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AI vs. Protection from color

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AI vs. Protection from color

Postby lujo » 07 Dec 2015, 23:55

There are several abilities which the AI is having general trouble with, but all the time I'm noticing it apparently having big problems with "protection from color". Don't know about other versions, but in Nomad's Bazaar 1 for sure.

When it has things with protection from color it tends to madly attack with them even if this would result in it getting killed because it has no blockers, but ok, anyone could notice that.

The bigger deal is how it tends to play when there's a creature with protection on my side.

It will sometimes madly attack into it not factoring it at all, like it does with some other abilities, but again, this isn't the really worrying part.

The worrying part - it plays like it's trying to concede. You know those games where the AI just won't play anything, or you look at it's hand and it turns out it's sitting on cards it could be playing but isn't and does nothing instead? I get a lot of that every time it's up against protection from color. It's getting annoying during deck testing, even, because I set decks at "random" for myself, and every time I'm testing a red deck, and my current winged stallion comes up against it the AI just plays like it just gave up.

Right now I baited that behavior - I saw it had a Veteran Brawlers in hand, and I had a Voice of Law on board. Nothing else but lands on both sides. The AI kept not playing them, and I just went draw-go for a while, and the AI got another Veteran Brawlers. But it wouldn't play them. Then I played a Wrath of God to kill my Voice of Law, and, like clockwork, the AI played both Vetaran Brawlers right away after sitting on them for something like 4 turns.

I can't be 100% sure, but I've had situations like that time and time again, and I've half a mind to remove the protection:color stuff from the pool entirely just in case it really is causing that. When you're spamming matches against the same deck to try to get kinks out of it, after 30 or so matches you kind of know what it's going to do when, as it generally does the same things, but nothing makes it behave like this. This isn't the "AI doesn't play even lands" situation, or even how it plays against something with protection from all colors (different issues).

I understand that this might be due to protection from color basically being hexproof + unblockable + indestructable and that the AI can literally have no way of dealing with it at all, so it just gives up. But if it's that, that just explain it, and even if that's exactly what's going on, the AI might not be able to deal with a 2/2 pro:X dork but it could certainly race it, except it doesn't even try.

What to do about this?
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