So the AI still cheats...

Unknown

Doing Magneto tournament now. Come up against a 141 LThor, Black Panther, and 212 Magneto. I was completely dominating the board. Had Thor down under 2000hp, with the AI getting mostly environment matches, and a few red for Mags to spam. Then I get a Call of the Storm to the face out of no where (with 1 green match). Next turn, Battle Plan and Magnetic Translocation wipe out my Punisher and Spider-Man (with 2 purple matches only), and a containment breach, which WAS warranted. Luckily for me, my Magneto was able to win with only 214 hp left. Just amazed at how all the enemy mana came from no where...

Bowgentle

Citizen wrote:

Doing Magneto tournament now. Come up against a 141 LThor, Black Panther, and 212 Magneto. I was completely dominating the board. Had Thor down under 2000hp, with the AI getting mostly environment matches, and a few red for Mags to spam. Then I get a Call of the Storm to the face out of no where (with 1 green match). Next turn, Battle Plan and Magnetic Translocation wipe out my Punisher and Spider-Man (with 2 purple matches only), and a containment breach, which WAS warranted. Luckily for me, my Magneto was able to win with only 214 hp left. Just amazed at how all the enemy mana came from no where...

Well, guess the nerf didn't go far enough.
Now the AI gets mana out of thin air when you still use Spidey.

This is a sign. Repent. Let go of the Spider.

Unknown

Oh and it gets better. 2nd match after, another LThor CoS me 3 turns in a row. With out matching greens in between. First was was legit (7th round with 4 green matches), but no green matches in between. Wowie. Insta-loss.
Edit:
I'm seeing a pattern. LThor = insta-win?

OnesOwnGrief

Before yesterday I didn't notice this bug until Thor CotS my face in it of nowhere. Guess we wait to see when it's patched.

over_clocked

Are you sure you were following enemy AP levels closely, including cascades? I know it might be hard on mobile devices, but still. More than that, if they get enough AP to use during a cascade, the AP info won't be displayed while the abilities will be used; the updated AP info will only be shown after the dust settles down.
In all my playing time (soon to be 6 months) I have never seen the AI use an ability they didn't have AP for. I play on Steam so I always know the AI's exact AP levels barring cascades, but that's just laziness on the devs' part.

Edit: trust me, I am a F2P, got a maxed LT recently, not seeing a magical insta-win button anywhere.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Are you sure you were following enemy AP levels closely, including cascades? I know it might be hard on mobile devices, but still. More than that, if they get enough AP to use during a cascade, the AP info won't be displayed while the abilities will be used; the updated AP info will only be shown after the dust settles down.
In all my playing time (soon to be 6 months) I have never seen the AI use an ability they didn't have AP for. I play on Steam so I always know the AI's exact AP levels barring cascades, but that's just laziness on the devs' part.

Edit: trust me, I am a F2P, got a maxed LT recently, not seeing a magical insta-win button anywhere.

Yeah, I don't follow the exact numbers, but I DO notice every time a cascade falls which colors they're getting. I don't know the exact numbers, but believe me, it was not possible in either situation. Both were with in the first 8 rounds of the match.
Lol about LThor tho. =D

Kelbris

So you managed to do 6700 damage and the AI only got some EV and ~6 red in that amount of time?

Unknown

Kelbris wrote:

So you managed to do 6700 damage and the AI only got some EV and ~6 red in that amount of time?

What? I had LThor down under 2k by dropping CMags blue all over the place. 1St move was a 5xBlue, after that i just chained it. Took out almost all the green on the board and made a couple of yellow and purple matches for about 6 rounds, watched the enemy make I think 2 red matches, 3 environment, 1 yellow, and 1 purple through cascading, and a a few random ap through 1 4-tile match and 1 cascade on enemy mag's red. No where near enough to drop CotS, BattlePlan, and MT

over_clocked

Okay, if you believe this happens often, try to record your match or something :O

edit: forgot to ask: you weren't running Ares by any chance?..

