Thanks.

[mike]

Thanks for taking the time to report this. Could you elaborate a little on what makes you think the AI restriction isn't applied on firemind.ch?

This is the branch of the code that is currently deployed for firemind.ch https://github.com/firemind/magarena-cs ... e/firemind

And this is the Version of Pyroclasm within that branch: https://github.com/firemind/magarena-cs ... oclasm.txt

It looks to me like the restriction is present:

ability=Cast SN with AI only if an opponent controls a creature.

Also the machine running the duels has been down since saturday because of a server crash. Working on setting up a new one soon.

[PalladiaMors]

When I saw the card's script page for pyroclasm I noticed that it doesn't show the line "cast sn with ai only if an opponent controls a creature", while diabolic edict's page does display the "cast sn with ai only..." line. So I thought this might mean it didn't get updated. My bad.

Do you think this had a positive impact, making the results a little more precise? I wish I had considered taking notice of previous ratings in order to compare them with current ones and have an objective way of measuring that. More hints can probably be added for a few more cards, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of the stuff I could think about has already been done.

[mike]

Oops, apparently the Card Script page still points to an outdated version of the repo (because it's checked out on a different server). Will fix that asap and see to it that it gets updated properly next time.

To be honest I haven't really had the time to do much analysis of the results lately. I do save the magarena version number with every duel though so it should be easy to compare the old and new version. Just run a proper sample size of duels with two decks that already had decent coverage with the old magarena version. Choose one deck that uses some of the improved cards and one that doesn't. If you could link me the duels you ran I can throw together some statistics on how the results have changed.

The thing is though that the server I used to run the duels on has crashed and the replacement will take about two days to set up. You can still create the duels but they won't get run until Thursday.