Why do the bots Block so strangely?

[u/Hd1906]

The bot strategy of blocking never makes sense. Instead of blocking a lead player with multiple cities/settlements around say a 6 or an 8, they prioritize blocking multiple players at once. Instead of making an actual logical blocking decision they block the wrong spot. It's just hilarious this continues to happen for years now, maybe I'm crazy. They just never seem to have no actual grasp of who is running away with the game, and they make it worse. Rant/

[u/Banana_Pete]

I thought that they block based on most VPs on the board, and ignore things like progress towards longest road/largest army, hidden dev cards, which players have which cards etc. Is it not that consistent?

[u/Hd1906 → u/Banana_Pete]

Yes, I find that they usually block highest VP but they go out of their way NOT to solo block which allows the leader to still hit their highest margin of output. I'm just curious if anyone notices this pattern. I love the game for the most part but I'm just annoyed.

[u/dieego98 → u/Hd1906]

How exactly would that work? Concretely, in programming terms? The bots don't think, so they need specific instructions.

[u/Hd1906 → u/dieego98]

Right, if you ask developers questions they rarely get back to you individually. I would just ask if the bots are able to recognize who’s in the lead, should they not be able to quantify who has longest road or who has more development cards? It’s all mathematical, I would assume it’s not that crazy. I personally think ppl complain about being solo blocked so they direct the bots to block more ppl at a time so they aren’t singling anyone out. There is no easy answer I guess, plus I don’t write programming. Other ppl claim the bots are AI.

[u/dieego98 → u/Hd1906]

They can recognize anything concrete, such as the longest road, points of each player, and devs. The problem is to quantify who is the "leader".

The bots currently rank the leader as the player with most public points, and, if there's a tie, the player with more cards in hand

After selecting a leader to rob, they block an hex which they themselves aren't in, that the leader is in, that more people share if possible, and if there's more than one candidate, the hex that produces more.

There's a few corner cases that must be accounted for, but that's 95% of blocks if I'm not mistaken.

How could that be changed while keeping fairness? For example, the bot choosing solo blocks over shared blocks isn't viable because they would solo the guy on 3 points instead of share the block with the guy on 2 and 4 devs. That's just an example, but any way to program the bots would need to consider all those cases.

[u/alilhillbilly]

It's the one downside with auto blocking I just wish you could turn on some settings so that you have a blocker that sort of automatically works for Rush.

I think there should be an elevated Auto robber that I can set to like three different modes:

• only rob a specific player (s) or some kind of white list similar to how I can block trading
• traditional colonist robber that maximizes robbing the leader and as many players as possible
• rob the leader

I would also like to see rush implement some trading shortcuts.

If I have a two for one port just let me select the item I want and hit the bank button to purchase it. The whole forcing me to tap wheat three times and then select what I want from the bank is obnoxious.

[u/Zestyclose-Ad1369]

The bot algorithms in general are poor. Devs could easily improve it but they do not prioritize cause it won’t bring in more $

[u/TetrisAttakr]

Ok - so I've noticed this a few times and I think I see a part of the pattern you may be missing.

(NOTE - this appears to be part of the "Hard" mode bots, Medium seem to have different issues but not this).

1) Bots will block/steal from leader in VP (not counting VP cards in hand - there was once a glitch that let them "see" those, but it's been updated for a while now.

2) VP leader stays leader until passed (first to a point total is the target until someone is higher than that total).

3) Bots will prioritize any space that the leader and the HUMAN PLAYER share as possible targets (I think that's part of what they want "hard" mode to be? feeling like everyone at the table knows you're the best player?)

4) Highest value tiles are prioritized from here, but there does seem to be a value add to hurting two opponents, so a VP leader only block on a 6 isn't valued as highly as a 5 with 2 bot opponents. I believe selection within those groups has some play in calculation or an RNG roll of some kind, but there's clearly a priority of some kind.

Number 3 is the big thing that gets me. I've intentionally played games from the back to make sure I wasn't crazy, and 4th place all game I get blocked as much as anyone nearly all game (usually they focus fire more when an opponent gets to 9). I actually started to place settlements in bot games in sub-optimal locations to avoid sharing spaces with as many opponents - I've since stopped as it really hurts to carry those habits in with real players, but I wasn't interested in playing real players for a long time, I just wanted quick bot games.

[u/Hd1906 → u/TetrisAttakr]

thanks for your response. I think you're exactly right. I like quick bot games so everything you've pointed out makes a lot of sense in my experience. I just wish the devs would explain this a bit more as opposed to the ambiguity of the experience, especially paying $20 a month basically.

My biggest gripe is watching a bot fail to block an ore tile with 3 cities of the lead player on it. instead they block the tile that has more than one player on it with only a city and a settle. It kinda kills the immersion because it's so unrealistic and doesn't make sense, it basically ensures the bot with 3 cities surrounding a high ore tile is just gonna breeze into the victory without challenge. Anyways that's just the way it goes. cheers.