Im shocked, so many good bots out..

Sorry if that sounded insulting. It's not that I'm saying you shouldn't be in the finals and only the top 8 should be there or something like that. I was merely saying it would make more sense to me if you at least had to go up against someone in the top 12 first to get there. I think it would be more fair if everyone that made it to the finals had at least one opponent in the top 12. The altered setup I suggested had a top 6 person in each of the 6 brackets so you either had to beat a top 6 person (or someone who did) or claw your way through the loser's bracket to get there. It was a more even distribution of the ranks as they were at the end of the qualifiers. And yes I know people shift around a lot. I hit higher ranks than 13th (10th was best I ever saw myself hit) and I even slipped all the way back to 36th at one point after a bad losing streak. I was just thinking if I was in the position of a few of these higher ranked bots I'd be a little annoyed that they got to go to the finals and I didn't. I'm not suggesting my bot should be there (and it will likely get knocked out in its next matchup).

The truth is, only reasonable distribution of semi-finals should be random one.

My bot (#22) destroyed #18, but I can't get to the final because of muli (#20) that my record against is 2:18.

What I mean is, every bot has it's counterbot. The fact that I am #22 doesn't mean I am worse than 21 bots. I am better than #18 but worse than #20 etc. etc.

Good bots knocked out are example of unluckiness. They prolly been fighting against their counters.

Edited 6/3/2014 22:59:59

Yeah I would have been happier with random opponents. But they seemed set on controlling it and then essentially 'fixing' it on some level which I didn't care for. They didn't use a simple or standard method for matching people, but controlled it in a custom fashion to 'make it interesting' or something as they say. I'd have preferred random and just letting the chips fall as they may. As you say some bots counter others so rank is by no means straight forward. Agreeing with you there.

Hello

but I can't get to the final because of muli (#20)
I have no idea what this Muli bot is doing among the top 24. Seriously, this is just a nonsense bot with probably a few hundred lines of code. The only thing that he does right is going strong into Africa from Australia.

Muli at his worst vs SupremeDalek:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5384e0984b5ab2088e1bb8fc

I disagree that the bots are at approximately the same strength. Of course with these semi final pairups it will appear that the bots are close since a couple bad / medium bots will get a free way to the finals. Also the 100% luck setting makes it look like the playing field is closer together than it actually is.

Edited 6/4/2014 03:59:45

Muli has beaten my bot a few times, but my bot can be pretty retarded as I didn't have enough time to clean up some of its behaviors and added a lot in the last day or so (also had to comment out a large portion that I didn't have time to find the problem with).

Just watched this game against Troga:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/538c72db4b5ab23cee6dbcc7

That may be me at my best. Doing well in a standoff and taking a bonus to then win with. Of course if my bot was better I might have been able to kick him out of South America with all those advantageous hits I took. Still was nice to see something I added real late working well enough to get me a win.

Checked my record against Muli, he clocked a few wins against me. I'm 10/3 against him if I counted right. Didn't look to see if it was the Australia to Africa thing, but my bot could fall prey to that. I did manage to add in some guarding behavior for South America, but it also makes my bot a bit retarded sometimes in Africa costing me some games.

Lol Muli can't play himself, So it's hard to expect, that his bot will be good :P

condolences to trogabot, you deserved to be in the finals imho!

i was thinking herz would also kick my ass, my back games log against him didn't look too favorable for me. lucky to go through. hope adsriskbot loses against mweb. i think i have better chance against him. mweb's north america counter strategy seems quite defendable but somehow still managed to beat me. :(

feels abit wrong to play against same bot twice on the semifinals, shouldnt we be playing against the loser from one of the other brackets?

ps: so you've finally noticed the North America strategy :P?

I also feel unlucky in this bracket. I think I have only roughly 25% chance to go to the finals at this point, where the main probability comes from being in the 3-way pre-final, but expecting to lose to Gadzbot (bad record), as well as 8-9 unfavorable odds to even get there against you, ps. Lastly being slow as we discussed in the stream will not help considering number of rounds will be used as a tie-breaker.

