Saw an example with the Lifesteal mechanic in another post and it reminded me of this question I had for quite some time now. There are chess bots a million times better than the best humans, why doesn't it work for digital card games? If the AI were better it wouldn't need to rely on cheap ways like mana gem, card or stat advantages to have a chance.
External link →First, Chess-bot research has been decades in the making and there's only a few pieces. Cardgames have far more interactions.
Second, players in pve campaigns generally prefer to be smarter than their opponents and win via superior play against a foe that has more resources,. Entire series like the fire emblem series relying on players exploiting the AI's mistakes and predictable actions. Players don't necessarily enjoy a game that's outplaying them and making them feel dumb. They mostly want the AI to avoid any super-obviously-stupid plays like using a removal spell on its own dude or failing to block lethal.
So it's a huge amount of effort to make truly great AI for a cardgame and many players might even prefer you not do that in the first place. When it comes to opportunity cost, would you rather hire 3 extra AI engineers to make the AI harder over many months, or would you rather hire 3 more designers/gameplay-engineers to make more adventures, champions, events, etc?
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