Among the many, many areas we’re adding to and polishing (this is a long-term game we’re planning to support for years to come) is improving the AI opponent. But what does ‘improving’ mean in this case? It’s an interesting question because in some ways we’re actually going to make the AI worse.

Huh?

Let me show you what I mean. Our AI plays like a human in that each turn it calculates how much damage its’ cards will do if it choose melee, psychic or ranged attack. It also looks at how much damage its’ opponents cards will do for each of those attacks, then chooses the attack with the best result (most damage done, least taken).

But if all of the attack choices are ‘bad’ (because the opponents’ cards are more powerful in every attack) the AI can currently ‘give up’ and resort to just Readying its cards instead of attacking.

Why

But why is this a problem, particularly with factions like Necrons, which benefit most from Readying? After all, the AI is making the ‘correct’ choice.

It comes down to the fact that this is a videogame, and if you really think about it, the AI’s job isn’t to beat you, it’s to give you a good battle.

Of course, we want the AI to do its best to win; Warhammer 40,000 and card game players both expect their tactical skill and deck building to be put to the test – otherwise what’s the point in playing? But above that, we also need to respect the players’ time, and ensure that each battle feels satisfying and isn’t dragging on because the AI has ‘given up’.

Solutions

So to fix this, we’re going to make the AI more aggressive – more focussed on the damage it will do, less on the damage it will receive.*

We’re also going to make it more aware of the fact that if its’ attacks kill an opposing card then that card will inflict no damage in retaliation. As a side effect, this means the AI will now understand that if its attack destroys the enemy Warlord it takes zero damage back, so it should definitely do that!

Finally, we’re going to allow the AI to reposition its cards when it deploys new ones to the battlefield, so you can expect it to take out your damaged cards as a priority.

Conclusion

These changes will roll out over the next couple of months, and we’ll call them out on the Facebook page.

What will be interesting for us, is watching how the win / lose statistics for the game change after the new AI comes online. Despite our current AI not being perfect, it does win quite a large percentage of games, so we’ll need to be careful that the new AI isn’t some Skynet style uber-opponent.

After all, as mentioned above, the AI’s job isn’t just to win games, it has to be beatable – its just that you’ll need to outsmart it, not simply have higher attack values than it.

If you have any feedback or suggestions on our AI, you can leave a comment, email [email protected] or visit our Facebook page.

Thanks,
Stu

* Rumours that the new, more aggressive AI chants ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ while making its attacks cannot be confirmed.