Well I was winning my first game but I couldn't finish as your program bugged on me and locked my cursor to one spot moving the map when I tried to move around. Clicking brought up the 'territories not connected' message. Which I could then move cursor around and click away the message, but then it returned to the former locked position back to the same spot which I couldn't get it to release from. Stuck dragging the map around, can't finish game.

Edit: Nevermind, looks like it saved my game and a refresh fixed the issue. Territories in North America aren't connected properly though.

Edited 7/12/2014 06:08:09

Are you able to see a history of games people play?

Yeah it's all saved in a database.
Whenever you run into a client-side bug like the sticky map refreshing the page should fix it.

I'll have a look into those NA territories, you don't remember which one it was?
edit: As far as I can see they all connect properly.

Edited 7/12/2014 12:11:19

The error is in your picture, there's a red line between Quebec (6) and NW Territories (2). They aren't actually connected though and shouldn't be. On their map Greenland extends down into parts of Canada and connects to Ontario (5) which is not shown on your map. So two errors in your drawing. But how it runs is probably in proper accord with how the map should be. Just need to fix the picture drawing and connections.

Thanks, I saw now what you mean. Different maps indeed, but that should be fixed now.

Also, luck is up to 75%, and both the player and the bot can see enemy moves from last turn now. So that removes both handicaps that the bot was fighting with.
Handicap number 1: the bot expects 100% luck, and in certain situation with 0% luck is better to expand because you know for sure you will have a bonus next turn, while with 100% luck its a gamble.
Handicap number 2: without access to enemy moves most of the strategic brain in my bot doesn't even get called. No predictions, no bonus guessing, no info about deployment and therefore it doesn't even try to break bonuses.

So far I've only posted the link in this forum and over at the The AI Games. Which means only experienced players have had access so far, and with both of the aforementioned handicaps, yet the bot has managed to get some wins. Time to send some people with no prior Risk experience and see how long it takes them to figure the game out.

http://elsocio.es/BP/index.php

Edited 7/12/2014 20:56:05

I tried it and lost honorlessly to your bot pedrito :(

But something else: I'm working on the next challenge and particularly on generating random maps. What existing Warlight maps do you guys think are good maps to have an algorithm recreate in terms of structure and amount of regions/bonuses?
The way I'm going to do it is randomly create maps, but using a (couple of) predefined structures based on good Warlight maps, so you can't end up with worthless maps, but still always get different ones.

All suggestions are welcome

small/medium earth are the ones I'm going to start with by the way

Nothing rigged about the distribution though, if both the bot and the player tie for a spot, its a 50/50 chance. And if you tie for the next spot as well, its 50/50 again. So technically if you take the exact same picks as the bot, there is a tiny chance that you get 4,5,6. And the same probability of getting 1,2,3.

That's not how distribution in Warlight works. Not sure how it worked in this AI-Challenge.

@ jim: These maps are quite nice too I think:

Europe:
http://warlight.net/Map?ID=73

Roman Empire A (has 1 province bonuses though):
http://warlight.net/Map?ID=1173

@ It's not how it works in Warlight maybe, but it's not rigged. That was my point.

if you expect distribution to be like warlight and you gut 1,5,6 first thought is "rigged" :P

Yeah maybe. Though a perfectly good explanation would be:

You pick A B C D E F

He picks B C D E F A

You get picks 1,5,6
He gets 2,3,4

Hello
That's not how distribution in Warlight works. Not sure how it worked in this AI-Challenge.
Works just as in warlight. First give player A highest prio pick, then player B highest available prio pick, then player A second highest available prio pick,...
--> Rotating between the players is all you need to get the warlight behavior.

@Jim:
I don't know how you are gonna generate those random maps. Here are however some thoughts about a good map:

Big bonuses are more worthwile than small ones in terms of income territory ratio. For example
2 regions --> 1 income
3 regions --> 2 income
4 regions --> 3 income
5 regions --> 5 income


With your map design you can determine whether the games will be huge stacking games or games with crazy action. The more open the map is the more action we will see in the games.

Also when you make multiple relatively small bonuses instead of just a couple big bonuses you will get more action and more back and forth. With the current small earth map when one bot manages to break a bonus of another bot it's usually game over.

I only played this map once but I can't name a better map for competitive warlight play:
http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=34052
This map is of course to big but it has the right principles. With such a balanced map also automatic distribution is a possibility. I can't understand those guys keep playing the ordinary europe map with auto distribution.

@Jim
Are you going to keep the 100 turn limit with this new competition? Which would limit you to keeping the maps rather small, but this would be your opportunity to change that limit and have the AIs play on some larger maps. Also are you going to strictly use generated maps or have you considered using some of the currently existing maps in the pool? As there are many you could use.

"Works just as in warlight. First give player A highest prio pick, then player B highest available prio pick, then player A second highest available prio pick,...
--> Rotating between the players is all you need to get the warlight behavior."

Wrong.

Warlight does not distribute picks as you described.

It does: ABBAABBAAB, not ABABABABAB.

Specifically, the reverse picks are given reverses every round, so in s1v1 it is:

AB
BA
AB

Ah yes, you are right. Of course that's the way stuff works, the order is swaped.

Edited 7/20/2014 06:02:21

@Doushibag
I'm not sure yet what we're going to do with the turn limit. Some maps are definitely going to be larger than the current one, so we're either going to make the limit larger on all maps or somehow dynamically change it per map. And if the generated maps turn out the be awesome then we'll only use those. If not we're going to have to change the plan completely.

Thanks for your map suggestions guys :)

If I may suggest something, Europe and ME maps are cool, but I don't think they would work well when it comes to random map generator. I think, that if we're talking about AI challenge, some regular shapes would be the best choice. I would consider hexagons (like this one: http://warlight.net/Map?ID=6619 but much smaller). Then I would randomly add empty spots all around the map and randomly connect adjacent territories with groups of 6-2 territories
(6 = +5 bonus
...
2 = +1 bonus)

I think that's the easiest way to solve it. Both for you and for bot programmers.

@Pedrito

I love it! It's what I imagined happening in Warlight single player when the AI challenge was announced. Now all that it needs is anonymous bots with different strategies (Didn't 125ch209, Norman and Trogatog post their source code?) and you'll create a real challenge.

@Jim
Also please use all possible shapes of bonuses

i.e.
from:
O-O
| |
O-O

to:
O-O-O-O
second is harder to capture, and bots should take this into accout.

+ you can analyze how many neighbours in average has regions of popular warlight maps (already posted in this thread) and use same value as mean value of neighbours count.

versions of battle islands iv, turkey and medium earth would be nice (and are fairly known to warlight players since they were all used in the seasonal ladders).

like greentea was mentioning, there should be a balance in maps that have more linear (i.e. safer, with less connections, easier to defend) territories, and multiple borders. battle islands and medium earth has a mix of both, turkey is entirely the second. europe is known for the importance of the north islands because they are safer to hold then getting similar income areas in the center and south.