Collecting Data on Player / A.I. cascades

Unknown

I think the point of the posting was missed by a lot of people. I am not trying to "prove" anything. I am simply giving numbers based on my experience. The main thing I learned from this experiment is that the way I (me the guy doing the experiment) play with this team. The AI gets way more cascades than me. I felt the need to share that. You are correct, I could go into the prologue and play 1000 games against the AI and get better control data, but no, just no. Not me no thanks. I obviously need to change my play style so that I get more cascades and if there is a guide to this please let me know.

aesthetocyst

traedoril wrote:

I think the point of the posting was missed by a lot of people. I am not trying to "prove" anything. I am simply giving numbers based on my experience. The main thing I learned from this experiment is that the way I (me the guy doing the experiment) play with this team. The AI gets way more cascades than me. I felt the need to share that. You are correct, I could go into the prologue and play 1000 games against the AI and get better control data, but no, just no. Not me no thanks. I obviously need to change my play style so that I get more cascades and if there is a guide to this please let me know.

Ah, sorry. Based on the OP, my question about it, and your reply, I thought you were trying to demonstrate some health pack related influence on RNG. Going back and re-reading, I still got that impression. Maybe add your desire to cause more cascades to the OP? If I am blind here, I apologize.

Off the top of my head, with Thor, save red and yellow AP to spam red 3x and later spam yellow 2x. May not make more cascades, but flooding the board makes chance of any cascade more likely, larger cascade more likely, and larger AP hauls more likely.

After that, it's all about specifics regarding moving tiles. Beyond favor moves at the bottom of the board, scanning from top to bottom for plinko-style chain reactions just waiting to happen, and then failing that, favoring vertical matches that drop a tile right into place, I got nothing

Malcrof

traedoril wrote:

I think the point of the posting was missed by a lot of people. I am not trying to "prove" anything. I am simply giving numbers based on my experience. The main thing I learned from this experiment is that the way I (me the guy doing the experiment) play with this team. The AI gets way more cascades than me. I felt the need to share that. You are correct, I could go into the prologue and play 1000 games against the AI and get better control data, but no, just no. Not me no thanks. I obviously need to change my play style so that I get more cascades and if there is a guide to this please let me know.

There are actually times where AI cascades can be of benefit. I will intentionally leave 4 matches when using loki for instance, and have had it cascade to the point where there were 15+ mischief tiles on the board.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

traedoril wrote:

I think the point of the posting was missed by a lot of people. I am not trying to "prove" anything. I am simply giving numbers based on my experience. The main thing I learned from this experiment is that the way I (me the guy doing the experiment) play with this team. The AI gets way more cascades than me. I felt the need to share that. You are correct, I could go into the prologue and play 1000 games against the AI and get better control data, but no, just no. Not me no thanks. I obviously need to change my play style so that I get more cascades and if there is a guide to this please let me know.

There are actually times where AI cascades can be of benefit. I will intentionally leave 4 matches when using loki for instance, and have had it cascade to the point where there were 15+ mischief tiles on the board.

Then I use Hood's black and laugh maniacally... mwahahahaha mwahahaha...

Buret0

daibar wrote:

If you have this scenario at the top:



do you take the yellow match to try for the critical?

This is what I'm talking about.

If you match the yellows, you have a 1/7 chance of getting a match 5. But if you miss, you are leaving the AI with a 2/7 chance of getting a match 5.

The most conservative move that you can make in that situation is to take the green to the left of the yellow and match it by swapping it with the yellow.

You leave the AI with a simple match three on yellow.

Unknown

Buret0 wrote:

daibar wrote:

If you have this scenario at the top:



do you take the yellow match to try for the critical?

This is what I'm talking about.

If you match the yellows, you have a 1/7 chance of getting a match 5. But if you miss, you are leaving the AI with a 2/7 chance of getting a match 5.

The most conservative move that you can make in that situation is to take the green to the left of the yellow and match it by swapping it with the yellow.

You leave the AI with a simple match three on yellow.

Your math is a little off. There are 343 possible drop combinations.

