Balanced maps are incredibly dull. Most lottery games are played on balanced maps. All the earth maps are imbalanced, pretty much anything that's not symmetrical is a little. That is a good thing, it creates dynamic strategic games.

I agree, thats why wastelands are generally randomly added, to change the weight of each part of the map randomly. Jim asked ideas of maps more balanced than small earth, it doesn't mean he is looking for perfectly balanced/symetrical maps. And Lottery maps are balanced only if you look at the geometry. But here the meaning of "map" clearly include the bonus distribution. But you already know all that

Hello

Let's just define a balanced map as a map where different strategies are viable. At present there is quite some variety in the games played by the bots. However this variety comes from the bots not playing properly and from the high luck factor. If the bot who took Australia is able to crush South America then only because either the other bot got unlucky or he didn't follow the correct strategy for South America. Thinking about the board I don't see many strategies that are viable here. What I mean by a viable strategy is that any other strategy will lose against it.

Strategy 1: Take South America and blockade North Africa. Then slowly take North America. As soon as you have North America start finishing off the opponent.

Strategy 2: Take Australia and North Africa. Stack high enough against South America until you have enough armies to take Africa / push the opponent out of Africa.

Strategy 3: Take Europe in 3 turns. Then go strong into North Africa and play your 5v4 income advantage.

(Perhaps doing stuff like going for Australia and a big surprise attack with your North America pick is also a possible strategy.)

Only if one of the bots goes for strategy 3 this map allows variety in gameplay. With the strategies 1+2 it's just a race for North Africa.

"Let's just define a balanced map as a map where different strategies are viable"

I realise I risk pissing you all off but the terminology is going to be important if anyone else is going to join the discussion and I really hope they do. A map is simply the board. Territories in a specific arrangement. The map is part of the template. The template includes all the settings; luck, distribution mode, base income, the specific income attributed to bonuses (I think you guys call those super regions?).

Youre absolutely right, we need a template that rewards a little creativity or higher level strategic planning. That is exactly what players look for too, so most games that you see being played in the open games lobby will be candidates. May I recommend guiroma, strat 1v1, 3v3ENC. Ill look for some links now.

Guiroma: A tidy little 2v2 template with not too many connections between bonuses which gives a short game, often won on picks http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6213005

3v3ENC: The quintessential 3v3 template, sprawling with a few high income hot spots that players must contest. Games can feel repetitive due to no wastelands and limited picking options. http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6095307 There are other templates on the same map with more picking options that are much less forgiving to small mistakes.

Strategic 1v1: Dynamic and complex, lends itself to creative aggressive play, with a huge player base. I play 99% of my games on these settings. Cards and wastelands may be too complex for simple bots to handle. http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6088494

Edited 5/10/2014 09:23:32

you just want the master race to conquer all!

As I was coding an update this morning, I wrote this little gem while in code-mode:

RoundNumber = roundNumber; //(for mocking opponent)

Gave me a little chuckle :)

I am now mocking you. Every. Single. Game.

Cheers!

Edited 5/11/2014 14:57:37

Thank you all so far for your suggestions. Definitely some food for thought. I see now why FFA isn´t maybe the best idea for the next competition. But we´re going to think hard and try to come up with the best combination of ideas.

More suggestions are always welcome :)

fixed some bugs and ended up with worse performance on my bot, need to do some serious update on initial rounds battles during this week or i'm out of the top race, hope i find the time. :S

Do you guys think the suggested changes; different map, wastelands, 16% luck factor and different starting regions distribution is enough to have people really adapt their bots?

We're looking for people to really have fun again in (re)coding their bot and not just re-upload the one they have already written and perform really well with it.

Wouldn't a good bot perform well on all settings? :P

jim: like i said before, just a different map would not be enough (people would still hardcode their strategy), having random maps might be much better imho.

ps what strategy would you hardcode for a strat 1v1?

@ Jim: Speaking just for myself here.... Unless the next competition has random maps I hardly need to recode my bot at all. If it's just a different map (but always that same map) I can adapt my current version fairly quickly, and that wouldn't be much of a challenge. Different luck requires no adaptation at all, wastelands require a single check to disable expansion in that bonus and factor them into pathing.

