Battlestations!, or, Mountain of Mounts, or, Pleasure Crews
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**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.**
I've noticed a distinct lack of Stationing by AI. They play cards w/ Station but I've never once seen it activate that ability. It's super effective! Maybe there's some implementation here & I've simply been unlucky enough not to come across it, but it really seems like AI just doesn't know how. Maybe it's on the to-do list & I'm jumping the gun here. Where's the to-do list??
I've also noticed the AI doing silly things like saddling a creature which is then used to saddle a Dracosaur Auxiliary it just cast pre-combat. It's not very effective! Or AI will saddle multiple Mounts &/or crew multiple Vehicles & then decide not to attack. It seems practically pointless to make such moves when saddling/crewing is only effective when you intend (& do) send the saddled/crewed creature into combat. Worse than that, when saddling/crewing weakens AI's defense to such an extent it loses the game when it didn't have to (@ least not that turn).
**Describe the solution you'd like**
I'd like to see AI using its creatures' powers more effectively in more situations. I've lumped these abilities (Station, Saddle, Crew) into this 1 thread because they seem somewhat related & might benefit from a standardized approach. Make no mistake, these abilities are quite different & would call for different AI implementations, but I think a good starting point is to look @ what approach we as players take when deciding to use these abilities.
When it comes to Station, it's frequently not worth it to activate if the opportunity cost of doing so is too high. Based on a given board state, you might be winning a dmg race by choosing to attack vs spending your creatures' powers on a Spacecraft. You might need to hold up blockers so you can get good/decent trades against your opponent's attacks; otherwise, if you can't effectively get thru & neither can your opponent, it might really be worthwhile to start powering up your Spacecraft. Several of the Spacecraft have Flying & there should be some value assignment given to that (whether for attack or defense). Stationing planets seems kind of niche & is much harder evaluate; it doesn't seem worth it in limited environments but constructed decks might really highly prioritize certain planets.
Saddle/Crew has some of the same considerations. The opportunity cost is often the loss of the saddling/crewing creature's stat points both in that turn's combat & for defense after that turn. Mounts can be used w/out being saddled & so the opportunity cost of saddling them is frequently higher than for a similarly costed Vehicle. But Vehicles can be used in defense & so some consideration must be given there.
As a 1st-pass solution, I'd like to see the AI modified so it stops making silly moves like saddling a Mount which it then uses to saddle another Mount. Or saddling/crewing multiple things & then not making use of those activations by actually entering the red zone. In general, AI needs some lookahead heuristics it can use to evaluate what might be a good course of action. I'm no programmer so I don't know what form those heuristics would take. Maybe it's a raw stat point comparison. Maybe it's a before-after board state comparison.
As players, there are many considerations & lines of thought we follow internally to approach good decision-making. 1 thing which came back to me in thinking about this was an article I read many years ago by Mike Flores, "Who's the Beatdown?" If you've not read it, you should; it's a real Magic theory milestone & perhaps the most influential piece of writing ever made for this game we play. I think it might help in focusing on what basic principles should be used in modifying Forge's AI for the better. To my mind, AI seems stuck in a primitive "beatdown" mentality & doesn't really have any "control" tools @ its disposal. Creating those tools is 1 thing & giving AI the discretion of when to use them is another.
**Additional context**
Thanks for reading & thanks for making Forge what it is & what it will become. Break the big problems into small problems & solve them. The edifice isn't constructed in 1 step.
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