Of those, 50 would create a match-5 in your favor, compared to 72 possibilities that will set up the AI for a match-5, which is 14.5% in favor and 21.0% against. Depending on the board situation, it may be a smart bet to take the chance

Edit: Fixed the math

optimiza

I commend the OP for tallying this as well, but unfortunately the results don't tell us anything about the topic at hand. You would have to control for this very carefully by doing a few main things:

1. No power usage from either side that shuffles the board or stuns teams. So basically you can't use, say, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, or Venom on your team. The other team also can't be composed of anything except Sentry Flyer x3. This ensures that each side gets the same number of moves.

2. You would need to painstakingly record which moves were made every match. It's known that the farther down the move is (7th or 8th rows) the more likely you would be to make a cascade. Also, vertical matches make more cascades than horizontal matches. If you only made matches at the top rows you would of course end up on the short end of the stick over a long enough period of time.

3. The definition of a cascade is something I would agree with, 4x matches. However, is a match 5 into 2 other matches plus one other match a cascade since it results in four matches?

Unfortunately, no one is going to do these experiments in a game setting so we'll have to take the devs at their word that the tiles are random. My experiences have been consistent with this. Now my MN Mags Magnetic Flux tile placement on the other hand...

Lidolas

I'm curious if you tracked the level or difficulty of the matches with the cascades. I always seem to get more cascades in Trivial matches than I do in any others, even though they don't last as long. I've always chalked it up to confirmation bias, but a small voice in my head keeps saying otherwise

Unknown

Lidolas wrote:

I'm curious if you tracked the level or difficulty of the matches with the cascades. I always seem to get more cascades in Trivial matches than I do in any others, even though they don't last as long. I've always chalked it up to confirmation bias, but a small voice in my head keeps saying otherwise

I am not a big pve player. Most of these matches were done in PvP during events (I have min requirements for pvp not pve, so with a job, wife and kids there is only so much I can do).

Buret0

Edit: moved the bulk of the math to my next post.

The only way to get the match 5 after matching the three yellows is to have a green tile fall perfectly into place (or have three blacks fall, which has a 0.29% chance of happening).

There is a 1/7 chance of a green falling into place, assuming that the odds of dropping any of the 7 tiles are equal.

If you miss, there is a 1/7 chance that the green ends up in the position above the match 5 and a 1/7 chance that the green lands in the position below the match 5.

However, since there is a 1/7 chance that you will drop a black into the position being vacated by the swapped yellow/black combination, that would also wreck the opportunity for your opponent to get the match 5.

Hitting three in a row will give you another set of drops:





Hitting three in a row blacks would lead to a match five:





Which would lead to a match four on the third row with the crit (and possibly an L shaped match six):





(the web tiles were the unknown drops)

But all of those scenarios are highly unlikely.

The basic math still says that there is a 1/7 chance of you getting the green to drop in the right spot and a 1/7 chance of getting a black to land at the bottom to destroy the line of matched greens. If you miss, there is essentially a 2/7 chance of the AI getting a match 5 because the green can be in either the top or the bottom of the row.

PeterGibbons316

The AI will likely get more cascades than you, but not because the game is rigged against you, because the AI plays poorly. Most people will always take a match-5 when given the opportunity, but the AI will always match-4 instead, which will generate more cascades. Most players will often skip over a match-4 in favor of a preferred color where the AI will always take the match-4......again, more cascades.

If you still think the AI is crushing you with unfair cascades.....then learn to play better. Seriously, think beyond your current match with all the tiles on the board and understand both what tiles will fall where, and what possibilities you open yourself up to with unknown tiles by making certain matches.

For example: when facing a boosted Juggs I will often make sub-optimal matches to avoid even the possibility of a red tile falling into place that might give the enemy a red match.

Buret0

papa07 wrote:

Your math is a little off. There are 343 possible drop combinations.

Okay, so I spreadsheeted the data to see where you were coming from.

There are 343 possible drop combinations. 49 give you a match five on the green. One of those would actually be a match 7 (three greens drop). There are an additional 5/343 combinations that give you a "spin again" (three of the same color in blue, purple, red, yellow, or TU).

49 give you a match three on Black. 1 gives you a match five on Black.

That leaves 239 combinations out of 343 that are not going to give you a match.

