Monday, March 26, 2012

Should the AI Bluff When Attacking?

Bluffing is not a major part of Magic but it is still exists. By “bluffing” I mean attacking as if you held a card like Giant Growth. You can even bluff with cards like Shock by attacking your opponent’s 4/4 with your lowly 2/2. Usually I would wait until the 4/4 attacks and then block it with your 2/2 and kill it with Shock but every game as different specific tactics and situations.


“When should you bluff?” I tend to never bluff when attacking because I never know if the AI will block or not. Obviously if I think that a bluff would win me the game, I will try it. Otherwise I might only bluff with small creatures if I had plenty of other creatures on the board.

The AI is interesting because it plays multiple matches and it could keep track of the number of times that a bluff failed or succeeded. The AI could bluff more or less as needed. In order for the AI to act like a human player the bluff should work 50 to 75 percent of the time (although this is just a rough guess). The AI could bluff all of the time but that would be very stupid. (The goal of the AI is to make it act like a human player and force you to make hard combat decisions.)

Right now the AI never bluffs on purpose. The AI may bluff accidentally because combat is very complicated (but very fun). I am just happy that the AI can play instants during combat, so players are surprised some of the time. For many years I attacked like a madman because I knew the AI never used instants during combat. The AI can also use Counterspell which is always stuns me and makes me momentarily panic.

Feedback Question:
When (and if) should you bluff when playing Magic?

--mtgrares

p.s.
Some games like poker are almost exclusively based on bluffing, which explains why I am so bad at it.

Because of my programming background I never have to ask myself, “Will computers ever evolve, like in the Terminator movies?” because computers are really, really stupid. A computer is just a very fast calculator.

4 comments:

ChadTroxel said...

Actually, knowing the AI won't bluff and can play instants simply allows me to thin his hand by baiting him with spells I don't mind fizzling.

Anonymous said...

I think if you have the chance to bluff you should do it, additionally if you have the instant you should make an "i'm bluffing" play and bam play your titanic growth.

max1c said...

At the moment there are way more necessary improvements to AI than bluffing in my opinion.

Lyracian said...

Feedback Question:
When (and if) should you bluff when playing Magic?

As many times as you think you can get away with it. If you are slinging Giant Growths around game one people are a lot less likely to block that 1/1 game two...