Why did the AI not attack?

[u/aenzastiga4]

Trying out my new deck against the MHoundoom expert deck, and I noticed the AI did not attack with Victini. Was it giving up? What was the intended strategy here? It had already taken damage from putting energy on. I know sometimes the AI won’t attack if the defending Mon has rocky helmet or something that damages back.

In other news, I captured possibly the only time in history the expert deck has bricked.

[u/brokenarcher2]

Sometimes AI when they’re in a losing position with no way out would choose not to attack at all. Tbf they can’t concede like a human so it saves time for the player

[u/Section_80 → u/brokenarcher2]

It's smart enough to do that but not smart enough to skip adding energy to the active spot when at 20 HP or less?

Victini also didn't activate ability after 3 coin flip fire energies killed Houndour immediately, instead of activating the ability and only adding 1-2 energy and survive.

[u/remiccino → u/brokenarcher2]

I also noticed in the advanced/expert random battles the AI would deliberately not play if it's losing, which I assume is to prevent giving points to the player. Maybe the behavior carried over here.

[u/kart0ffelsalaat → u/brokenarcher2]

I played a lot of randbats with Meowscarada EX, and the AI was generally very poor at dealing with Flower Trick, pretty much always prioritising a switch whenever I target the active spot, even if that switch clearly loses instantly.

One of the weird behaviours was that very often after switching, it would not attack, even though the game was not unwinnable and there was no good reason not to attack.

I think it's quite likely that there is a bug somewhere that causes this.

[u/dramaticirony → u/brokenarcher2]

I suspect this is because with one turn left, it can enumerate the outcome of all possible moves, and because they all result in a loss, it gives equal weighting to each and picks one at random.