The card drawing assessment mechanism

[lujo]

Is making every single card with "draw a card" in it not usable by the AI and a hazard to put into a deck. Korath apparently refuses to think about changing it, and I can't figure out if it was always the way it is or if he changed it into this in order to implement something. If it's the later, whatever it was wasn't worth the huge mess.

Now, why the system has to be different is obvious to me, and I'm sure it can be explained to anyone. The problem on my end is that I'm not sure what's confusing about this, and why would anyone ever think of making the system the way it is. I can make any number of videos with horrible AI misplays related to the card draw mechanism, and seeing just one should make anyone understand that the system was a wrong idea and that it needs to be changed.

So does anyone know how it works, exactly? Who made it that way? Why? What can possibly be the tradeoff for every single card draw card set to potentially trainwreck any hand it's in?

---

As an illustration, I put a video in the "AI improvement suggestion" thread, I don't even have to look at it to remember all the cards involved and explain what's going on there and why it alone should be enough to immediately realize how wrong the current system is.

The AI has the following in hand:

Tranquil Thicket
Treefolk Harbinger
Ordeal of Nylea
Battlewand Oak
Forest
Forest
Forest

The idea behind the deck it is playing is that the sequence of plays (and damage made to a non-resisting enemy) is:

T1: Forest, Treefolk Harbinger -> Puts, say, Cloudcrown Oak on top of library
T2: Forest, Ordeal of Nylea on Harbinger, attacks for 1, total: 1
T3: Forest, Battlewand Oak, attacks with Harbinger for 2, total: 3
T4: Forest, Cloudcrown Oak -> 5/7 Battlewand Oak, 3/6 Harbinger, attacks for 8, total 11
T5: Forest, any Trefoolk -> 5/7 Battlewand Oak, 3/4 Cloudcrown Oak, 3/6 harbinger, attacks for 11, total 22. Cycles Tranquil Thicket.

It's a deck which deals 22 damage to a goldfish by turn 5 just by naively and mindlessly playing that hand out. I made it with that in mind, except I put in Tranquil Thicket to make the video about why cycling is unusable for the AI. And if it wasn't for the Tranquil Thicket, or rather if it wasn't for the insane card drawing system, it would likely play it exactly that way.

But what the AI does instead is:

T1: Forest, Treefolk Harbinger -> Puts Cloudcrown Oak on top of library
T2: UPKEEP: cycles Tranquil Thicket in order to draw the Cloudcrown Oak it would have drawn anyway, Forest, nothing
T3: Forest, Ordeal of Nylea (turn late), attacks for 1
T4: Forest, Cloudcrown Oak (but without Battlewand Oak allready on board, 5 damage lost), attacks for 2, total: 3
T5: Forest, Cloudcrown Oak (Battlewand Oak lost in the sequencing entirely), attacks for 6, total: 9

So what happens is that it decides that drawing a card it can't play instead of playing what it was meant to be playing is better because of the ridiculous card-draw evaluation system. This makes it cascade into skipping Battlewand Oak, which then makes it cascade into throwing away 10 damage. And even if that damage doesn't go through it skips 2 early attacks with a 5/7 which is much more difficult to safely block than the 3/4 Oak. By turn 5 the deck which didn't have to honor the lunatic card draw instructions does more than 20 damage, making it capable of killing a regular MtG goldfish, while the deck which is forced to follow the lunatic card draw instructions doesn't even do the 10 needed to kill the Shandalar goldfish. I think the second deck doesn't even do 20 at turn 6 vs. goldfish -.-

And most of all, the second deck doesn't present the actual experience the deck was meant to provide - you're supposed to be afraid of the Battlewand Oak in that deck, when you face the shandalar enemy with it you're supposed to dread facing a 5/7 for 2G , not have the opponent just sit there with some 3-power creatures you can easily wall up. The first deck is a fine, dangerous opponent, the second is a pile of garbage - because the second is following insane rules which make MtG not work.

And this happens all the time with most things which draw cards. I could make hundreds of videos spotlighting it, and I don't need any videos to know this, so what's the problem? Why is it there? Why is it not clear that whatever the reason for it was it can't compare to the problems it causes? If changing the system would make something in particular not work, it would make hundreds of other somethings suddenly work, way more things than it could possibly mess up. How come it's even possible that this needs actual explaining?

