I have played about 30 matches so far (PvP and a few challenges) and there hasn’t been a single fight where all of this happens;
I use the Khaziel banner almost exclusively, all but 2 of the fights have had 5 or less brown Gems at the start, and always none ready to be matched.
Every enemy spell that creates Gems will bunch them together for a guaranteed match, without fail
The AI will make seemingly bad matches (3 of a colour they do not need) only for the Gems to drop to match an extra turn
Combination of 2 & 3 makes the AI have ridiculous cascades. If the player had this “luck”, I’d have 2-4 maps A GAME
The AI is also receiving extra turns off of 3-matches when they make 3+ of them happen in a cascade. I have watched and rewatched replays, I’m not missing 4-matches
The AI will, about a third of the time, do 4x the normal damage for Critical Hits (5-matches of Skulls). The number may be higher, but my Troops do not have 50+ combined Life/Armor to test.
I noticed late this one, so the sample size is small (6 fights), but the AI is getting Mana Surges at about a 75% rate, while I am receiving mine at about 15-20% less than I should.
I believe today’s events are in response to players getting Magic keys in place of Iron keys.
I think the GoW development team should have a talk with Pipeworks/505Games about how they are handling their game. The last month has literally been one F***up after another, and it’s becoming clear they have no real interest in the product since this game allows a player to be 100% free and offers little incentive to spend money.
You say “today”…did something change today, like an update or patch? (I haven’t logged into the game yet today).
I will say this - I kind of agree with you. In particular with respect to mana surges. I am in the number 2 ranked guild on Xbox One, and as a result, have really high bonus levels for mana surges that are only surpassed by the people in the number 1 ranked guild (I would think, not sure though). It seems like I get a mana surge a lot less than I should, but wow - almost every move by the AI is a mana surge at times, especially if the AI is losing. The mana surges are so frequent by the AI, it makes me wonder how this is determined. All I know is, the AI gets way more mana surges than I do, in pretty much every game.
The other cheating moves do happen a lot, and drive me nuts (like when every match 3 you make results in skulls dropping perfectly into place from the top of the screen so the AI can attack you next move) but I can’t say it happens any more or less than it always has. It’s those mana surges though that seem to be endless for the AI as of late.
I agree. This happened to me as well. I was doing one pvp after another and wining one game after another, choosing matches I knew I could win. Then after the weekly turn over I quit getting a lot of mana surges to two or three per match. Plus my armor wasn’t green anymore I had to go back to my original kingdom and flag to get the armor boost back. This was after I spent $30 bucks on this game today! I have a PS4. This AI does in fact Cheat! It wants to win. I even lost a challenge because of this…
With all the changes the console seems to be having, the “Combo Breaker” might have gotten turned off. They put in a system to have the AI cheat for us players. In the mobile version, you can turn the combo breaker off, and have fully random drops. With it off, I’ve had the AI take more than 15 turns in a row.
I do think there are some skull patterns of multiple gems that the AI sees as multiple match 3s, and not as blocks of 5+.
If you have video of the 3 match cascades causing an extra turn, please share it. It could be a rare bug, or such.
There have been numerous topics about this before in the past. Essentially RNG is “streaky” and “recall bias” plays a huge part in making it seem worse. The devs figured out that if the players don’t win something like 80% of the time (it might have been higher) they feel like the AI is cheating.
I don’t have that much luck. But I do accept my bad luck rather than complain about it.[quote=“TaliaParks, post:12, topic:4141”]
Failed to mention on that point that mine were rarely making matches, nevermind extra turns.
[/quote]
It just comes down to bad luck. Sometimes you get lucky enough to win in the first few turns, sometimes you get unlucky enough for the AI to fill all 4 troops mana on the first turn and get thrashed. The AI logic has always been sketchy. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s complete trash. Remember on console you can quit a pvp match without losing a trophy or taking a stat loss, which is nice since I don’t think I deserve a loss when the AI goes nuts and gets 30 extra turns on the first turn. I’ve had matches where the AI has literally gotten an extra turn on 100% of turns while in the same match, I struggle just to make 3 pairs. In case you didn’t know, the AI is designed in situations to make matches lower on the board in order to make a 4 pair from the subsequent gem fall. Also remember that the AI knows which gems are above the board, so when boar rider is used, it is often used to create extra turn pairs from the gems that drop from above where we the player can see.
I have witnessed or experienced every single one of these myself. And it hasn’t just been “today”. It’s been weeks now. Ever since “The Update Is Coming: Part 1” came to consoles, the AI has been on a rampage.
Those that say “I take whatever RNG gives me”, you accept having a full maxed out team suddenly getting steamrolled by 1-star Challenges? Not once. Not twice. But for weeks? 5-10 games per day, and not being allowed to win a single battle. Not against Quests. Not against 5-star Challenges. Not against 1-star Challenges. Not against PvP. I had a 2 week period recently where reaching rank 14 in PvP was impossible, no matter how many battles I fought a day. Every single opponent would get a 4-match, a 5-match, skulls, or get powered up. Pick 2 and that was EVERY turn for the enemy. Again, not for one match, or two matches, but every match for 2 weeks.
The Extra Turn on a 3-match, seems to happen when they get a Mana Surge, that I’ve seen. Like the computer is seeing “Mana Surge” and seeing “Oh, they HAD to get 4 or more to get that many gems worth”.
I’m not trying to down this game. I love it! But the console version has definitely been having major issues that need to be addressed. I’ve been chalking it all up to “The server is being messed with to get ready for the update”.
The Combo Breaker could definitely explain some things. But being completely shut out for two weeks, and having a 95% losing streak for another 2, can’t quite be explained by that. That’s not unlucky with RNG, that’s a Curse!
Sorry for rambling. Trying to address everything that’s been mentioned. I’ll shut up and go take a breath now lol
Before the combo breaker came in 1.6 I had the same issue. I spent weeks trying to beat the Zhul’kari questline. There was one battle against 4 Boar Riders and it took 42 tries before I finally beat that team. My team was not really optimized and leveled due to a lack of troops and souls.
And then 1.6. BAM! All issues were gone. Even today I still doubt that a turned off combo breaker evens the luck, because basically everything, that does something with the board (exploders, gem spwaners, etc.) nets the computer at least one skull most of the time. But I gave up on ranting after 1.6 because of 3 reasons.
Ranting constantly is not really that healthy.
We now have the combo breaker. Why rant? It makes the game very relaxing. Isn’t that what I wanted?
The discussion about “cheating” AI went long enough.