Ikalgo: i dont know what happened, like i had mentioned to you before: i had taken a look at those bots who used north america counter, and i usually beat them, but this mweb i took a look at the back logs and i already had losing stats against him, not sure why, maybe couz he still keeps expanding from australia into africa so i cant even get a safe africa when managing to hold up against the north america counter which i usually manage just fine. this is especially saddening couz mweb has such horrible managment of troops, attacks with 1 on first action, doesnt distribute properly to finish super region. and yet still manages to easily beat me. :(

Edited 6/4/2014 13:15:31

condolences to trogabot, you deserved to be in the finals imho!

It's the way the chips fall. I knew Dbag (and Webmartino, actually) have bots that can easily defeat mine, so I'm not too upset about it.

Dalek defeats my bot too, so that's not a huge deal (kudos, Norman).

Just irritated about how the pairings happened. In any normal tournament format, I would have played a lower-ranked bot 1st round, and it looks like pedrito second round. Probably lost, but at least made it to top 8.

Just as luck has it, I played the top bot and a scissor bot to my paper bot. It happens.

Anyways, I'm going to be gutting my bot and putting significantly smarter code in for the next challenge. Also, I'm not going to put in a last minute change next time either thinking I'd be putting something smart in (which turns out was my downfall against Dbag and Webmartino) :)

Looking forward to watching the next few rounds! Good luck gentlemen!

I was writing a really long and detailed post about lots of shit and then the browser crashed... damnit!!

Anyways here's the short version without any attempt at literary aesthetics:

-Semifinals pairings silly
BUT
-Rankings not representative of real bot skill anyways because of luck factor

-Why are semifinals minimum 5 games a match, but finals only 3 games? Strange.

-Sorry Trogatog, shit happens :O

considering the luck factor i would hope for _more_ games in the finals, not less :)
but well, let's see how it goes.

feels abit wrong to play against same bot twice on the semifinals, shouldn't we be playing against the loser from one of the other brackets?

Yeah I'm probably going to have to face Blender again, who trumps me with his Europe strategy.

Just as luck has it, I played the top bot and a scissor bot to my paper bot.

Yeah well my scissors are about to be re-featured on an episode of 'will it blend?'. Fracking thing blends like a beast! Wicked scientists and their deviously strong inventions, argh! And yet perhaps I'm no better than a common scientist putting a mouse in a maze. Perhaps if I'd just straight up given them the cheese they would have fought and won for great justice instead of because of my trickery. I have only myself to blame for my coming defeat. I've done wrong by my bot and I don't deserve to win a thing for it! I thought at least I was feeding it delicious cheese, but I wasn't being honest about it. I was a bad parent to my bot, shame on me!

Edited 6/4/2014 20:02:22

considering the luck factor i would hope for _more_ games in the finals, not less :)
but well, let's see how it goes.

I know, right? Why weren't there 50 matches for semis and 100 for top 8? I think I run 100 matches in about 5 minutes. Plus, it would add the the eager anticipation of the outcome :D

Winners that have made it into the finals: [wins/losses/ties]
SupremeDalek (1) -- beats Blender (9) [5/3/2] (who faces Dbagbot (13) next)
Damian_Warlight (19) -- beats Speedy2014 (17) [8/6/0] (who faces Assimilator (21) next)
AdsRiskbot (3) -- beats mweb (15) [5/2/0] (who faces psWarlighter (11) next)
pedrito (4) -- beats Webmartino (16) [5/2/0] (who faces TheeYo (8) next)
Muli (20) -- beats SupremeLeader (22) [5/0/0] (who faces HouplessBot(18) next)
GreenTea (2) -- beats Gadzbot (10) [5/1/0] (who faces KewaKareban (14) next)

I feel particularly sad that my bot basically would have won 2 games extra against Norman had I just finalized my last-added-on-the-last-day strategy of capturing USA and not bothering/amassing on the Asian border against pedrito/greentea (which wouldn't be needed anyway as I now hide income). Ah well.... Norman does have a very solid bot and it indeed shows in chaos.

Edited 6/4/2014 22:12:43

http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/538c74984b5ab23cee6dbcf4
hard to watch without pain :'(

Hah, damn he was doing so well then he fell apart at the end. Looks very similar to one of the stupid things my bot does in Africa that causes him to stalemate a won game as well. Although mine doesn't play as well in the prior respects as shown in that game. Mine would go for North America when it could hold the Africa block, but would probably lose before that letting him take Europe without a proper fight.

Edited 6/4/2014 22:31:27