And really, I have to consider this by this point, if the problem is that Korath made it the way it is, and would feel stupid if he had to undo it or something - feeling stupid about having done something stupid is no big deal. It's stupid, how are you supposed to feel about it, smart? To what end? Having hundreds of cards not work and the AI routinely wreck decks it otherwise wouldn't? I mean, if you leave it like this everyone who looks at the AI's hand to see why it's not playing cards right is going to conclude that it's stupid, and if you fix it folks will forget you ever arsed up with it in the first place because a lot of things will suddenly work. I'll certainly delete this, I don't need it, I just have to do everything I can possibly think of to get this awful crap fixed. I'd much rather be appreciating all the tons of card drawing cards you implemented, or rather would have implemented if the card draw mechanism wasn't making them useless.

And if it's somehow not Korath's fault - people who know the first thing about MtG who see this sort of thing will think it is. And a large number of cards he's implemented can't be put into AI decks because of the way things are, and there'd certainly be fewer misplays and bug reports if this was working in any more senisble way than it "works" now. This makes AI which would play simple things passably well mess up in way even stupid people in RL wouldn't. Korath seems to have this idea that he's porting cards which would make some historical decks work - as long as this is the way it is it won't if the deck uses card draw, because this stupidity will just wreck the decks. And the reason I feel exasperated with him personally is because he "won't fix-ed" my feature request to fix this, while also devoting a bunch of his time to port cycling cards which I can't even bloody test because of this crap. I'm not saying these things for my damned sake, I don't need this explained to me and I wouldn't have gone porting cycling (or many other things) without first making sure this kind of thing can't happen.

EDIT: Now, if the reason this hasn't been fixed yet is something like "Then the AI couldn't make predictions with the regular card it would always draw", the answer to that is: believe it or not, an AI which never involved the card drawn that turn in it's predictions would STILL be playing more sensible MtG than this one. Really, it sounds preposterous, but it's actually true - it would also be playing lousy MtG, but it would be less lousy than this. And it doesn't even have to be that way. What the human does is recalculate it's stuff every time it draws something and that's the only thing that should ever have been contemplated.

[Korath]

You don't have the first clue what you're talking about or how minimax AI works. Kindly stop embarrassing yourself.

[Huggybaby]

Post Deleted by Admin

[Huggybaby]

Hello lujo,

I do not understand this post. You have 555 posts as a member here. You've never lost your temper like this before, and you've never been so insulting before.
Have you?
So this seems out of character.

[Huggybaby]

Post Deleted by Admin

[gmzombie]

Here the problem with your "problem with the game". You seem to forget that korath is doing the coding on his own or with gargaroz. They do this with their own free time. There is problems with this game no doubt, but your insensitive tone and demeanor does nothing to help your problem. What type of coding experience do you have? I know very little coding and from what i red when i get the chance to it is incredibly difficult to understand. Maybe you have C and assembly coding experience? Speak up if you do if not do not piss of the only damn coder for this game we have. I have never heard of this issue before today but i also havent been on here lately. Ive been with this project since lmost the begining and ive seen alot of coders come and go but none and i repeat NONE have ever worked on shandalar and i fully believe that the game is way better than before. We are adults here and childish swearing is not needed. This thread is going to ne closed if we cannot act like adults. And as for the compaint to wizards if you want to act that way nobody can stop you. Just know that you will be hurting not only this game but other games as well over some childish behavior. Just saying.

[Huggybaby]

Post Deleted by Admin

[Huggybaby]

Hello Lujo,

I don't know what's going on, but you are not making sense in context of this topic.

Therefore I've banned you for two weeks.

