So, about the "Expert" AI
http://imgur.com/SYxbH2h http://imgur.com/TnWIa3C i would understand this on normal bots but...
Posted Apr 22, 2014, 11:04 AM UTC
96105
I hope curse of nax has slightly better AI rather than just unbalanced cards or hero powers.
78
4/4 minions every turn, they all hit your unsilenced Ancient Watcher.
47
Well I've had people in ranked kill my unactivated watcher. Even I've done it before.
Of course the was a reason for that other than "it was there".
12
If someone plays it in constructed they will have multiple ways to activate it. If you can deal with it efficiently like trading 1 for 1 or 1 for 0 always kill ancient watchers
22
That line of thinking is why I run watchers with nothing to activate them.
36
Depends on what class and what turn. Sometimes you feel you should kill it now before a mark of the wild comes on it and you can't trade efficiently any more.
There's also the idea that warlocks are known to shadowflame them the next turn in some cases.
1
i have been under a rock in regards to heartstone recently(not been playing) is that the adventure more name?
5
The first adventure we get to play in adventure mode will be Naxxramas, yes. Classic old World of Warcraft raid dungeon.
5
also WotLK World of Warcraft raid
1
oh i remember Naxoramas
-11
Yes
3
they are delaying that mode for a lot, we first heard of adventure mode last year, so we can hope they have it perfect on launch
1
They never said anything else but it's coming some day, so no delays this far since it was just officially revealed.
1
I hope so too.
0
Hey, Northshire clerics need to follow the rules too, no exceptions.
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[deleted]
9
Except for the Sunwalker next to it. Being a paladin, it gets to stay at 4/2.
4
Trying to set up the brilliant 'get down!' play.
12
Made less brilliant by the fact that if the priest has any sense, it'll heal the Sunwalker at the start of the next turn for the card draw. Unless there's something worth mind controlling behind those cards, I suppose.
1
I was playing the AI the other day (expert no less), and he Mind Control'd my Auchenai Soulpriest and apparently this blew his robot mind. He proceeded to "heal" his minions as if nothing had changed.
Just when you think the AI might actually beat you...
51
I took control of a friend's Auchenai and, having planned to heal myself, shadowform, attack my friend, accidentally wound up doing two damage to us both. I don't have any Auchenais of my own so it somehow failed to compute that I was going to put myself within lethal range of the Repairbot that was killing both of us.
3
Of course it's an expert. The AI has a degree in Dennisology.
27
I wish we could give the AI a deck we created so we could practice particular match ups. Well, that and try to make them not suck.
10
Unless you can teach the AI combos, it's not going to be much help.
6
They just need to script the AI for all this stuff and it could be really good.
1
Give em a miracle rogue deck! lolz ensue
2
I can see turn 5 now, Gadgetzan Auctioneer and that's it while I have 4 attack on the board.
5
What matchups are you having trouble with? I could play against you if you wanted.
1
Not really having trouble, it's just that sometime I like to make decks then I wonder how it would handle against other popular decks in the meta, like Hunter or Zoo.
The last thing I want to do is lose a bunch of rank just to realize that my absurd creation is... well.. terrible.
1
thats what casual mode is for
0
It's better than it used to be. Taunt up a giant and you didn't even have to attack as the Rogue domes herself against your giant wall of rock again and again.
9
"I just need to hit this 8/8 8 times to kill it, this hero power is OP!" dies
6
He misclicked.
4
Let's take a moment to consider how much time Blizzard allocated to creating an AI for a game where almost no one plays against the AI for more than a couple hours.
Priorities well chosen, imo.
3
almost no one plays against the AI for more than a couple hours.
...but those first hours happen at the very beginning when players are trying to learn how the game works.
(The fastest fix would be to yank the Expert AI out of the game completely and replace it with a handful of videos of Trump or other such webcaster playing a few sample games and explaining the reasoning behind each move.)
5
...but those first hours happen at the very beginning when players are trying to learn how the game works.
At which point they might learn faster if the AI makes mistakes, as players can spot them and learn not to do that. These two plays were remarkably bad, but in general it's just small things.
4
Yeah, there's quite a bit to learn from watching the AI screw things up. Would be nice if the game pointed it out, but it's rare for any game company to put a 'we screwed this up' sign on their own work.
1
Let's take a moment to consider how much time Blizzard allocated to creating an AI for a game where almost no one plays against the AI for more than a couple hours. Also, what's this "Adventure" thing everyone keeps talking about? Eh, I'm sure it's nothing.
1
Was playing the Druid expert AI the other day. He innervated Hero Power when he had 4 mana left, with no follow-up.
3
If you want expert AI play ranked.
