MArcomage

Mojko posted in the AI thread about a possible "AI challenge" feature, where you would play against overpowered AIs for a gold reward (one-time, I think - not farmable). I've been working on a couple challenge AIs, but I've found that even if you give the AI a high starting advantage (high starting wall, tower, and/or facilities), it's still not really hard enough to beat. There are enough game-changing rares such as Return to the beginning or Order of the white lotus which can completely negate the AI's advantage. This makes beating the AI much less of a "challenge" - I think beating a challenge AI should take careful deck construction (picking cards that specifically counter the AI's strategy) and planning, not just one lucky draw.

Some possible ways to remedy this:
- Disallow the player from drawing rares in challenge mode (this would presumably apply to Scepter of Summoning, Illusion keyword, etc.)
- To win the challenge, the player must beat the AI in best 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 5, or must beat the AI a certain number of times in a row. This would lower the luck factor, but not take it away entirely.
- Give the AI lots of discarding cards and make it very aggressive about discarding rares (this is iffy).

I'm curious what people think about these options, or if you have any suggestions for other solutions. Also: anything in particular you want to see in challenge mode? Deck types you think would be interesting?

I would propose another one:

Beat the AI in 4-5 games in a row, where in each game you start with 5 wall and 5 tower less and like dindon suggested, play without rares.

Wow, that's harsh! Don't you think people would get frustrated though, if the AI can literally one-shot you in the first round?

I think that requiring a winning streak rather than a single game wouldn't so much remove the luck factor as to instead encourage bad luck.

Could you elaborate on that?

My thinking was that if your strategy relies on something flukey (like drawing one of a few specific rare cards), then you might have, say, a 20% chance of winning. The expected number of games needed to win once is 5, which isn't very much (hence, there isn't much of a challenge).

If you have a well-thought-out deck that wins consistently against the AI, with good commons and uncommons that counter the AI's strategy, then maybe you'll win 75% of the time, so the expected number of games to get a win becomes a bit less than 2.

Now imagine you have to win 3 games in a row. Now the expected number of tries for the first deck is on the order of hundreds, and the expected number of tries for the second deck is still less than 10.

Edit: I got a C in stats, but it turns out my estimates were basically right! I did a Monte Carlo simulation, and a deck that wins 20% of the time takes about 175 games to get a streak of 3, and a deck that wins 80% of the time takes 5 games. If you increase the streak length to 5, then the bad deck takes about 3000 tries and the good deck takes about 10. See what I mean about evening out the luck factor?

Two more ideas:

- lower player's starting resources/facilities
- disable playing rares in AI challenge mode

What I meant was that you're increasing the chances of failure due to the AI drawing the same kind of fluke.

Mojko wrote:
Two more ideas:

- lower player's starting resources/facilities
- disable playing rares in AI challenge mode

Rares are a good idea. But lowering facilities would make players not being able to play anything :P especially if they are gonna rely on Uncommons for high damage output. Perhaps though we can combine the two.
I.e. start with facilities = 2 or facilities = 1 and replace rare summoning with summoning University (+1 selected facility). That would make it easier.


@ dindon: yeah you are right. It is harsh. I had in mind the Tavern challenge of Might And Magic 8, where each tavern has harder AI and you start with lower wall + tower each time.
Perhaps we can remove the streak in my proposal and people should just win the 5 difficulty levels. The last one would be hard as hell (5 tower, 0 wall) :P

So, we have this implemented. I decided to allow playing of rare cards in this mode for now. Please let me know of you find AI challenges challenging or not ;-)

I have challenged the Captain and the Marquis (Alberto Sordi?) with a well balanced holy deck. They are both very strong. The Marquise should discard some cards every now and then so he can use Apocalyctic rain and kill the challenger.
You should add a "AI challenge" filter in the replay section and also in the player page.
Anyway it's really funny, I already hate them all.

Fithz wrote:
I have challenged the Captain and the Marquis (Alberto Sordi?) with a well balanced holy deck. They are both very strong. The Marquise should discard some cards every now and then so he can use Apocalyctic rain and kill the challenger.

I agree that sometimes the AI should discard a little more aggressively. I've been thinking about this for a while, but it's a slightly complicated matter. For example, certain deck types are much more crippled by junk cards than others. The Marquis will be at a big disadvantage if his hand has a bunch of Purified Ashes (because he relies on lots of undead support cards like Deathwood Shaman, Banshee, etc.

On the other hand, Sophie can pretty much shrug off junk cards, because she's not using keywords or support cards. If anything, junk commons help her out because they bolster Working Together.

Ideally, any AI "deck cleaning" mechanism would keep these considerations in mind.

Filthz wrote:
You should add a "AI challenge" filter in the replay section and also in the player page.

Agreed.

Filthz wrote:
Anyway it's really funny, I already hate them all.

That was definitely the goal :)

Dindon suggested that it would be a good idea to disallow playing of rare cards in AI challenge mode for player. Looking at some wins against challenge AI's the player usually wins by playing a gamechanger card, while exploiting that AI is unable to correctly handle such situation.

Do you think this change could improve AI challenges and force player to do a more creative deck building?

To my observations, winning against against AI in challenge mode is nothing but pure luck.
For example Le Marquis, his deck sucks, if he wouldn't summon those rare nature cards all the time. You need to have cleansing in your hand and use it on the first turn or you can't win.
Yes, you simply can't win because after the second round he will have played 1 uncommon nature and 1 common nature and summons 1 rare nature which will be 33% Apocalyptic Rain = you're dead, 33% All-elemental attack = you're maybe not dead right away, but after some turns when he's got enough resources, 33% some other rare nature which only delays your doom because he will summon one of the first two eventually.
I played against the other AI as well, but it's ridiculous. All just pure luck to have the right game changing card in your hand. If you don't, you're doomed and that's all there is to it.

Marquis is probably the weakest, it should have purified fire in his deck.
Aniway it's not just luck, you need to create a suitable deck to beat Grofgul or Sophie.
I just won against Grofgul but using a rare (implosion)
Capitan Demetrios seems weak against cheap direct tower attack cards, maybe he needs lookout tower in his deck

Yeah well it's obvious that you won't win against any of them with non agressive cards. Of course you have to use a holy deck against Marquis, and counter cards for all the others. But still you can't win if you don't have a game changing rare in your hand, which is completely clear since the starting conditions are against you always.

Thanks for feedback, I will be working on improving the challenges.

andi wrote:
Yeah well it's obvious that you won't win against any of them with non agressive cards.

When I was testing Grofgul, it was much easier to beat him by construction than destruction. This was under slightly different circumstances (long mode, no rares), but I wouldn't be surprised if he could still be beaten that way.

Sorry that the challenges aren't super-balanced in some cases. Just as I was about to go into full-on testing mode, my motherboard decided to die, and I was only able to fix it yesterday, by which time it was too late. :(

Finally, anyone who says the Marquis' deck sucks is clearly missing out on the flavour. Come on, it's so spooky! Swamps! Ents! Banshees! Unspeakable necronatural horrors!

Currently, the AI challenges are always played in long mode (after the change yesterday). I would like to wait for more feedback before I decide if the rares should be disabled or not.

Problem with Marquis is that even if I put Purified fire in his deck, he won't use it, because he doesn't understand the effect.

It seems that rares are already disabled?
Replay. Princess of elves giving nothing.

I suggest to replace Perfect shot with Lookout towers in Capitan Demetrios' deck.