[gmzombie]

First off you must remember that this game is from 1995. It was never supposed to be anywhere near like it is now. Even the original had bad flaws in the game. Korath is also working on a game with NO sourcecode. Unless you can produce an acurate representation of the original source then i would give this man less grief. You know he just got a working version of modern stack in there right? There are things that korath codes so that when he codes other things he dosent have to go back and rewrite those changes. Are some things broken sure. But without a real sourcecode he has to find and recode the old items to new. Painfully long task to do. If you look at any other mtg game on this board the only other game that even supports the computer player that is any good is forge. Xmage computer is crap forge is alright and maybe a little better but i always liked the computer player on manalink. And i think korath and Gargaroz have done a fine job thusfar. Yes there is problems but things get worked out. You need to relax man. If you rhink someone would even come into this project without sourcecode and be able to do half the stuff these guys have done i think you may be in for a rude awaking. Ive been with this game since 2003 long past the expiration of this game. It shouldnt still exist but it does thanks to dedicated people who love this game. Lets not ruin that over some petty arguing. Have you even looked at the source that korath has given out. I remember the original source as i have supplied it a few times. It is gobbledygook to me. Even the original coder did alot of hacks and when he came back he said that we should find and name all the routines and subroutines and everything we could before even moving on from the 2000 card limit. We have gotten alot farther than ever now. Ill ask you again do you have C and ASM coding experience. If you did i think you would understand some of koraths decisions in what to fix and how to fix. Im not trying to start a fight im trying to get you to understand that this game is going to take time to get eight especially with a computer player that is suppoed to play as smart as you a human.

[Tomislav777]

And now Korath deleted all of his archives, thank you very much for your "contribution" Lujo, i hope that you happy now! Why? Because you think you are smarter and that certainly did not show in any way, neither you something contributed to this mode you mo**n? Because he did not want to fulfill your demands? Very smart you fu***ng re**rd! This is a mod for the game and I do not think Korath violating someone's copyrights! This is my first post, although I visit this forum every day for the last 10 years, today is the first time that I wanted to express my opinion, after this admin. is free to delete my account, I do not care, the best mode of my favorite game is destroyed because of some low life scum!

[Aswan jaguar]

Hello Lujo,

I don't know what's going on, but you are not making sense in context of this topic.

Therefore I've banned you for two weeks.

Huggybaby,thanks for looking into this.Unfortunately, Korath was greatly offended as anyone of us would be, by the abusive language and vulgar characterisations made to him to the point to delete all his contributions.Unfortunately I don't know if there is anything we can do about this but please consider to delete all these abusive posts that offended Korath so much.I don't think it's material to be read by people anyway.In fact I was one click away of deleting lujo's first post as he has used vulgar language against Korath in the past and that kind of language is something I really hate (I know shutting up somebody is not the way to go not a democratic way but nor is being extravagantly offensive). However I thought it is better to leave it to you to take care of this as you are moderating for many years with great success.
@Tomislav777 I know how much disappointed you are and believe the same will be at least hundred of people that love shandalar and thousands of them potentially if you see how many people have downloaded the ISO.However,please don't use abusive language and be civil.

[Goblin Hero]

Therefore I've banned you for two weeks.

Changed it to permanent ban. Such like things are not tolerated here. And I'm really thinking of mass deleting all his posts...

[Bog Wraith]

Therefore I've banned you for two weeks.

Changed it to permanent ban. Such like things are not tolerated here. And I'm really thinking of mass deleting all his posts...

I was going to suggest the same thing to Huggy. This kind of behaviour is not wanted or tolerated here. I don't know where all this anger came from, but it is unlike anything I've ever seen here before.

Oh BTW, his threat to go to WotC shows what his true character really is made of and that is a kind person I don't think any of us wants to have as a member! Also, if he thinks that WotC doesn't know about this place already, he's also not very bright either!

The tone & disrespect shown to Korath, OR ANYONE OF OUR MEMBERS by any other member is not going to be allowed here, so don't think it's because of Koraths abilities or value that this action was taken. This standard is held for all who participate here, regardless of involvement or number of posts written. This respect is implied for all who come to CCGHQ.

Period!

[Huggybaby]

Alright folks, we've done what we can so let's move past this aberration now. Let's remember and concentrate on all the good that we've done. Let's get back to having fun, and don't let a bad day ruin years of work, because that doesn't make sense.

Happy Holidays

[Rawky]

Changed it to permanent ban. Such like things are not tolerated here.

Good!

And I'm really thinking of mass deleting all his posts...

Please do! No sense in leaving his taint anywhere on this board.