Sealed and Drafting the Forge Way
Forge’s quest mode is fully realized and fleshed out, while the sealed and drafting modes are bare bones. Obviously Forge’s sealed and drafting modes don’t have questing “levels” and it is easy to win against the computer.
Unfortunately the drafting mode is very easy. While the AI does create his deck from the cards that he picks, the decks are mediocre at best. The AI could draft much better if the card set was much smaller. Trying to give 9,000+ cards a power rating, such as A or C, is much harder than only giving 350 cards a rating. Forge does allow the user to create a custom set to draft from but it is complicated.
I do not know how to make the AI better at sealed deck. Basically you are trying to create a deck that is “good” with a semi-random collection of cards. The deck should have a basic mana curve with mostly creatures, some removal is possible, and a few creatures/spells that are good finishers: either creatures with evasion or spells that cause direct damage. While I understand the basics of deck building, I don’t know how to specifically program the AI to build better decks.
Programming a better drafting AI seems impossible because you need to create a specific formula for the computer to follow. Human intuition is trained through observation but computer programming is accomplished through logical steps, if this is true then do that. Programming is like following a recipe with mathematical precision, there is no “flavor to taste”.
Basically the computer is an idiot and computer programming makes the idiot appear smarter than he really is. (If you have ever seen an unintelligible error message, you will quickly realize how dumb the computer really is.)
From the very beginning, I knew that Forge’s drafting and sealed mode would not feel like real life but it would it be an approximation. When you draft in Forge you still have to watch your mana curve, choose good creatures, splash for big spells, and stay in your colors, all of the things that you have to do when you draft in real life. I’ve never drafted or played sealed deck in real life, so for me Forge is as close as it gets. (I’m guessing that most people have haven’t drafted or played sealed deck in real life but who knows.)
Question of the week:
Have you played draft or sealed deck in real life?
Currently not programming but has thoughts
of programming again some day…
--mtgrares
p.s.
--Part of this blog is just me hammering the fact that programming is very hard. Programmers understand this but many other people do not. Think of Java code as concrete. Concrete cannot be randomly thrown around and neither can code.
--Artificial intelligence is just an illusion, like a magic trick. The illusion can be strong but it doesn’t mean that it is true. I have no fear of computers learning to think and becoming sentient. (Despite many movies to the contrary.)
Someone once asked, “Can a computer think?”
He replied, “Does a submarine swim?”
(Stolen from here.)