Combo-breaker.
I play only combo teams, so I find this thing terrible.
I think that boycotting combo team, equals to cheating.
Basically you are saying that you openly discourage the use of any combo team (This brings me back to the days when I used to play Magic the Gathering).
Basically you’re saying that if I do 5 rounds of Justice/Courage/…, but they’re not enough to win, there is a strong possibility of giving AI 4x and 5x ready to be concluded.
Which, actually, happens quite frequently to me, since my opponents are often stronger than me (my Kingdoms are not yet at maximum and my guild is not a top 10).
So, basically you arealso saying that the strongest players, in addition to being stronger, get an objective advantage, being able to conclude the combo in 5 rounds and getting even 4x and 5x matches ready to be completed if I’m faster to start the combo.
Honestly, this, in addition to the doubts I still have on the fact that the drops are completely random and unpiloted, and in addition to Devour / Resurrect percentages that seems strange and unfair, could be enough to make me stop playing.
Thank you. Now everything is clear.
Kind of…
And this has never been a secret - we announced it was in the code about 18 months ago when we added the feature (old forums unfortunately, so I can’t bring up a link here).
Here is how it works…
- If you’ve managed to generate 5 extra-turns WITH GEM-CREATION FROM SPELLS, without the enemy taking a turn, then it triggers the combo breaker.
- Next time you cast a spell (and the enemy has still not taken a turn) there is a 20% chance for it to avoid generating the gems into a position that makes a 4-5 match directly
- If you managed to get another extra turn, then the following turn it is 60%, then 40%, etc…
If you’re using a Guardian Team to perform long combos, I really think the double-colored gem creation will likely have sabotaged your turn before this combo-breaker ever kicks in most of the time. Would love to see a video of it reliably looping though, because I’ve never managed to get it work (reliably).
As for giving the AI’s 4 or 5 gem setups from Guardian Spells… I honestly think gem-spamming spells do this by their very nature, combo-breaker or not.
We heard this complaint a lot in the Puzzle Quest series… so we released the code to Galactrix and Puzzle Quest 2… script code where you could mod it and see it working in the game. Conclusion was: no cheating. I don’t know any more we could do than that ! You can still get those games on Steam… the code is zipped with them. I guarantee they’ll provide an equal amount of luck/unluck as Gems of War, and you can read that code and verify everything I’ve said. 30 years of game design reputation is staked on that!
In this thread, I’ve been extremely open about ANY time we tamper with the board in the game, and I’ve listed EVERY single occurrence. If we altered drops at ANY other stage, I would have mentioned it.
But when it comes right down to it… here’s a way to think about what we do… WE SELL FUN. Why would we be purposefully making folks have a bad time? If anybody REALLY believes that our goal is to cheat & lie to folks to get their money, I would submit that is not well-thought-through… We make money by making sure people have as good an experience as possible. Trying to frustrate you into spending by cheating would be a bad idea.
If we WANTED to frustrate you into spending, we’d actually just create an Energy System (3 games per hour kind of thing… pay for more). We’d make tons more money from that too (like most of our competitors!) But we’re just really gamers like you guys, and we just really want to make as good, as honest, and as fair a game as possible.
I started playing just two months ago and only recently I’ve started reading the fourm. 
[quote=“Sirrian, post:108, topic:20082”]
Here is how it works…
- If you’ve managed to generate 5 extra-turns WITH GEM-CREATION FROM SPELLS, without the enemy taking a turn, then it triggers the combo breaker.[/quote]
Mmmm… ok… I’ve a question (for clarity)… combo breaker triggers when you generate 5 extra turns, even if not consecutive, correct?
i.e. : Spell (1), spell (2), spell (3), 4 of a kind, spell (4), spell (5) → combo breaker triggers
Never told about spending but I’m a programmer too (former game designer)… and in my experience the companies aim to minimize the effort required. Put simply, it is easier and faster to “fix” the drops rather than creating a strong AI.
Anyway, indeed this seems to make sense. 
Correct, I believe. But when the enemy takes a turn, it definitely resets.
I don’t have the code in front of me at the moment (and it was a year and a half ago I wrote it, so I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the player can make a 4/5-match in between spell casts without resetting the combo breaker… the reason for which will be clear below!)
It was mainly put in place to stop EXTREMELY annoying AI teams, such as the rock worm teams that were used in a very early defense meta. It was possible that they could get into an infinite looping state, that would VERY slowly grind the enemy down to a loss over 10-15 spell casts, with extra 4-5 matches made in between. Humans never used it on offense much because it was slow, so we put in the combo-breaker, to give the human player a shot at counterplaying the team (while we worked on a design fix)
Indeed! I agree.
That’s why our difficulty settings simply increase the stats… it’s the simplest solution possible!
I think to most of us who have been involved in the GoW community for any length of time and especially those of us who have been long-time PuzzleQuest fans, this statement is very self-evident in so many different ways. I do, also, understand how players who haven’t had the luxury of this experience might not be inclined to assume it is so (especially considering how most F2P Devs seem to treat their players), so I think posts like yours are good and necessary every so often. Still, I hope you and your team know that even without you pointing it out, it comes through in so many different ways.
/end love-fest. Now where’s Guild Wars?
I’m sitting here working on it right now!
You really answered that? And then on top of that your answer was you are working on it right now? Wow. 
