Since AI4's HP was reduced to 150, there has been growing suspicion that they have become an excellent source of profit. However, tests have been infrequent and scattered. As a few recent forays into AI4 grinding by several people have indicated that it is probably a great source of money both unupped and upped, in the spirit of FGEI, the arena stats thread, the old AI3 TTW studies, and others, I decided it was time to start collecting some data.
There are two purposes to this study:
Spin ChanceFirst, I would like to expand on the work begun by
kev, where he
recorded the spins from 300 wins against AI4. I have recorded a good bit of wins which I will eventually add in to his numbers, but they seem to be reinforcing what he had already learned. Even though I don't expect the final result to be very different, I would like to get a collection of at least a thousand actual non-simulated in-game AI4 wins, ideally from several sources, to be able to be quite confident that we know the spin rates.
For now, though, working just with the approximate rate of one upped card per twelve wins which was shown in kev's study, it is apparent that AI4 is
far ahead of AI3 and arena in terms of pure profit over time within the fully unupped meta. While there have been far fewer tests, it appears that AI4 is likely quite profitable upgraded as well - this remains to be seen.
If you would like to help collect spin chance stats, all you need to do is to pay attention when you defeat an AI4. Keep track of your total number of wins and the total number of upped and unupped cards you receive from the spins. It is not necessary to break down this part of the study by deck - we just need to know total wins and total cards received. As more stats are collected, I will periodically update the table in this thread with the new totals and the percentages. I would like a minimum of 20
wins included in any submission to the spin chance stats, just to cut down on the number of updates I need to make.
DecksThis is the more traditional part of the study, as seen in FGEI, arena stats, TTW studies, and others. As it seems quite probable that AI4 is an excellent target to get money, the question becomes what decks are the most effective at getting money from AI4 quickly. This part will follow the same general format as the arena stats thread. A minimum of 50 games with a given deck are required for the deck to be included, and 100+ are vastly preferred. Unlike the arena stats thread, TTW (average turns to
win) is also required to be included here, as speed is of the essence. EM rate is not strictly required, though it is highly preferred. If you don't post an EM rate, I will probably just assume the EM rate is zero.
I would like to eventually have stats for both unupped (and ideally rareless) and upped, but I am more immediately concerned with the very early game decks, so unupped/rareless decks are what I'll mostly be personally testing. I would love any help from anyone who wants to test anything at any part of the game. The more participants, the better. If you're relatively new to the game but you want to help out with stats, this is a great way to do it - AI4 is a much easier target than any of the other AIs which are actively being studied.
For anyone curious about the profitability, at the time of this posting, it is my belief that top tier unupped/rareless AI4 farming decks are 1.5-2x as profitable as top tier unupped/rareless AI3/bronze/silver farming decks. I would not be surprised if the infrequent unupped FG farming decks are still more profitable, but I also wouldn't be surprised if an AI4 deck could be found that would surpass them. It also appears that even a mid-range AI4 deck can pull 1.2x the profit of a top tier AI3 deck - I'm not totally sure yet, but rough numbers right now say that you need about a 40% win rate/12 TTW against AI4 in order to roughly tie monodeath against AI3 for profit.
I am not sure about how profitable AI4 is upped, though the one test I've done so far seems to put it roughly equivalent to a low-to-middle range upped FG deck.
I hope to be able to collect enough stats to get a much better idea of the actual profit. If you want to contribute, please do. AI4 is a fun target to play against with their random decks - every game is different. AI4 is fast, too. They rarely present a strong defense, and most decks that can get to 100 hp quickly can generally get to 150 hp within a turn or two more.
Spin Chance TablePlayer Wins Upped Unupped
---------------- ------ -------- ---------
kev 300 23 67
treebeard xiii 54 2 12
Fippe94 20 2 6
ColorlessGreen 327 28 70
trashduke 40 2 4
ginandtonic 40 1 10
Blutrabe 42 4 3
TribalTrouble 40 5 4
Mythrilvael 85 9 20
RulacMage11 86 14 23
Pvt_14 70 8 9
ChemMan13 75 9 11
---------------- ------ -------- ---------
1179 107 239
9.08% 20.27%
Average extra profit per win: 117.90
Extra profit per win assumes that a successful upped spin is worth 1160 electrum (as assumed in FGEI) and a successful unupped spin is worth 62 electrum (as shown by Xeno's simulation), and is calculated as ((UppedWinRate * 1160) + (UnuppedWinRate * 62)). As a point of comparison,
Xenocidius' simulation showed an
average of 25.6 extra electrum per win from AI3.