3
Value Slum
2
I think its cuz the AI has a list of cards it considers high and low priority. Thats why the AI wastes some big removal on something as small as a raid leader or completely ignores taunt on an ancient watcher.
2
I'm a casual player and even I find the Expert AI to be lacking at times, but for the most part it got me good enough to feel comfortable going up against actual players. I think that's the only reason it's there in the first place. Bliz wants you to play against others, not the AI. (I believe)
2
Give the AI some legendaries! Poor thing.
1
I actually think that giving each Expert AI deck its class legendary would be a good thing.
3
Give all Expert AIs Millhouse Manastorm.
5
It could also hopefully teach people not to freak out if they see a legendary.
4
In the pic it shows the cleric as a 1/1...isn't she a 1/3?
1
Not if it was summoned into a Redemption or got hit by Equality. The opponent is a paladin. You're right that it's normally a 1/3, though.
7
Redemption puts the minion at one health, it doesn't change their max health. It activates enrages.
1
He probably meant Repentence.
1
Equality. He's playing vs a paladin.
1
probably repentanced
1
Derp
0
Expert AI means they have cards like Aldor Peacekeaper, not that they know how to use them. Unfortunately.
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[deleted]
0
He killed himself attacking a minion that couldn't hit hit him next turn.
6
The paladin had less than four health and died from attacking it, losing the game.
1
In the first shot, the AI can't win and is clearly committing sudoku. Very realistic
0†
Seppuku. . . >.>
-2†
TBH I think the Expert AI is called like that because it has access to the Expert card pool. It's probably the same AI with different decks.
A good AI would simulate all the different plays they could do and then evaluate the possible results with a good heuristic. Designing a good heuristic is the hardest part of writing such an AI. I wonder if the heuristic Blizzard uses has some major flaws or if they used a simpler approach to begin with.
To be honest, it's kinda hard to evaluate value gain on moves without taking into consideration your opponent's entire potential card pool - which can take time and resources serverside, and even then, it wouldn't really do 'advanced' stuff like playing cautiously turn 6 against Mage because of the Flamestrike threat. That's metagaming and it's not happening unless you shove it down the AI's throat the way chess openings are.
I agree basic behavior (like trading minions and such) could be improved a little though.
That's true if you want to have a really challenging AI that can go toe-to-toe with experienced players. But a relatively simple heuristic that takes apparent board value and both players' health into account, without considering potential future plays by the opponent, would probably already outperform the current AI by leaps and bounds.
Even for complicated turns with many different valid plays, it's not hard to put a limit on the number of analyzed plays. Once that limit is reached, the best move so far is selected.
Technically (to Chess programs do that (algorithm runs, checks out every possible play, attributes score based on criteria, picks highest scoring move when timer runs out), but it'd still be a BIT harder in Hearthstone because you can play several cards / attack several times a turn before passing.
I agree it's highly possible, just don't expect computers to play Miracle Rogue effectively anytime soon.
Honestly, I think they put very minimal effort into the AI. Which is all fine and dandy, seeing as a majority of players will only use the AI to unlock classes / maybe level to 10.
I do hope they get a better AI for the adventures.
I doubt the ai will be significantly improved, they will probably just have access to very powerful cards to compensate.
yeah, the Hero they showed off has a pretty good hero power. 1 mana deal 2 damage
I personally got the impression that the tutorial AIs were almost on a rail, I would not be surprised if the adventure AIs were similar.
It is impossible for them to be because you can customise your deck. You couldn't do that in the tutorial.
The AI might be limited by processing power, considering they need Heathstone to be able to be run on a tablet that probably limits how many calculations it can make without slowing the game down waiting on the AI to move.
The expert AI isn't supposed to be good. It's supposed to get you to the point you can beat it once and then you aren't supposed to play it any more.
I don't get how they programmed the AI honestly. I'm certainly no master at AI programming but I'm fairly certain I could do a better job at it. It seems to ignore the very foundations of AI programming like what you outlined. A simple start is to simply find a way to assign every play state a value of advantage, during a move try every single option possible and choose the one that will lead to the biggest advantage, if randomness is involved in an option then use the average.
It's not a perfect AI, but it's a start and it doesn't do bizarre things like that.
I'm sure it's something their pouring over with the development of single player adventure mode (that has pay-for options)
A more complex AI would burn up server resources. Server expenses >> AI play experience.
I dont think the AI even uses search trees ... it is probably a simple decision tree that uses minimal CPU and memory.
Enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves
This is exactly what I was going to say, the ai itself doesn't change they will always attack into everything even if it's a horrible trade and it makes no sense to do so, they even trade a minion they didn't need to to actively 2 for 1 themselves.