So looking only at the remaining combinations, there are 72 that will give the AI an automatic match 5 (78, but 6 of those were a in the top row and a in the bottom row, which would null the possibility of a match 5).

So the AI will always have a better chance of matching five in this situation than you. I read this as ~21% chance of the AI getting a match 5 and a 14.6% chance of the player getting a match 5.

At this point, you need to weigh the risk of how badly you want black or green AP before offering it to the AI.

Edit:

Essentially, if you hit any of the 104/343 good drops (30% chance) that's great. But if you miss (70% of missing), there are 72/239 combinations that will give the AI a match 5 (30% chance again) on the drop.

If you tell someone that making that move gives the AI a 70% chance to have a 30% chance to make a match 5, is that like how Sex Panther has a 60% chance of having a 100% chance of getting you laid?

Unknown

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

The AI will likely get more cascades than you, but not because the game is rigged against you, because the AI plays poorly. Most people will always take a match-5 when given the opportunity, but the AI will always match-4 instead, which will generate more cascades. Most players will often skip over a match-4 in favor of a preferred color where the AI will always take the match-4......again, more cascades.

If you still think the AI is crushing you with unfair cascades.....then learn to play better. Seriously, think beyond your current match with all the tiles on the board and understand both what tiles will fall where, and what possibilities you open yourself up to with unknown tiles by making certain matches.

For example: when facing a boosted Juggs I will often make sub-optimal matches to avoid even the possibility of a red tile falling into place that might give the enemy a red match.

That's incredibly condescending. I had some really, really nasty boards yesterday during Deadpool. At least 5 matches where AI got turn 1 monster cascades. Watching Thor go from full to 1k at the start of a match (just one example) and having the rest of the team come out with near 0 health was anything but fun. Other matches they'd wipe my entire team within the first 5 matches with cascade after cascade every turn, even if I tried to lock down the board to make it less volatile. Or the last-call cascades it kept giving the A.I. other matches where I'd successfully deny AP, but despite that it would give them miracle cascades from match 3's near the top (statistically unlikely) because I was either about to win the match or about to start firing off strong powers, and often wiping my whole team from full to 0 in one turn (or the next couple turns, since tile generation weighting algorithms readjust in the enemy team's favor once you've lost a hero). I had other matches yesterday where nearly every match generated a cascade (also statistically unlikely), admittedly sometimes in my favor, but more often in the favor of the A.I..

Thankfully, it's been somewhat better today, as no events are ending soon, but just telling people they don't know how to play, especially people who've played the game for quite a long while, doesn't really contribute anything to the conversation.

Buret0

aesthetocyst wrote:

Buret, Papa .... you guys are really making me wonder ... what does the rest of that board look like?

It's all Ultron Bombs.

PeterGibbons316

theHappyDance wrote:

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

The AI will likely get more cascades than you, but not because the game is rigged against you, because the AI plays poorly. Most people will always take a match-5 when given the opportunity, but the AI will always match-4 instead, which will generate more cascades. Most players will often skip over a match-4 in favor of a preferred color where the AI will always take the match-4......again, more cascades.

If you still think the AI is crushing you with unfair cascades.....then learn to play better. Seriously, think beyond your current match with all the tiles on the board and understand both what tiles will fall where, and what possibilities you open yourself up to with unknown tiles by making certain matches.

For example: when facing a boosted Juggs I will often make sub-optimal matches to avoid even the possibility of a red tile falling into place that might give the enemy a red match.

That's incredibly condescending. I had some really, really nasty boards yesterday during Deadpool. At least 5 matches where AI got turn 1 monster cascades. Watching Thor go from full to 1k at the start of a match (just one example) and having the rest of the team come out with near 0 health was anything but fun. Other matches they'd wipe my entire team within the first 5 matches with cascade after cascade every turn, even if I tried to lock down the board to make it less volatile. Or the last-call cascades it kept giving the A.I. other matches where I'd successfully deny AP, but despite that it would give them miracle cascades from match 3's near the top (statistically unlikely) because I was either about to win the match or about to start firing off strong powers, and often wiping my whole team from full to 0 in one turn (or the next couple turns, since tile generation weighting algorithms readjust in the enemy team's favor once you've lost a hero). I had other matches yesterday where nearly every match generated a cascade (also statistically unlikely), admittedly sometimes in my favor, but more often in the favor of the A.I..

