AI attacking and blocking Observations

[timmermac]

I'd like to see the computer block one of my attacking creatures with multiple blockers that have sufficient power when put together to kill my attacker. The current match I'm playing is seeing me abuse the computer with a Nova Cleric while I have a Noble Hierarch in play. The computer could take out the Cleric with two of it's available 2/2's.

[beryl]

Hi

I'm playing with the 12/11 beta, I noticed that the AI would keep attacking with a creature even though I've got blocker of sufficiently high toughness but low power (such as walls), so neither the attacker nor the blocker would die and no damage is dealt to the player, but the AI should have simply kept the creature untapped instead of attacking for no gain. Similar thing when I have creature with protection or regeneration, the AI creature does not have trample but still keep attacking.

It seems that the AI is throwing all creatures to attack as long as they won't be killed by my blockers regardless of whether it forces any actual gain.

[slapshot5]

Kind of goes along with beryl's post.

I had three 1/2 creature in play. Compy had a 1/3. He attacked into me, and I blocked with all 3 of mine, killing his, but leaving all 3 of my creatures intact.

-slapshot5

[timmermac]

The AI also needs to take into account what cards it has out in play when making decisions about whether to attack. I'm playing against the special-quest-modified version of my Burning Elves deck, and the computer has 3x Beastmaster Ascension out and 3 creatures, including an Elvish Champion. It's had the Ascensions out for a while. As soon as a creature came out, it should have been attacking me to build counters on the Ascensions. That's one of the major points of having the Ascensions in the deck. It's also one of the major reasons why my own v2 of the deck includes 4 copies of Doubling Season. Theoretically, I should have been dead by now, but the computer hasn't attacked once with any of it's creatures. This is especially bad, since I've got Forests out, and 2 of the computer's creatures are Elves.

[Jaedayr]

AI with a lot of life will attack just fine with a shadow creature when I have nothing to block it. However if I can get the AI down to around 4-6 life (not sure the exact number) it will stop attacking with the shadow creature even though I cannot block it nor can it block anything I have.

AI had 18 life and I attacked with 3x 3/3 creatures and the AI had a 3/3 first strike creature but did not block even though it could have killed one of my creatures.

[SoulStorm]

The AI needs to more aggressively defend planeswalkers. Currently the AI is too easy to exploit. As long as I have a creature with lower power than the number of loyalty counters on the planeswalker, yet enough power to kill the AI's creature with the highest toughness (sounds very circumstantial, I know, but it seems to happen every time I face one of the AI's planeswalkers) I can keep the AI's planeswalker in check without the least bit of concern.

[lazylockie]

r4419:

AI suddenly became "dumb" when attacking. AI is attacking with 2/2s and 3/3s into that evil Plant Wall 1/4 Deathtouch. I'll update the revision to see if something got bugged or so.

[Sloth]

r4419:

AI suddenly became "dumb" when attacking. AI is attacking with 2/2s and 3/3s into that evil Plant Wall 1/4 Deathtouch. I'll update the revision to see if something got bugged or so.

Thank you for the observation lazylockie. This should be fixed now.

[friarsol]

The AI seems to never want to block if he has a bunch of creatures out but would need to trade to kill my creature.

Right now I have a 3/3 that I'm attacking with and he would need to trade to kill it. But could multi-block with a 2/3 and a 2/2 to kill my creature. Obviously this is a "Trade-up" situation since i lose a 3/3 and the AI loses a 2/3, but he doesn't seem to want to do it.

[Jaedayr]

AI had 4 life and 8 poison tokens. I attacked with a 4/4 flying infected creature and two 2/2 land based normal ones. The AI had three creatures, one of which was a flying 3/3. Instead of blocking all three of my attackers it blocked and killed one of my 2/2 with it's flier and lost the game on poison counters.

[noian]

AI occasionally regenerates cards during Main 1 for some reason, tapping the card and preventing it from being able to block.

[Chris H.]

AI occasionally regenerates cards during Main 1 for some reason, tapping the card and preventing it from being able to block.

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Currently, the AI can only use the regeneration ability before it attacks. The AI will also only cast pump spells like Giant Growth during main 1 prior to attacking. We plan to make some needed changes in the future, just have not gotten to it yet.

[Rob Cashwalker]

While it needs to prepare the regeneration before combat, it shouldn't be performing the regeneration until it actually would be destroyed.. I haven't looked into the new AF_Regenerate, so maybe something is wrong in there... unless you're looking at a card that has tap as a cost for regeneration, but I don't think there are many.

[noian]

While it needs to prepare the regeneration before combat, it shouldn't be performing the regeneration until it actually would be destroyed.. I haven't looked into the new AF_Regenerate, so maybe something is wrong in there... unless you're looking at a card that has tap as a cost for regeneration, but I don't think there are many.

Take Drudge Skeletons for example.
Ai's turn. Ai taps Swamp and uses regenerate during Main 1.
AI proceeds not to attack since I have way more elf counters than ai creatures.
My turn, I attack with a elf warrior token (2/2)
Ai blocks with Drudge Skeleton (1/1).
Drudge Skeleton dies since the ai does not have a swamp land left.

Sorry for not being clear enough.

Also, the AI prefers to block 2/2 creatures with Wither (Twinblade Slasher) with walls while leaving similar 2/2 creatures (Elvish Archdruid) unblocked. This is very confusing as this leads to the death of the ai walls. If the ai blocked Elvish Archdruid, it would have taken the same amount of damage (to say none due to Perimeter Captain) without slowly losing its walls.

Similarly, the ai doesn't block my green creatures with Vodalian Zombie which has protection from green, but rather Blood Knight.

[Rob Cashwalker]

Take Drudge Skeletons for example.
Ai's turn. Ai taps Swamp and uses regenerate during Main 1.
AI proceeds not to attack since I have way more elf counters than ai creatures.
My turn, I attack with a elf warrior token (2/2)
Ai blocks with Drudge Skeleton (1/1).
Drudge Skeleton dies since the ai does not have a swamp land left.

Sorry for not being clear enough.

Doesn't matter, the AI can't play abilities on your turn anyway. Regeneration as a keyword, was the second thing I coded for Forge. (first being pump spells) I tried to apply some basic heuristics, like mana available, likely hood the creature would attack and some other sort of criteria that escapes me right now. Each criteria would be combined in a weighted fashion, and resulted in the AI sometimes choosing to apply regeneration, which only might have saved the creature during combat... if I chose to block in futility.

If the current Regeneration code is pretty much copied verbatim, then it should still play the ability on occasion, but not quite 'properly'.