Ah, I see.

It's actually kinda funny because I initially designed my bot to be an aggressive SA bot (I actually still have a variable in my code called "saRegion" for one of my place army movement). The logic is still the same for starting in Australia and in SA though, although my rankings are significantly different :)

How do you have access to our code out of curiosity? Are you even eligible for the competition with such an advantage?

Ah no, I don't have access to you guys code. If I was able to peek the only thing that would really interest me is how pedrito manages to tell where the opponent expands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlpRBLkgcBo
All other things in you guys bots are pretty obvious.

I traded JArs with 125ch209. I use his JAR to test my own bot with one of the GUIs someone posted at the forums. This is quite useful since Gadzbot plays differently than SupremeDalek. I was just curious how 125ch209 managed to organize his code since his bot does so well despite him asking those easy questions in the forums.

Oh -- gotcha. I was actually kinda bothered when you said you peeked. Good to know that there's no other advantage :)

added a nasty bug yesterday when doing an update, left the bot losing games all night, made it drop down back to 17th. Did a couple updates yesterday to fix that and a few more things, still slowly climbing up.

Slippery slope with bots of generic approach, you change a little something and it can influence in unpredictable ways, used to have mine stacking up and breaking into SA all the time, now it just disperses around on Africa trying to be smart but hitting enemy walls instead. :D

am i the only one struggling not to rename my bot Anna?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7iU0GGVco8

It's very tight right now in the top. Most games up there are decided by luck IMO. Every now and then the bots make an obvious mistake that a human player wouldn't, but most of the time they are competent.

I'd be surprised if anyone can take their bot to a next level.

well, we have 20 days to find out :p

It's very tight right now in the top. Most games up there are decided by luck IMO. Every now and then the bots make an obvious mistake that a human player wouldn't, but most of the time they are competent.

I'd be surprised if anyone can take their bot to a next level.

TREMBLE.

Sometimes I see games where the winning bot just got plain lucky but the vast majority of defeats aren't necessary. Let's point out some easy to fix mistakes and skip those more tough ones:

Pedrito vs SupremeDalek:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5367642c4b5ab235189fc55b
Turn 4: Supreme Dalek takes Australia in one turn instead of defending South America
Turn 7: Unnecessary risk taking with taking Africa in one turn by Supreme Dalek
--> SupremeDalek got lucky in this game.

Trogabot vs psWarlighter:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746814b5ab235189fc2cd
Turn 4: An 8v2 neutrals attack should happen before an irrelevant transfer move.
Turn 10: Same problem with psWarlighter doing his transfers first and then attacking the neutrals. Didn't have any effect though.
--> Trogabot lost because of his turn 4 mistake.

Trogabot vs KewaKareban:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5366e7744b5ab235189fba6b
During the whole game Trogabot reveals his problems with expanding efficiently. If the opponent had been smart enough to move towards the known opponent spots in Australia Trogabot would have lost. Turn 4 it was an easy win for KewaKareban.
--> Game not won on luck

pedrito vs RaptorBot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746124b5ab235189fc2c4
Pedrito knew the opponent had South America. The current version of SupremeDalek would have walked around the stack.
--> Unnecessara stalemate.

pedrito vs Trogabot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5366b2114b5ab235189fb5d3
Unnecessary stalemate. If Trogabot had attacked that Africa spot he would have won.

Gadzbot vs Trogabot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/53673bd14b5ab235189fc1e0
Gadzbot is the only bot pulling off counterpicks at present.

I don't have a game at present but most bots just deploy to the opponent border instead of deploying to a bigger stack in the background and moving the big stack first order to the border.

Most games up there are decided by luck IMO.

I'm obligated to agree.
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536780a64b5ab235189fc81f

counterpicking isn't very "smart" on this setup considering you only start with 2 armies on each territory and very likely bordering your opponent. you won't have time or income to surprise your opponent. that's what i concluded a month or so back. couple weeks ago i also concluded starting in australia with a foot in SA/Africa/Europe is usually better then being based in South America.

