unreactive AI & AI related problems

[charitruth]

Hi,
I don't know if this would help, but I keep encountering the same problem lots of times. Especially bc I like to play with maximum size libraries and as many different cards in them as possible.

What I discovered (sorry, no example in my head)is , that the AI starts the game fast and with relatively good moves. After breaking the normal play with a wrath or a powerful board-position, the AI slows down, makes bad moves or doesn't play anything at all.

At first I thought this is my slow computer and the AI takes more time to "think" when things get complicated.

But then I played some hand disruption spell and got rid of some really unimportant card. (a land or a duplicate thread or a mana acceleration artifact or something) and suddenly the game was fast and good again. So I concluded taht the AI sometimes has a hard time taking decisions that are nearly the same (i.e. "which of the two copies of wrath of god should I play"). And is sometiems overwhelmed by the board-status, it has no real strategy to break up. I realized, that even simple try-strategies like "playing a chump-block-creature an hoping for one more turn to draw an answer" or "expanding the manabase" or "draw extra cards for extra options or draw burn to race my opponent" are not even tried. Sometimes the AI has simple cards to regain better board-position in hand, but is too confused to play them. There's not even a try.

I think there are very big (presumably unnecessary) thinking-loops that somehow can't recurse back and result in "do nothing anymore". Or there is data on which the AI takes decisions that somehow gets corrupted/overwritten/mixed up or something like that - so that the AI decides on bad data/information and gets completely lost.

I hope this will help... If I encounter situations like that in the future I will keep track of the exact hand/board-state and post it.

[Shantak]

Has anyone tried what happens if AI becomes unreactive and you then save the game and then load it, possibly restarting Manalink before loading? That often works when AI freezes - maybe it could also make AI active again.

[foolosopher]

Tried to do this but when AI seems to be "thinking", the game won't even open the menu by right clicking the mouse and keeps on "thinking"
This with latest (April 2011) patch.