The Game of Life on Steam, Part 5: AI Behavior and Counter-Strategies

The Game of Life on Steam, Part 5: AI Behavior and Counter-Strategies

The AI players in the Game of Life are a mixed bag. Sometimes, they can give you a run for your money, or even win the game outright. At other times, however, they will make highly egregious errors. Here are some of the observations I made while playing against the AI, along with a few strategies I used to counter them..

Career Choices and House Purchases

AI players should consider themselves lucky if they end up with the Entertainer or Athlete careers if they choose to start a career straight away - these cards are the only regular Career Cards without a maximum salary, and there is only a 33% chance of starting out with such a card if no other regular Career Cards have been taken. With any other regular career, they tend to struggle unless they get really lucky, such as from winning large amounts of money from Spin to Win.

However, if an AI player chooses to go to college at the start of the game, they will have a much better chance of winning, assuming they aren't sued too often or lose their job later on, since College Careers tend to have higher salaries than regular Careers, as we have seen earlier. As such, you should be especially wary of any AI player that ends up with a high-paying College Career, particularly if that career is a Lawyer or Doctor.

When the time inevitably comes for them to buy a Starter Home, they won't always buy a house with a $20,000 profit margin, if one is still available, even though we have already seen why it is beneficial to do so. However, they may buy a house that they can't afford without taking out any loans - a potentially self-defeating decision. It gets worse when they choose to incur large debts by trading up to a better House that's more expensive than the amount of cash on hand they currently have. However, this is a fairly rare occurrence, since selling off Starter Homes is optional, not mandatory - and most of the time, AI players won't even bother to do so.

Career Swapping

Sometimes, AI players will choose to return to school instead of continuing on the Path of Life. Usually, when they finish school, they will take a $20,000 pay raise, but they may change careers instead. In that particular case, if they end up with a higher-paying career than their previous one, you should be worried about the possibility of them catch up to you later on. However, they may make some bone-headed decisions when it comes to career choices, such as:

• Returning to school and replacing their current career with one that pays less in the long term, or:
• Having a lower-paying career and either not returning to school at all, or returning to school only to not change careers and take the lower-paying $20,000 pay raise option instead.

If any AI players choose such self-defeating options, you should feel relieved, since you won't have to worry about them as much as you would otherwise.

Lawsuits, Life Tiles and Share the Wealth Cards

Whenever an AI player lands on a Lawsuit space, it will always sue the wealthiest player in terms of net worth. Under most circumstances, this is a good idea, but occasionally, another opponent could turn out to be more of a threat in the long term and should be targeted for lawsuits instead. As such, exploiting the weaknesses of such a short-sighted strategy by suing the player with the highest-paying career (which may not always be the wealthiest one) may be preferable under those circumstances - a tactic I have used to great effect against even the toughest AI players. The AI also tends to follow a similar philosophy by targeting the wealthiest player when taking life tiles from other opponents after the draw pile has been fully depleted.

In general, AI players will use Share the Wealth Cards against opponents at the first opportunity. However, I have proven this strategy to be misguided more often than not: given that every Share the Wealth Card can only be used once, they would be better off saving them for when they need it the most. In particular, Exemption Cards should be reserved when you are about to be sued or stand to 

Spin to Win

The AI is not very good at making the most of a Spin to Win space. It is quite rare for them to win, and when they do, they don't earn very much from it (amounts from $50,000 to $150,000 are most common) due to not having wagered much money initially. This generally over-conservative strategy ultimately hinders them in most cases, although I have seen AI players earn $400,000 or more from Spin to Win. However, I always keep an eye out for the possibility of this happening, and when it does, I tend to counter it by suing that player repeatedly until it is no longer as much of a threat - potentially avoiding the problem of a particular AI player earning too much money as shown above.

In short, AI behavior in the Game of Life is wildly inconsistent, and can vary from self-defeating to potentially game-winning. However, if you are aware of what the AI tends to do, and how to counter it, you should still be able to win with ease. It's not a guarantee, though; sometimes, you could win or lose by the skin of your teeth. Such narrow margins are rare, but the game gets more exciting whenever it ends this way.