I swear the AI cheats

[koboldsftw]

To give context, I'm trying to beat Noel's Magic Guard Clefable in a fire monotype run.  Basically, the only way I can figure out how to do this is pp-stalling and just waiting for struggle, which is pretty easy because the only damaging moves Clefable has is HP-ground and Moonblast.  My Talonflame gets 4-hit by Moonblast and has roost, so it basically can't kill it.  Once Moonblast ran out of PP, I kept Talonflame in for a while, with me hitting it with acrobatics or whatever and then it soft-boiling back to full (not that I was really doing any damage anyway).  However, I realized I could grind out the PP by switching to another of my pokemon on the Clefable's Soft-Boiled turn, and then switching back to Talonflame the next turn when it tried to use HP-ground.  This should have worked in such a way that I didn't use any PP and none of my pokemon take damage.

 

EXCEPT: as soon as I switch my Talonflame out, the Clefable doesn't use Soft-Boil, it uses HP on my Pyroar.  Obviously, this is annoying, but I thought it could have just been randomness in the AI's code, so I switch back to Talonflame, HP doesn't effect Talonflame, and Clefable is back to Soft-Boiling.  After a bit of this I try it again, and again it predicts my swap out and uses HP on my Growlithe.  I try this 2 more times, and each time the AI predicts my swap out.  It also never uses HP on Talonflame (which makes sense, that's the way the AI should work).

 

I generally like the difficulty of this game, but if this is an intended interaction then it seems blatantly against the philosophy of Reborn, and if this is unintended, I guess maybe it should be looked at?  Anyway, it's weird and I don't like it.

[CrossImpact]

what is the philosophy of Reborn? please explain.

though I do wonder if there is a recognition for the player swapping back and forth. I haven't heard of that, but who knows what was put in ~

[Alistair]

That's interesting feedback. A couple times I too was annoyed by the fact that the AI seemed to "predict" a switch perfectly, but I didn't or couldn't experiment the way you did with your Talonflame and Pyroar, so I didn't give it more thought.

Now I wonder if this is indeed intended or not. If it is, it may be an attempt at recreating a human's player ability to predict the opponent's actions, but if the AI seems to know things that it realistically shouldn't then it's probably worth looking into.

[CrossImpact]

I know the AI will not necessarily use another SE move if one is low on HP and often instead use another (still damaging) move, but something like soft-boiled and hidden power are completely different categories of moves :thinking:

[Azeria]

There's an aspect of the AI that focuses on PP conservation, given HP Ground and Softboiled both don't have the highest PP iirc, the AI probably tried to stagger it's usage of either to keep them up as high as possible? Since you probably let it get to +6 Cosmic Powers, the AI had 0 reason to use that move. That alongside the AI learning about the player's habbit's in terms of switching is likely what caused the scores for each to hit the range they needed for this situation.

[Guest Relinquished]

AI isn't perfect... From my experience, the recovery items usage (from enemies) has issues. They usually like, completely forget, to!

 

Also, many times, they pointlessly switch (without any need to), like Adrienn dropping his Mawile (without Mega), right in front of my Golem's Earthquake (i almost won that time, lol)! Or the meteor admins, or other double battles... There were times that they couldn't even score an attack, just because they got a sudden switching mania! Or that other important story battle, i don't remember now, that a move was used for a second time that would have no effect (i wanted to report it and still, i forgot)!

 

It recently got renovated and "finalized", yet it has the occasional issue, every now and then!

[Marcello]

Hi so I programmed the AI primarily so here's roughly what's happening:

 

The AI doesn't cheat with regards to this stuff, it's not able to do that. It's programmed to do things like use weaker moves if they can kill to preserve PP, be aware of other pokemon it knows are on your team in case of potential switch ins, and it tries not to get stuck in loops by doing things like overhealing or overboosting, so if it's already healed a lot it's less likely to do so again. Importantly as well, while it doesn't know when you are going to switch, it does remember your past switches in the battle, and the more you switch and the more of your team you show off, the more likely it is to predict you're going to switch and attempt to counter that. Sometimes this works out and can make a very smart seeming AI that appears to predict like a human player, and when that happens we're all very happy. Sometimes it can be disastrously stupid a little off the mark, and we're working on that too

 

The tl;dr is yeah blatant AI cheating is indeed not in line with our philosophy for the game so it's not a thing we have happen.

[koboldsftw]

@Marcello That's what I figured which was why I was surprised.  It could have been it figuring out my switch patterns but I would be pretty surprised considering I was just mashing z for a while and doing other things in between switch-ins.  I still beat Noel pretty easily so I'm not that motivated right now to go back and test more, but I might at some point just to see if it was a random anomaly.

[Commander]

I'm just going to add on that Rejuv does have input reading (weird story how I figured that out) which I am pretty sure we can assume most fan-games do have this cheating mechanism in it. Reborn's AI is just very smart compared to what it was in the olden days so it could feel like it's cheating or just pure bad luck.

 

Though to really see if the AI is cheating it's pretty easy to tell:

Is the occurrence repeatable?

If you change your attack, does it change what they do?

 

I'm pretty sure E15 had switch input reading as it often would go for moves super-effective against the Pokemon I switched into back in ye old testing days. I don't believe it does that now but that's just a little fun fact. That's not the weirdest thing we've seen the AI do (cough*Stallord*cough)

[Gabriel1]

I actually had a bit of fun in the Connal fight in the Fiore mansion (was it how it's called?).

 

Basically, after Hell Bringer (Incineroar) defeated Musharna in the Psychic field, Connal would always bring out Raichu and attempt to finish me off with Thunderbolt. However, I anticipated this and switched for Crusher (Golurk) to negate it.

 

Then, Connal's AI seems to think I'm going to switch back to Incineroar (which I actually did at first), so he uses Nasty Plot as I completely cruch him with High Horsepower.

So yeah, AIs are smart and good at anticipating, but it can easily be used against them.