How do minions get AP in Marvel Puzzle Quest Dark Reign?

Lately I have been playing Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign by D3 Publisher. I'm playing it on Android but it is available for other platforms.

When playing the single-player missions, there are two kinds of opponent characters: "villains" and "minions". Members of H.A.M.M.E.R. and the Maggia are minions; Venom, Dr. Doom, and other named characters are "villains".

Only villains have the ability to move tiles on the board to make matches and hurt your characters with tile damage. In some battles there is one villain and two minions, and if you stun the villain, then only you are moving tiles until the villain wakes up.

You get AP by making tile matches. I think villains get AP by making tile matches. But how do minions get AP?

In a pure minion battle (i.e. you downed all villains or the team was three minions to start), only you are moving tiles to make matches. Yet the minions continue to accumulate AP and are able to plant their timers on the board. How does this work?

To be more specific: suppose I am fighting three minions who all have area-of-effect attacks that require 10 green AP. I want to keep these minions from being able to put their timers onto the board. What can I do?

Do the minions get part of every AP I match? Then I could avoid matching any green as much as possible.

Can I keep the minions from getting green AP by matching it all myself and clearing the board of green?

I have found a few guides, "walkthroughs", and wikis discussing the game, but I haven't found any discussion of this.

Solution 1:

After playing this for some time, it appears that simple minions draw 1 AP of whatever color they desire. This means when a player is fighting against 3 minions, their AP pool will fill with 3 AP points of whatever color the AI chooses whenever it is their turn. If you stun one, the other two will draw an AP point when it is their turn.

The simple minions will always choose a color that benefits them (ie, they will not choose a red AP point when they do not have any skills that use red, they will choose either a yellow or green if they need yellow or green points for their skills, etc).