AI

About Forge's Artificial Intelligence

The AI is not "trained". It uses basic rules and can be easy to overcome knowing it's weaknesses.

The AI is;

• Best with Aggro and midrange decks
• Poor to Ok in control decks
• Pretty bad for most combo decks

If you want to train a model for the AI, please do. We would love to see something like that implemented in Forge.

AI Matches from Command Line

The AI can battle itself in the command line, allowing the tests to be performed on headless servers or on computers that have poor graphic performance, and when you just don't need to see the match. This can be useful if you want to script testing of decks, test a large tournament, or just bash 100's of games out to see how well a deck performs.

Please understand, the AI is still the AI, and it's limitations exist even against itself. Games can lag and become almost unbearably long when the AI has a lot to think about, and you can't see what's on the table for it to play against. It's best if you set up the tournament and walk away, you can analyze logs later, results are printed at the end.

Syntax

forge.exe sim -d <deck1[.dck]> ... <deckX[.dck]> -D [path] -n [N] -f [F] -t [T] -p [P] -q

• sim - "Simulation Mode" forces Forge to not start the GUI and automatically runs the AI matches in command line. Enables all other switches for simulation mode.
• -d <deck1[.dck]> ... <deckX[.dck]> - Space separated list of deck files, in -f game type path. (For example; If -f is set to Commander, decks from <userdata>/decks/commander/ will be searched. If -f is not set then default is <userdata>/decks/constructed/.) Names must use quote marks when they contain spaces.
  • deck1.dck - Literal deck file name, when the value has ".dck" extension.
  • deck - A meta deck name of a deck file.
• -D [path] - [path] is absolute directory path to load decks from. (Overrides path for -d.)
• -n [N] - [N] number of games, just flat test the AI multiple times. Default is 1.
• -m [M] - [M] number of matches, best of [M] matches. (Overrides -n) Recommended 1, 3, or 5. Default is 1.
• -f [F] - Runs [F] format of game. Default is "constructed" (other options may not work, list extracted from code)
  • Commander
  • Oathbreaker
  • TinyLeaders
  • Brawl
  • MomirBasic
  • Vanguard
  • MoJhoSto
• -t [T] - for Tournament Mode, [T] for type of tournament.
  • Bracket - See wikipedia for Bracket Tournament
  • RoundRobin - See wikipedia for Round Robin Tournaments
  • Swiss - See wikipedia for Swiss Pairing Tournaments
• -p [P] - [P] number of players paired, only used in tournament mode. Default is 2.
• -q - Quiet Mode, only prints the result not the entire log.

Examples:

To simulate a basic three games of two decks (deck1 and deck2 must be meta deck names of decks in <userdata>\decks\constructed\):

• Windows: .\forge.exe sim -d deck1 deck2 -n 3
• Linux: ./forge.sh sim -d deck1 deck2 -n 3

To simulate a single 3-player Commander game (deck1, deck2, and deck3 must be meta deck names of decks in <userdata>\decks\commander\):

• Windows: .\forge.exe sim -d deck1 deck2 deck3 -f commander
• Linux: ./forge.sh sim -d deck1 deck2 deck3 -f commander

To simulate a round robin tournament; best of three, with all decks in a directory:

• Windows: .\forge.exe sim -D C:\DecksFolder\ -m 3 -t RoundRobin
• Linux: ./forge.sh sim -D /path/to/DecksFolder/ -m 3 -t RoundRobin

To simulate a swiss tournament; best of three, all decks in a directory, 3 player pairings:

• Windows: .\forge.exe sim -D C:\DecksFolder\ -m 3 -t Swiss -p 3
• Linux: ./forge.sh sim -D /path/to/DecksFolder/ -m 3 -t Swiss -p 3

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Original Text about AI, I wasn't comfortable removing.

It's not really setup to work in "first to X wins" matches right now, although since the AI doesn't sideboard running 3 games should give you what you're looking for. I think this is wrong.

Additionally, it'll run in the background (not print to the command line) and outputs to the standard forge.log as it plays. I think this is wrong too, by default it outputs to stdout and to forge.log unless the -q switches is enabled.

Each game ends with an announcement of the winner, and the current status of the match.