I'd look forward to recode my bot from bottom up if there are at least 3 different maps, randomly selected each game.


@ Timinator: Coding a bot that performs well on any map and any settings requires many many times more work than a bot that performs well on a specific map under specific circumstances. So the answer to your question is yes, but the price is high for creating such a bot.

Would LD need more new coding pedrito?

I assume you mean local deployments? It depends on the map size. Yes it would require a substantial change in the way the AI thinks about expansion and exploration in order to use it efficiently on a bigger map. On the Small Earth map however it wouldn't be much of a factor because by the time any bonus aside Oceania and South America is owned by a bot the game is usually over, or will be before those reinforcements could make any impact.

Edit: Oh yeah, local deployments would also totally break my bots ability to guess how big my enemy is and where he's expanding... ouch!

On the other hand local deployments would make for much longer games on a bigger map, and therefore more server load.

Edited 5/12/2014 15:56:19

dead piggy: i'm talking about fixed map knowledge, like how for example we know SEA is a nice location to counter russia and scandinavia combos. or how greenland is more safe then australia. this info is mostly the same regardless of where the wastelands are at.

i would prefer to have coders focused on coding an algorythm that analyzes the map layout and comes to all those conclusions / decisions by itself. not hardcoded as a "if russian combos are good, deploy safe and place counter in SEA" rule.

so that algorythm could be carried to another map (battle islands v for example) and work just as good.

so my point is to have a batch of, i dont know, 10 maps, something that would be annoying enough for a coder to avoid detecting and hard code all decisions, each of the maps with slightly different settings and layout and have the coders abstract all that layer of strategic decision.

Couldn't agree more with what ps said.

The real challenge would be to create a bot that can read the map, identify weak and strong spots, plan ahead, and execute a real strategy.

Currently none of the bots even works at a strategic level (as far as I can see that is). They are quite efficient tacticians, but what little strategy is used comes mainly from the hard coded opening moves. SupremeDalek's strategy is to deploy strong in Oceania, Trogatrog's strategy is to deploy equally on both small continents and then counter enemy deploy. After the initial phase is broken, the bots play on a purely tactic level.

This has to do with the simplicity of the Small Earth map, and also with the fact that if the coder knows what map the game will be played on it's easier and more efficient to hard code strategy than to rely on more volatile interpretation methods.

Hello

How dare you announce my strategy pedrito. However I don't see why you call Trogabot's strategy hardcoded:
--> Give each bonus a value according to how many territories still to take --> Initially South America and Australia get a higher value than Africa. Perhaps mark Africa as unimportant since to much regions there.
--> First try to deploy enough armies to defend. This gives the South America spot 3 armies and the remaining two armies go to Australia since defence is also possible there.

I admit I hardcoded that my bot prefers Australia (by giving Australia extra points in the evaluation stage). Also you can call my first move hardcoded but that's just to prevent my bot from attacking first move. Apart from that it's not fair to call my bot hardcoded. I wrote quite complex algorithms telling me which bonuses the opponent has and there I didn't add any "South America" exception. If you see my bot stacking in Africa till he has 20 armies together and then marching towards South America then this is completely dynamic behavior that will work on every map.

OK, you told my secret now I tell your secret:
The main reason both SupremeDalek and pedrito play that well is because they both rip off bots that can't play South America. Also neither of our two bots is able to play South America themselves. Trogabot was the first bot to reach the 3000 mark but then he changed his strategy and he immediately dropped down in rank. That's not because the other bots improved but because him rising that high was also due to him ripping off bots not capable of playing South America.

Pedrito's last game against a SouthAmerica bot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/537156bd4b5ab26e84c7ec58

SupremeDalek's last game against a South America bot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/537137ac4b5ab26e84c7ea47
(OK, wen't a little different but if not for the Africa victory SupremeDalek would have marched towards South America)

Pedrito won this game but still this game acts as proof that pedrito can't play South America:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5370f46c4b5ab26e84c7e5ce

The real challenge would be to create a bot that can read the map, identify weak and strong spots, plan ahead, and execute a real strategy.

That would be very cool, do you think anyone can do it? I assumed that was way beyond your capacity as most humans cant do that, and the bots in the current competition aren't even close. It sounds like you should use the real time ladder templates.