Unknown

If I had to guess, I'd say OP was probably playing in jungle and all those environmental tiles got used to fuel powers. I've run into that before, where I've been lazy and not paying attention to env tiles and gotten hammered once the AI cashed in on the jungle power ( +5 AP to all colors ). If they had a few saved up, that could easily fuel a string of powers.

over_clocked

The current Magnetic Mayhem event doesn't have Desert/Jungle nodes... only Winter, Hi-Tech and Latveria.

Unknown

Since I'm using OBW, I always pay close attention to enemy AP. Steam version also helps showing APs in fullscreen at top left and right. And I have not come across this AI cheats thing yet.

Unknown

I've had the same thing happen to me. It's usually with green abilities, I don't know if that means something

Unknown

Sometimes it seems the AI has more AP than it ought to. I've experienced puzzlement at having more AP than expected. These could be a product of playing so much that we have an expectation of what AP levels should be and are suprised when expectations differ from reality.

It could be a bug. They could have coded a cheat. I think it's more likely the brain being suprised. I believe I am keeping track of AI but as I've tried to keep track of any discrepancies I find that keeping a close eye on opponent is more effort than I thought and I may not have been keeping as track so well.

Unknown

One thing I have noticed playing online (Steam) and Mobile is that the AI will not use powers when the have the AP. it holds on to it's attacks until a certain character (OBW) is in the front, and then Wham-O! I've been trying to watch for this more in mobile. It also will start firing off if one of it's team is dropped.

Unknown

Well quite frankly I am under impression that AI sometimes conjures mana. I recently had a game where in PVP LT summoned like 9 green to hit my team with his lightning turn 2, and next turn summoned full 14 for a repeat without any green tiles matched in between. LT seems like the one really using some additional resource most often.

Still it usually happens when AI is at low health or when I lack health packs to heal back full team. My recent most extreme case of the issue where I lost was an out of the blue combination of mags purple+LT green followed by mags purple that didn't deal damage+BP black on next turn.

I'm not talking about a lucky cascade because those just happen from time to time.

IamTheDanger

I also noticed that powers that cost us, DO NOT cost the AI.

Example, Human Torchs green powers cost 1 green AP every turn, but not for the AI. I noticed that it did the same damage EVERY TIME. And the AP amount stayed the same, unless it magically went up. So why doesn't it cost the AI if it costs us?

Unknown

This is happening! I'm solidly in the two star range but ever now and then I decide to take on one of the many Lthor teams my MMR throws at me. I have been CotS twice for 13 green AP followed up with a lightning strike for good measure. lol honestly as if I needed another reason to avoid PvP early on in events.

_RiO_

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

So why doesn't it cost the AI if it costs us?

Because the AI cheats.

I've seen it happen before with Ares throwing out Sunder while the enemy only had 9-of-10 yellow AP in stock. And that was at the start of the enemy turn, meaning no chance to use a match-3 to generate AP or to miss a match in an ocean of cascades. Also; PVP, so no goons present capable of generating AP and crucially; also no Hood present to auto-steal AP.

Seen it happen before that with OBW and Agressive Recon, as early as R48, iirc.

My current theory is that the game is intentionally set up to smuggle in small AP-cost reductions for the enemy when you've remained on a winning streak for too long. Certainly fits with the company's mentioned credo of keeping players second-guessing the system, catching them off-guard and instilling a feeling of insecurity/uncertainty.

Unknown

Confirmed in the Magneto tournament (Android)...

I whittled a team down to just Patch remaining and he The Best There Is one-shot one of my guys. Checked his red AP, 2 left, proceeded to actively deny red matches to his patch to win with my last-man-standing Patch...and he The Best There Is one-shots my Patch. 14 Red AP cast when he matched at most 4 from when I started denying.

_RiO_

Under-the-covers AP cost reduction is not the only way the AI cheats; just had an enemy Ares get 4 green AP out of a single match-3 in the TaT PvE event.