Cardotron 2000

So in case you missed the update, there is a new AI opponent currently in the Test game called Cardotron 2000. For those of you who don't know who this opponent is, here is a picture.



Cardotron 2000 is probably the most brutal AI opponent available in multiplayer right now. The Priest seems to have at least 10 Impenetrable Nimbus in her deck, the Wizard is full of 3x3 terrain effects and has at least two resistant hides and several Obliterating Sparks, and while I (thankfully) didn't get hit a whole lot by the warrior, he does have a few Perfect Blocks, Acrobatic Flips, and other nasty cards.

Oh, and their decks are packed with Attack Skill cards and Magic Skill cards as well.

I don't really have a steadfast strategy for this group as I've only fought him once (and won...somehow), but this definitely seems like an AI that is going to give everyone trouble, so I'm opening up this thread for strategy on how to stand up against them.

 

Do you mean Spell Skill or Magic In The Air? And I love love love those figures.

 

Yeah the minis are AWESOME.

 

Speaking of awesome new figures...

 

Ok after playing him for around 20 times i think i have an idea of what his entire deck is like. All 3 character has 29 hp which is more then what they are suppose to have.

Magic using unit(dwarf)
Attack
Obliterating Spark: His main damage he has a lot of this
Lava Pool: Can be op sometimes
Freeze: this is really irritating but manageable
Lightning Bolt: this card is the most op card in his deck and could easily lose you the game if he lands a gd one. 8 range line stun what could possibly go wrong.
Counterspell: This is currently bugged he would always use it on the fighter unit making it do nothing so yeah hooray for useless card.
Utility
Flight Aura:another useless card
Teleport Other:meh
Swap: this is insanely powerful in the hands of a human player but he has no idea how to use it well and rarely swap you when you are on the control point.
Mud Pit: The stop nature of the terrain could give you a fair bit of trouble
Resistant Hide: More control mage hate
Arcane Aura: meh
Spell Skill: This card one of the reason why the mage is dangerous he would cast this and burst down one of your character easily
Toughness: Another irritating card
Movement
Teleport Self:meh
Traits
Spark Generator:no comment

Fighter unit(elf)
Attack
Vicious Thrust:Gap closer what could possible go wrong
Dancing Cut: more gap closer
Almighty Hack: Because 17 damage is too little
Almighty Bludgeon: hey more 20 damage cards
Fiery Stab: a little range to switch it up
Utility
Attack Skill: He is so going in for the kill
Pathfinding: Anti encumber i guess but its not that effective given that he always see to pop it very early in the turn
Armour/block
Enchanted Mail: dam the reduction
Impenetrable Block: I hate this card 50% block any keep, what could possibility but frustrating about this card.
Perfect Block: Another hated block a 1 for 3 in term of value card no less
Enchanted Harness: gotta combo with that enchanted mail
Acrobatic Flip: meh
Move
Flanking Move: no comment
Trait
Slippery: could screw over control mage pretty hard with this card.

Clerical unit(Human): appears to be very poorly programmed
Attack
Obliterating Bludgeon:damage
Mighty Bludgeon: damage
Powerful Bash:damage
Utility/heal
Impenetrable Nimbus:The ai is not that gd at casting this his priority without anyone being low hp is himself, mage then lastly warrier. He will not keep nimbus and will always cast it even is he will have no cards left and you are nowhere in sight.
Martyr Blessing: The only card he cast correctly most of the time prioritises fighter unit.
Mass Frenzy: well you can't make the wrong decision if you make no decision.
Leadership: Basic moves has very low priority as every card is high silver and better so he sometimes cast this on the first turn and both his teammates has no move cards left.
Healing Rays:His basic heal card you need to focus them one by one else he would heal them faster then you can damage them.
Super Team Heal: Another card that he has no idea how to use. He would always use it on the turn he draws it, even if everyone is full hp and even if it is his last card. It is also incredibly op(think 3 greater heals at global range).
Dash, Team!: Well at least you can;t go wrong with this.
Greater Holy Insight: He has never casted this card period. I only know he has this card when he discards it and i think its a pretty op card if he cast it at all.
Blocks/armour
Perfect Block:damit
Resistant Hide:Control mages thx
Traits
Altruism:He can heal his entire team to full hp on good luck with this trait
Hover:ha control mage you mean no damage mage
Talented Healer:meh



All in all the ai is pretty bad but if it isn't this trio would be the most broken NPCs ever. For the most part stacking impenetrable nimbus seem to the best way to win as they would waste all their damage on nimbus targets and allow for favourable trades. You can mostly ignore the cleric as he has close to no move cards and seem to be easily negated by just not being beside him so you can focus on the 3v2 but his heals can sometimes be game changing.

If you are using control mages i have gd and bad news. The gd news is that you still have a good chance to beat this ai as despite all the anti control mages cards as the priest is useless vs winds of war and encumber and the fighter does poorly vs encumber (unless he get slippery). The bad news is if you lose it is most likely due to their mage that can pump out so much damage at 8 range that he can fairly easily take out one of your mages if he draws spell skill. i manage only around 50% win rate but its probably due to me being bad at control mages.


Most decks are pretty bad vs the new ai. The only strat that allow me to achieve a 90% win rate over the ai is the double warrior nimbus priest combo with a lot of gd gear.

