It goes both ways. Without exaggeration, I just had two games using a divine line up. One against a full mythic team that all the gems dropped my way and I cleaned house. The second was against a single legendary rock worm and it lasted two minutes because of chain combos followed by a cast followed by more combos followed by my turn with no good gem marches available.
It happens both ways but it is a lot more painful when you have to sit through the AI’s chains while doing nothing then it is to have the joy of just hulk smashing.
I really find it amazing that people need to invent conspiracy theories for a gem match game. What possible motivation would the devs have for rigging the AI to cheat? It doesn’t benefit them in the least.
This crazy theory could be tested on the console pre 1.85 patch. There was a bug in the Challenge mode on the console, to set the EXACT SAME board for each unique challenge. You could defiantly Win or loose based on… the choices you made in game. Shocking I know. The game is not pre determined.
I understand recall bias where it seems like the AI must be out to get me. [My office-mate states that this has nothing to do with recall bias … but my mental state - as he thinks I am crazy to be this addicted to this game.] But I play on both PC (Steam) and Console (Xbox) and I see a definite difference between the AI play between the two platforms.
On the PC, it feels much more fair and balanced between my ‘luck’ and the AI ‘luck’. Also, on the PC, the AI WILL typically perform matches in a predictible, consistent way.
Four and Five Way Matches:
PC – will always take the largest match available
Console – may have a four way available, but take the three way match (with then many times a four way drop from above)
Console – may have a five way available, but takes only the four way match
Skulls:
PC – will always take skulls secondary to 4/5 way matches - but will definitely match skulls when available
Console – will bypass skulls in many instances (yes, sometimes to our advantage); especially during the AI’s first turn. It appears the AI wishes to collect mana first.
Console – too many times it bypasses skulls, only to have skulls drop out of the sky
Extra turns:
PC – I have not seen an instance where the AI gets an extra turn and it did not perform 4/5 match
Console – an extra turn is awarded, yet 4 or 5 gems were not matched on the visible board
Console – I take a turn … AI takes four turns … I take a turn … AI takes four turns … lather; rinse; repeat
Multiple cascades:
PC – occurs equally for both user and AI
Console – favors AI much more than user (yes, again you will say this is bias)
YES I admit I have had some pleasant, lucky experiences on the console when everything seemed to go my way … and quickly admitted that. But I have had way more experiences on the console where I wish to throw my controller at the television screen and yet have never had that same exasperation when playing on the PC.
Call it what you may; BUT there is definitely a difference between the PC and Console when it comes to AI game play.
The biggest difference is having the AI Combo Breaker always off now. Makes Arena practically unplayable, and it’s absolutely frustrating to lose a match while you are far ahead because the AI DECIDES it’s going to win and gives itself an endless cascade/combo.
To claim it’s random is a blatant lie and insulting to my intelligence.
This game is fast becoming unplayable for me. The flat-out cheating the AI does just to break a streak of wins sucks literally ALL of the fun out of it.
All this complaining about the A.I. RNG makes me wonder how bad it is. I normally play with a strong control team and limit the AI to a few turns per battle. So there is no need to worry about what is going on in the right pane. .
It’s true that a strong control team can mitigate the game’s RNG being, well, RNG. I tend to play control teams because I hate feeling out of control. In @TaliaParks 's case above, he was referring to Arena, where you don’t get to pick.
Frustrations aside, there’s really nothing the dev team can do either way to prove the absence or presence of any foul play short of providing the source code and having you compile it yourself (and even then you could accuse the compiler or language runtime of injecting bias ;))
I try and play as much of a control game as possible as well to mitigate the AI’s “luck”.
Arena is the worst example though, you don’t get to pick and the teams are so evenly matched that even a small cascade can cripple you. I have resorted to (in Arena) making a team and if it’s not “uber”, immediately retire it and try again.
Arena is so unplayable, it’s only touched to clear Tasks, so it’s worth spending 3,000-10,000 Gold using my method.
What I feel I can say, without violating the Terms of Service, is;
Colours seem to have an “opposite”, where your Banner colour will make it’s opposite drop a little more and your Banner colour to drop a little less (about 1% per bonus, which means 2% if you use a +2 Banner).
To be fair, I believe this to be a balance feature where you may get less matches, but they are worth more.
The opposites are; Red-Blue, Yellow-Purple & Green-Brown
I don’t understand why posting data would violate the ToS. I’ve done it for data collected on tributes, and it wound up uncovering a bug in how kingdoms were selected for tribute.
If you aren’t reverse-engineering the source code, but just collecting samples of what appears on your screen, I don’t see where the problem might be.
- as he thinks I am crazy to be this addicted to this game.] But I play on both PC (Steam) and Console (Xbox) and I see a definite difference between the AI play between the two platforms.
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