Thankfully, it's been somewhat better today, as no events are ending soon, but just telling people they don't know how to play, especially people who've played the game for quite a long while, doesn't really contribute anything to the conversation.

I wasn't being condescending, I was trying to be helpful. I'll say it again - the game isn't out to get you, it isn't giving the AI unfair cascades to spite you, it's completely random. There is no tile generating algorithm doing anything in anyone's favor. If you are constantly getting wiped by cascades then you are incredibly unlucky, or incredibly bad at the game. Almost any cascade that starts with multiple matches of known tiles is your fault, because it's something you should have seen coming, and can almost always avoid.

Have you ever watched the AI play this game? It's anything but rigged. They are constantly making bad matches that don't make sense, they rarely match-5, they don't prioritize colors or understand the concept of saving up AP for multiple abilities or nukes. Trust me, if there was going to be any time spent on code to rig the game against you it would be spent on making the AI play more optimally, not on some phantom "tile generation weighting algorithm."

Sickboy254698

Never ever skip a match four unless you have Loki and its a setup or the three you will get are going to end the match.

I agree there some serious cascade **** with the AI. However, I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to match 3 games. There is a system that almost all of them follow. Certain moves at the right time will cause a cascade a large percentage of the time and/or will cause the game to drop tiles that macth as the board fills back up.

There really isn't a science to this. I would say it works about 70% of the time. One of moves you should never pass up when trying to create cascades is a match 4. Another example would be 2 green tiles a blue tile and a green tile laid out horizontally on the board. If there is a vertical match three below the blue tile there is a very good chance of a green tile dropping to match all four greens if you make that vertical move.

Another would be a pink tile, black tile, pink tile, two black in a vertical column at the top with no tiles above the pink. If you move the black to match it to the other two the pair of pink will most likely get another pink tile dropped on top of them.

I have a mediocre roster at best. I skipped the two star transition and I waste ISO on stupid ****. I only have two maxed three stars and 5 or 6 more between lvl 120 and 150. But I get top ten any time I want. I used to get top ten with Ares and OBW. I did that by playing this as a match game and not worrying about firing off powers. I just played the way I would play Bejeweled and I lose about 1 out of 50.

Unknown

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

I wasn't being condescending, I was trying to be helpful. I'll say it again - the game isn't out to get you, it isn't giving the AI unfair cascades to spite you, it's completely random. There is no tile generating algorithm doing anything in anyone's favor. If you are constantly getting wiped by cascades then you are incredibly unlucky, or incredibly bad at the game. Almost any cascade that starts with multiple matches of known tiles is your fault, because it's something you should have seen coming, and can almost always avoid.

Have you ever watched the AI play this game? It's anything but rigged. They are constantly making bad matches that don't make sense, they rarely match-5, they don't prioritize colors or understand the concept of saving up AP for multiple abilities or nukes. Trust me, if there was going to be any time spent on code to rig the game against you it would be spent on making the AI play more optimally, not on some phantom "tile generation weighting algorithm."

This is downright wrong. My experience is the game adjusts to your play style to ensure "hard matches" (but in reality damage taken), which would be fine except for the fact that placement is usually an issue and health packs are an issue. In terms of the A.I. I'll disagree. Maybe if you play like ****, it plays like ****, but my experience is inconsistent with yours. I find that it almost always stores AP to unleash powers on my weak characters if I don't force it to unload on stronger characters by making suboptimal matches (risky), and that it does in fact store AP to fire off chains. And the biggest problem I have is with the A.I. getting miracle cascades that start from the TOP, which shouldn't be statistically possible as often as it's been happening lately.

In terms of your claim of being able to avoid cascades, this is pretty asinine. I'm sorry, but it is. Board volatility increases the greater the level differential (VERY easy to test - just go into prologue), so even if you play the cascade denial game, there's a fairly strong possibility they'll get random cascades that will destroy you when you're facing severely over-scaled nodes, if they don't just take you down with match damage. It has nothing to do with how you play, but with longer matches and increased influence of random cascades, and increased board volatility. The only option is to try and use boosts and team-ups to shorten matches enough and hope the cascades they get are more minor. And to use health packs as much as possible, without sacrificing the ability to keep playing.