Trogabot vs psWarlighter:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746814b5ab235189fc2cd
Turn 4: An 8v2 neutrals attack should happen before an irrelevant transfer move.
Turn 10: Same problem with psWarlighter doing his transfers first and then attacking the neutrals. Didn't have any effect though.
--> Trogabot lost because of his turn 4 mistake.

Actually, it was a logic bug on turn 3 that was introduced yesterday :-/

Some of the glaringly obvious mistakes with Trogabot surprised me that others didn't take advantage of them. Stalemates are going to slowly go away (I've still got a little time!) now that I've started looking for extra income to use for expanding

Round 28: Estimated Opponent Income: 5

Round 28: Potentially 1 armies available on Argentina for seeking new income

Round 28: Potentially 4 armies available on EastAfrica for seeking new income

Stalemates are just an eyesore when I'm sitting in Africa alone....

Edited 5/5/2014 18:24:49

Most games up there are decided by luck IMO.

No, I disagree -- most aren't. Once in a while, sure. Then again, sometimes you just have to shake your had at the RNG:

http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536634a64b5ab235189faaca

i do wish the attack randomness wasn't so wide ranged. some of these games you just don't have a chance regardless if you do everything "right" or not.

Opinions are divided on the subject of luck. Good!

was thinking my bot was finally robust, but i seem to still lose against those folks who focus on SA and then stack on north africa while slowly expanding into north america. Even if i expand into asia it's usually too late. So i guess maybe it's time to rethink the idea that australia is safer.

Also noticed that some bots go for triple pick in europe when available, which i feel might be too risky, you will need to be able to defend double border against northafrica for a couple of turns, but somehow they manage to pull it off, i'm divided if they've just been lucky or what.

Hi All! I wonder, how many bots are writen only for this map, and will not work on other maps?
For me I can say that only hardcode connected with map is to select first 2 picks in Australia ( It's given 70% of wins against older version)

Edited 5/6/2014 12:50:10

Hello

I was probably to fast with anouncing my next generation bot. I don't have enough time at present. What I wanted to do is to add labels to each region allowing me to distinguish far more situations and giving my bot a better map understanding. For example he could tell quite precise when a stalemate situation occured.

@GreenTea:
It depends on how you define that the bot only works on this map. In my opinion there are three different map types:
- Huge expanding maps (Big Europe map, Eastern Asia)
- Balanced expanding / fighting maps (Medium Earth, Europe map)
- Fighting maps (Small Earth)

The more the map is foccused on fighting the better my bot works. The heuristic never to expand into two bonuses at the same time isn't good for all maps. Also I have a heuristic about when to use armies to expand into a bonus depending on whether I'm losing or winning and how much regions are still to take. Although this isn't hard coded this heuristic doesen't make sense on all maps. When I lose connection to the opponent then at present I walk strong into his direction. This works very fine on this small map. On a bigger map like medium earth you can't just build a big stack and march towards the opponent.

Hi, I understand and generally agree.

"The heuristic never to expand into two bonuses at the same time isn't good for all maps."
but if you implement some rule, when to expand on one, and when for more bonuses - then bot will be more map indepented.

"When I lose connection to the opponent then at present I walk strong into his direction." The same , could be possible to define whether it is needed to go to enemy with big stack or not.

But yes, probably this map is not require such checks and some strategies optimal for it could be hardcoded.

I didn't test bot on another maps, but it would be interesting. Small earth is too.. small :)

Norman your bot would do better on strat 1v1 than you think. Never expand in 2 bonuses and when you lose connection with your opponent walk strong into his direction are pieces of advice many players need to start following in their strat 1v1 games.

I agree with Norman. I tried to code my bot as map-independent as possible, but some of the rules that it follows just scale very bad with map size.
For example, my bot only considers bonuses for taking if no smaller bonuses are available (either because they are already owned or because they are disputed). This works well on small earth, but on any other map it's a recipe for disaster because I might simply not have any "smallest non disputed bonus" within reach, so the bot would not expand in this situation.