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I just got Magarena 1.21. I think it's great, but I'm having trouble determining how to "balance" the game for the best challenge. That doesn't mean just playing against the strongest possible deck with the strongest AI setting, that means a computer opponent as an "equal" so to speak.

So far I've tried the default settings, both players using 2 color decks, no edits, the cards drawn from the "all (1960 cards)" setting. I haven't experimented with Legacy or ubeefx or the premade decks--do those make for a more "even" duel?

What about the AI setting? Again I had the default minimax, on 6, then I changed it to 8. No discernible difference, I won easily both times and the comp made several decisions. What would be a stronger AI setting? A couple of them say "cheat" next to them--how is it the comp cheats using those settings?

Any suggestions?

Welcome to the forums Batman55.

I think the balance you want can be best achieved by experimenting with two premade (or self made) decks. Or try a duel where both you and the AI use the same deck. Mind that the AI is better with some decks than others.
The generated decks have a random element to them so the balance can vary. Best chances to get a balanced duel with generated decks is the ubeefx cube because those cards were picked especially for that purpose.

There's actually a wiki page with some comparisons between the different AI's and settings here:
AI Comparison.

As you can see there isn't much difference between MiniMax on 6 or 8.
Cheat means that the AI knows the cards you have in your hand. That makes it stronger but you may not like the idea (it's my prefered AI though)
Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has the advantage that it runs in a fixed amount of time, so MCTS on level 6 will always take 6 seconds 'thinking' time. I use it whenever a deck has cards that generate a lot of tokens because that can make the MiniMax AI take a long time to evaluate blocking options.

There is a deck strength tool that is great for finding a balanced match. It plays the two decks against each other an x amount of times and shows the win percentage. It's probably the fastest way to find a good match.

So I think there's not one group of settings that assures a good balance because there are too many variables involved. It's a matter of trying different settings and decks and even then you or the AI can have a bad draw, but that's part of the game.

Good luck!

Very informative, thanks!

The Minimax AI works best at level 6.
The cheating AI also knows about the cards in the library.
Not all games are won merely by skill, there is still some luck involved too.

thanks a lot, that's some great advice. the computer has beat me a few times since.

Suggestion: eventually you may want to design a "campaign mode" of sorts. it would feature about 10-20 computer opponents, most of them using specially made decks, increasing in difficulty. if you lose once, you lose completely. you should be able to design your own deck, but you won't be able to edit it once you start--excepting a sideboard of 15 cards. it would have the Vintage restrictions (only one Black Vise, for example) to prevent quick and easy wins. After beating certain opponents, you should be rewarded by either choosing cards from your opponent's deck to add to your sideboard, or by gaining access to powerful classic cards not usually found in Magarena.

A lot of this is similar to Microprose's MTG game from the late 90s, in particular "Shandalar." But my version, described above, is more balanced.

What do you folks think? Possible in a future version?

A campaign or tournament mode is something that has been suggested before and something I'd love to see. It's a matter of having the knowledge and time to implement such a thing. There's an issue on our list with one idea on what it could look like. I will add your idea to it so there's a list of possibilities when someone will start work on it. The issue can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/magarena/issues/detail?id=29

I don't expect this to happen any time soon to be honest but you never know...

Thanks for the suggestion.