Well the game has been around for a while now, there were some definite signs of automation in the previous event too, there was a person in the set of people I could share my elite guards with that very likely was automated to attack one focus at a time until the guard died (including spending pudding), it is possible that they were just extremely ravenous, but it seemed too mechanical, their rate of attacking was incredibly consistent, and time of day had no impact on whether or not they would start attacking. I stopped calling them in to attack because it basically just turned in to giving them another guard to kill.

p.s. apologizing for derailing the discussion a bit