AI cascades

JonJohns

I have been frustrated for some ti.e on how it seems the AI seems to be pre-cognizant of the gems that are about to appear. I've looked through the threads that all mention this issue. I do understand there is a discrepancy between our perception of a situation and how the situation truly is. I don't particularly care for the fact that my AI opponent seems to get longer cascade chains than I have. I don't know if that is the case or just my flawed perception. What I can report as true is that I have routinely seem my AI opponent skip a four gem or five gem match to select a three gem match that leads into a long cascade chain that fills most of the mana requirements for the cards in hand. If the AI is programmed to make four gem matches over three, why would the AI skip a five gem match for a three?  Also, a five gem match gives you another attempt to make a match. I'm not jumping o  the bandwagon saying it's intentional. What I am saying is there is an issue somewhere that allows, permits, or otherwise gives the AI an unfair advantage over players. It makes for unpleasant game play and turns me away from spending any money on this game. I may as well light my hard-earned cash on fire if I'm paying to get cheated. At least as a freeplay puzzle quest player, I'm not out that money

Tremayne

@JonJohns - welcome to the forum.

To answer your question, been there, done that, lost the match. I truly get the frustration when loosing to a deck that is definitely not a winning deck. I have challenged the randomness of MTGPQ several times and gotten nowhere. Oktagon will not comment on this issue, no matter what. So don’t expect an official answer.

Secondly, there seems to be at least two kinds of opponents (Greg = dumb and Manuel (I think) = clever) that has been confirmed by Oktagon. So I’m quite sure that sometimes you’ll see dumb moves by Greg. I reckon the Greg’s rules for selecting a match has a clause stating that in 1/5 cases, he’ll choose a suboptimal match.

Thirdly, we have the cascade situation. Over the years, I have gotten the impression that there are also two kinds of cascade settings. Because sometimes the number of cascades are insane. It might just be randomness at work, but when an opponent gets 25-40 mana on several turns, it seems suspicious.

When combining the above you end up with a situation where a dumb move (choosing a match-3 over a match-5) results in a random extra match and sometimes that continues into a cascade, which may or may not cost you the match. That is unbelievably frustrating, but that is the nature MTGPQ. If you can’t live with that, don’t expect MTGPQ to be anything for you in the long run.