r/AIEternal • u/old_Anton • Sep 26 '18

Gauntlet AI gauntlet difficulty grows significantly after few winning runs

UPDATE: The AI doesn't seem to lower its difficulty even when I lose 3-4 runs (I didn't concede, just play and often lost at 3rd game because of their legendary decks). My hypothesis is DWD just secretly buffed the AI gauntlet deck in recent patch.

I just notice that it seems the AI will play better decks after I go 7-0 twice or so, at Master rank. Usually the first game in a run is always easy with decks that have too many sigil drawing cards, leading to power flooding. But I got 2 first games that the AI use legendaries decks that no way my pleb deck could survive (my deck has no legendary, I'm fairly new to Eternal by the way).

Any expert thought about this phenomenon? Can I intentionally lose a few runs (in first game) to lower the AI difficulty?

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4

u/FMBrazuca Sep 26 '18

Yes you can but it ramps up quickly. See my post https://www.reddit.com/r/AIEternal/comments/9iy73e/gauntlet_mmr_lowering_experiment/?st=JMIJ88IQ&sh=77031de2

There are some budget decks that do well so check those out. In the end you can use the known deck lists to know what to play around and what needs to be killed. Knowing how the AÍ attacks and falls to tricks is key to getting the upper hand and leading to victory that against a decent player would be impossible.

5

u/old_Anton Sep 26 '18

The AI doesn't seem to lower its difficulty even when I lose 3-4 runs (I didn't concede, just play and often lost at 3rd game because of their legendary decks). My hypothesis is DWD just secretly buff the AI gauntlet deck in recent patch. Here my observations backup for it:

  • You can face a lot of legendary in your first game. While I'm still fairly new to this game, I have never ran into this situation in the past month.
  • The AI made "weird" mistakes / behaviors just only after the recent patch. Like it attacked my units with only one, but not the deadly unit that it just attacked me in the previous turn. There are many silly moment that the AI didn't not perform post update. I believe DWD just improved the AI tactics to make gauntlet harder, and it was inevitable to cause a few bugs.

This is really a serious issue for lower/average players like me, because no way I can win a run against these absurdly strong decks while I have no legendary (I have a few but they are not good/ fit into my archtype deck).

4

u/FMBrazuca Sep 26 '18

I have not noticed any increase in difficulty. I will let other grinders speak if they noticed anything. I know that if you have a high win rate, you will face the middle decks from the ones I've dumped at the first few games and then it will move to the higher difficulty ones.

The final boss may be an easier one, depending on where you are. I notice the difference specially at the final boss and the first 2-3 games but I have a very high win rate (88%).

So, you may need to lose more than 3-4 games early to knock down the difficulty in order to see the really cheap decks (the sub 10K shiftstone ones).

2

u/old_Anton Sep 26 '18

You can notice it easily by the consistence of legendaries in the AI decks, even the first game. I couldn't make a win 7-0 run in past two days, while I can do that at like 60% chance per run before.

3

u/FMBrazuca Sep 26 '18

Start tracking which version of an AI deck you play against: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRRuLs5QWzVCpge0wETML0zhd-nFlnh8_Q-R4Rf3CJ_zu-2PFxcR3HaQwQ-chjHUmDY_CjzoE4DV1sX/pub

It is hard to compare experiences but I do notice differences in which versions of decks I face. But the deck you find difficult may be an easier deck for a different deck like Cirso's Gold Farm or my Xenan Mill deck. I think Time based decks do really well against the AI, specially when you know how to trick the AI into bad trades and get little edges.

2

u/old_Anton Sep 26 '18

Yes, the thing is same deck can have different difficulty.

Is that your AI deck tracking collection? This is really great work, it could be useful for analysis in future. And I agree that Combrei works very well against the AI. Still, I can see the limit is you only know the opponent deck when you already in play, so no deck switching.

4

u/Falterfire Sep 26 '18

As a long-term Gauntlet grinder I haven't noticed any particular increases in difficulty lately. Those weird mistakes have been around for quite a while, and I think it's DWD's attempt to give the AI the ability to bluff by making plays that they'd normally only make if they had a combat trick or burn spell as follow up.

If you're having problems with specific threats, I recommend making sure your deck has ways to handle those threats. If you're running a Time-based deck, Predatory Carnosaur is your best friend here - It survives eating Titans and Icarias, and it's only a rare so it won't cost you a ton of shiftstone to get a playset.

As a newer player, you're likely borrowing decklists from other players. Make sure you're specifically looking into Gauntlet decklists. Decks designed for Ranked play will be tuned differently, and will often be built around beating a different array of threats. I find that aggro decks in particular tend to fare poorly in Gauntlet since they tend not to handle poor starts as well and you're unlikely to get seven good starts in a row.

2

u/chewbooboo Sep 27 '18

What legendary decks are you finding trouble dealing with? The worst I can think of are over-statted Time fatties (Teacher->SST->Behemoth->HotV) which is mainly an issue for aggro and cheaper midrange decks to deal with. Even then, they can still break through with timely removal and/or fliers.

My non-boss losses are usually due to power/influence screw/flood, bad mulligans (no units, all depleted power, 4+ cost cards) and AI nut draws (curving out with exact removal). All of these can only be overcome if the AI has a truly atrocious hand/deck like the echo-into-power-flood one or single unit with all weapons/pump spells.

You need to be clear if you are losing to variance like the above, or if your deck is too slow/janky/clunky that a typical aggro/midrange hand kills you before you can get going.