 

That sounds utterly terrifying. Don't look forward to having to play that deck in the future. I'd have to put some serious thought into strategies after playing it a couple times.

Cool models indeed though.

 

Ha, a dwarven ice mage figure, that seems appropriate given how many of them you see in MP.

 

On a side note the new christmas treasure items are pretty cool. Looks good and sells for treasure cost even though the item seem erm rarely used.

 

Please tell me there's a two front teeth arcane item.

 

I'm really surprised no one posted anything on cardotron 2000 in the past week since it was integrated into the game so I'll be the first and hopefully some of you will have feedback for me.
So as it stands, I preety much have to not allow gm opponents if I wanna run my current build which unfortunately is also a problem since I live in a completely different time zone than most players
and getting a human opponent can take alot of waiting time in my current rating.
I run 1 warr, 2 priest focusing on mobility, buffs and debuffs and I just got destroyed by cardotron several consecutive times. I can get the reasoning behind making it since MOM failed to be the high rating AI opponent blue manchu initially thought of but this is ridiculous and not enjoyable at all.
So I decided to take some time and watch other players against it and surprise, surprise - what I've found is that players that run 2+ wizards have a much easier time and can win consistently.
Since the AI is still very bad your best shot is to avoid any melee skirmishes, try to take out the mage asap and sail to victory on WoW+encumber on the remaining units.
Sure, sometimes it's not as smooth as that but just try to win on pure melee and see how you crumble against the best blocks and attacks this game currently offers. I'm not even talking about nimbus and super team heal, it's more of a rolling a failed block twice and losing my warr to almighty hack+bludgeon or being zapped to death with oblit spark (powered by arcane aura).
I understand that improving MOM's AI is time consuming and this was the easier solution but making some builds not viable anymore to the best AI the game currently offers is extremely disappointing and really ruins MP for me.
Also, why the change to the timer? It didn't use to trigger until you got your first win. Now I'm one hour in already having done nothing but consecutively lose.
Oh well, there's still peasent mode I guess

 

I faced cardotroon a couple of times, and not counting that one time i forgot i had my 3 mages naked its a good challenge. sure i run 3 mages, but my build seems to work quite good on the ai, just 1 path of knives and see the ai moving itself to death can be prety fun. the mage is rly a problem, must keep him away or try to s p ray it or counterspell it ( or pray for my res hide)
I can see how melee teams will have alot of trouble facing it :\

 

I actually enjoy cardotron (even though its cheap). I think this is a bandaid solution to curb rating inflation, and to make an AI that is actually fun/scary to play, so I don't mind it.

 

I'm pretty sure the only rating inflation occurring is 3DC bringing 1100-1200 players into the 1300+ bracket. And I don't think Cardotron does anything to stop that.

 

IF anything cardtron will help ppl to get higher in rating till he climb down. I was in mid 1300s when met him and he was like 1550. Gave me huge points and the easiest game i had vs a high ranked player. Even with my 1 week old card hunter experience and items was soo easy to nimbus bait and kite around.

 

The reason tons of players are now 1400+ isn't because some increase in their skill, I've noticed a lot of players who were stuck in the 12-1300s for the last 4 months suddenly in the 1600s. Their ratings are inflated from easy wins as 3CW. I'm guessing cardotron is supposed to somehow counter that, but for the comp I run, and for any players that are actually good, it'd be very easy to just farm Cardotron late at night when people aren't on and climb high on rating. I've had several games of taking 0 damage from cardotron.

 

I don't see how skill has anything to do with it when you can still abuse the AI in all the traditional ways (nimbus, silly movement,etc), in fact what it really does is to compound on the already existing problem of 3CW dominance since the AI is so susceptible to control, and if one of your wizards draws Resistant Hide you just put him in front of the magic unit for some more silly AI abuse.
At the end of the day this will increase inflation for the exact same reasons and unless I start running a mage or multiple nimbuses, in short - trying to counter cardotron, my melee build is at a severe disadvantage.

 

Where skill comes into it is: Cardotron isn't as susceptible to 3CW teams, particularly not ones that are high-rating but low skill (the vast majority I've encountered), and as a result, they are losing a lot, and he's at 1500 rating. It's the other teams, typically one with a priest that are dominating him, or teams with very good players or extreme items, not the run of the mill 1500 3CW teams that plague the MP atm.

 

Well, that's not the experience I had as I told in my post above (not the one you quoted but the previous one). Try running full melee without nimbus for several matches against Cardotron with the best items you have and tell me what you think. It's not that it's impossible it's just puts you at a great disadvantage and honestly just from looking at the cards that Cardotron runs you can see that 3CW does have a clear edge in that they want and can stay away from the various melee oblits as opposed to full melee which strives for conflict.

 

I agree that warriors are at a disadvantage. I've tried it with a frenzy setup. I'd hate to have 3 wars // no nimbus. And you are right, its a huge disadvantage without a priest, whether warrior or wizard. I'd say 3 warriors < 3 CW = 1 priest + 2 warriors < 1 priest + 2 wizards (from what i've played).

 

I kicked Cardotron with my 3 warriors twice in a row. I didn't really have a problem, though I can see how an excellent draw would be pretty unbeatable, but I wouldn't expect that to happen too often.

Once we've ripped the arms off Cardotron, I expect to see Cardotron's Mom show up.