The primary element of survivability in this game is your level as compared to the level of the enemies you're facing. You need to be good at the game too, but that almost becomes irrelevant with super scaling. The board isn't simply titled in the A.I.'s favor, it's pushed perpendicular to the ground. Once you hit 300+ enemies, no team you field that doesn't contain boosted characters will have very high survivability, no matter what you do. It WILL give the A.I. cascade after favorable cascade and wipe you in several turns. Which admittedly is a separate issue from it cheating in normal matches to ensure health pack usage. It wouldn't be as much of a problem were there no health pack system that prevented you from retrying matches.

Lately, I've been having no fun in PvP due to boosted characters (actually stopped playing completely last season and not sure I'll bother at all this one), and scaling in PvE is starting to get at me, along with the grind. Maybe it's time to quit again. I don't know. In this game you either have to spend extreme amounts of time and/or money to advance at all. I'm starting to get to that point where it's no longer worth the slog. The health pack system and the artificial scarcity and the poorly designed PvP just aren't fun. And have never been fun. Collecting covers and having challenging matches is fun, but it discourages you from actually playing challenging matches, except that they've increasingly changed it to "force" you to be challenged, but that challenge usually is just super-scaled enemies with cascade madness, A.I. that outright cheats whenever you start doing too well, and have never compensated by getting rid of the useless health pack system and the mostly useless competitive elements that most players have zero interest in. This is how I've been feeling lately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GGMN-RoMo4

The effort / reward equation in this game is just far out of line with reality.

PeterGibbons316

Sickboy254698 wrote:

Never ever skip a match four unless you have Loki and its a setup or the three you will get are going to end the match.

I agree there some serious cascade **** with the AI. However, I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to match 3 games. There is a system that almost all of them follow. Certain moves at the right time will cause a cascade a large percentage of the time and/or will cause the game to drop tiles that macth as the board fills back up.

There really isn't a science to this. I would say it works about 70% of the time. One of moves you should never pass up when trying to create cascades is a match 4. Another example would be 2 green tiles a blue tile and a green tile laid out horizontally on the board. If there is a vertical match three below the blue tile there is a very good chance of a green tile dropping to match all four greens if you make that vertical move.

Another would be a pink tile, black tile, pink tile, two black in a vertical column at the top with no tiles above the pink. If you move the black to match it to the other two the pair of pink will most likely get another pink tile dropped on top of them.

I have a mediocre roster at best. I skipped the two star transition and I waste ISO on stupid ****. I only have two maxed three stars and 5 or 6 more between lvl 120 and 150. But I get top ten any time I want. I used to get top ten with Ares and OBW. I did that by playing this as a match game and not worrying about firing off powers. I just played the way I would play Bejeweled and I lose about 1 out of 50.

No. Just no. There is no science to this because it doesn't exist. It's random.

There are plenty of instances where you should skip a match-4:










Match those reds and give the enemy an extra turn and 10 green AP. No thanks. In fact, in this scenario it is better to take the black match at the top and let the AI make the red match giving you those 2 green match-5s.

Here is a slightly tougher one:










The green match-4 on the right is bad, the red is decent as it would break up the green, but the better play is to match the 3 greens on the bottom row cascading a yellow, purple match-4, red, and green match.

Unknown

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

Here is a slightly tougher one:










The green match-4 on the right is bad, the red is decent as it would break up the green, but the better play is to match the 3 greens on the bottom row cascading a yellow, purple match-4, red, and green match.

Would have gone with the bottom horizontal yellow, cascades into:
=> purple match 4, red match 3, 2 X green match 3
=> red match 4
also breaking up the match 4 on the right, and the red match 4 top left.

TLCstormz

All I know is that in the PvE before Gauntlet, the AI was getting Match5, after Match5, after Match5. I literally was in shock, most matches. Like.......3 or 4 Match5s in a row, on one town.

If my phone's screen goes into lock mode, it means that it's been idle for at least 20 seconds. That SHOULD NOT be happening several times in ONE match against a non human player, in a puzzle game. lol.

Period.