[RonCo]

Since I have no insight into his algorithms, I'll just say that it's possible that Markus has written a very sophisticated algorithm to force a team to make a bad decision specifically in order to keep scoring to some limit.

But I think it more likely--far, far more likely--that his AI algorithm just isn't robust enough to take into account a two-three move chain of events. I'm purely guessing that in this case it makes a decision to bunt because Markus thinks that's a decent strategy, then after the bunt is resolved his AI makes a decision on whether to keep the SP in the game.

The game AI is a continual source of angst, and I think it always will be. This is because it's really, really hard (IMHO) to write an AI that will make the right calls. The "right call" is difficult to define, better yet make a piece of software that determines it.

If I see three people posting that they see a single bad decision, it makes me wonder. On the ohter hand, OOTP owners play thousands and thousands of games in a week. Real baseball teams play only a hundred or so. Three occurrences in 5,000 games is hard to get too excited about. I note that no one gets into the forum and says "Wow! My #8 hitter bunted, then the AI pinch-hit for may pitcher! What a great call by the AI!"

Given the sheer number of OOTP games in a day, the repetition of a 100-1 shot had better happen quite a number of times or else the game's engine is not truly random.

At the end of the day, though, I agree with the idea that the AI has many bad logic flaws. I just don't see any evidence that makes me think it's because Markus is trying to shoehorn in results to match some pre-defined outcome.

I do, however, see compelling evidence that his algorithms are based on setting random probablilty and using the computer's ever-present random number generator.

Please note that I'm not intending to rant on Markus. I know he trulywants his AI to be great. But I've been on record before as saying that it always will have these flaws because Markus is not a 100-person psychological study group. It is my opinion that he can't possibly be expected to write a piece of code that will think like Davey Johnson or Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson or, for that matter, like me--baseball is a game far more complex than chess, and it took major think-tanks decades to write chess programs that could compete with humans.