That’s 7 resurrections out of 11 deaths. With a 25% probability on each death, I think that comes out to about 0.0019%, or about 1 in every 52,000 battles you should expect that to happen. Given how much you play, that would be about once a week for you, so not that surprising, really… 
I haven’t seen any more extr lucky runs from AI than before. Am not sure Tribute statistics are correct though.
Nowayjoe2go
So, in a nutshell, it [the lucky computer runs] must be a bug…
There are no bugs Smuggler, only features.
What are bugs?
Your math is off, it’s about .006 which is under 1 in 200 for 7 regeneration at 11 kills at 25%
So just checking in… we looked at the codebase of consoles today… it appears it functions the same way as PC/Mobile with regards to limiting lucky AI drops on Normal Difficulty for Explore, Quests, Challenges & Casual PvP.
Also @GoldPhoenix0 has written up an awesome detailed description of the console AI for you guys which he will post here shortly.
I did fail to mention one think on the console AI that I wasn’t aware had been changed (more details in @GoldPhoenix0 's post)… this is just a TL;DR for that bit.
The console is getting new spellcasting AI… it’s not complete yet, and is split into 2 parts:
- Do I cast now?
- Who should I target?
The first part is currently active (which I didn’t know until this morning)
The second part is not active yet
That has been the case since the previous client update.
Hey @RyuuHou24 and everyone else,
I can confirm that we did change the AI in our last Console 2.1.5 as stated in the patch notes. I’m not sure we have ever misled anyone about this, but I cannot comment for before we took over development of the game.
There were issues with the AI system which was in the console version before 2.1.5, which was getting some complaints on the forums. While looking into this code, there was sections where it would first check for a 4 of a kind, then a skull match, then a spell, then a normal board move. There are obviously some problems with making code like this here, where suddenly the AI would always make skull matches instead of casting spells (often referred to skull baiting). Basically, the AI started becoming predictable (and exploitable).
On top of this, the old AI system was created in a way that each troop had to have it’s own bit of code on what and when it should cast it’s spell. This system was fine when the game was released, but with an expanding game like Gems of War, this no longer became viable, especially with the console version reaching 300+ troops, and heaps more weapons.
Just to inform everyone on how the new Console AI works, every possible board move and spell is calculated and given a score. This score is calculated and is changed according to certain aspects of the move. For board moves, there are multiple factors which changes this score. Here is a breakdown from highest to lowest -
- 5 of a kind
- 4 of a kind
- 3 match of a troop on your side which is still alive and still requires mana
- 3 match of a troop on the opponents side which is still alive and requires mana
- Any other board match
Troop and Weapon spells are a lot more complicated to work out, as each troop has a unique spell. Instead of one targeting code per troop and weapon, each spell is broken down into pieces and given a score instead. This means that if a troop was to poison a troop, then a ranking would be given for “poisoning a troop”. Damaging a troop has a different score, where True Damage gets a better score (but only if the troop still has armor). This code starts getting even more complicated when more complex situations come into place, like chance to devour Goblins, or double damage for Yellow troops, or casting manaburn when the target has higher mana values. On top of all that, what troop should it target, what gem should I target, can I only target the first or last troop; these all have to be taken into account, and this score needs to be calculated per target. This code is complex, and all these things are taken into account. This all produces a score per spell per target, which can then be compared against all other spells and board moves.
Basically, the AI tries to take into account anything a normal player could take in to make their decision. Depending on difficulty and player level, there is some random numbers multiplied in there to make sure that there are some mistakes made by the AI, but they should be similar to what anyone could make.
I do apologise if any any of these changes have made the game seem like it is cheating. As mentioned, it is a complex system which may still require more fine tuning, and evolve over time as more spells are created.
I’ve looked into the board dropping calculations and I can confirm that this code has not been touched since we have taken over the project.
So it’s the New Normal now is it?
Troops casting spells while 4-5match of skulls or gems are still on the board during PVP, Explore and Quests.
Unique targeting code for spells is surprising. I had no idea. The rest of the stuff I actually knew.
There was an ai bug that was fixed I think two updates ago, and I forget when it was introduced. The AI used to prioritize dead troops mana colors.
Depending on the spell, there are chances of this happening. This is also due to the small randomness which is multiplied into the final scoring. But, that being said, having an AI being perfect and not missing things can also be boring or frustrating, so sometimes it can be nice to laugh a bit at it while it takes a wrong move every so often. This may change in the future to make it smarter for end-game players though, but the plan is to make the AI as enjoyable to all players as possible!
This possibly was another issue with the previous version of the code. It does seem weird for the AI to collect colors which it no longer requires, so now the AI will scan the troops, check if their mana values are full (ignore that color for that troop) and plan accordingly.
this new “improved” AI has to go…65% of My matches in pvp extra turn…extra turn …cascade…extra turn cascade…over and over…3 trophy matches on hard…it’s way beyond annoying
Mr Strange once mentioned it, they introduced a bug that set dead troop mana collection color at maximum instead of minimum probability.
He’d get quite chatty sometimes, and I’d learn all kinds of things. Such as a milisecond time stamped rng seed is created at initial account creation, and the rng is reseeded based on that salt every time the game talked to the server.
This is probably too much to ask, but just a food for thought. Is it possible for AI to have spell casting behavioral script for each individual troop? For instance, Amira should always prioritize blue target unless she can kill outright, goblins should cast at every opportunities (unless …) etc. We can even help suggesting some of these.