Very funny. I have very little time right now, I'm about to leave for a 4 months trip halfway around the globe. pedrito_Warlight2 is how the system over at theaigames called my bot =), I just haven't come around to changing it to something meaningful.

But be patient, the last AI Challenge took many months to get properly started. The good guys will come around eventually. Meaningful name will appear. IIRC, the whole thing is still in beta stage.

Hey Guys,

Yea, you guys call it Tasks, I call it Plans like the famous Risk AI paper written :-)

Loving this competition a lot. Finally I'm trying to have the bot find an optimum. Though I'm not a great Warlight player myself, it is really fun for me, and I'm learning a lot through the competition!

I'm in a major rewrite at the moment. I finished 2 parts and I know 2 more crucial factors are needed. For example, I simply do not have a "Break" task in place. I created a monster evaluation function which really guides the bot well, but only in the logger output; now to just follow it ^_^ From what I can see, it will certainly be top bot material.

In other words, expect some "real" competition soon Norman :) In the mean time, I noticed your bot still has several flaws, but I guess you don't have so much motivation to improve.

By the way, GreenTea, I really suspected that you would come out on top in the new competition since it sounded like your bot was the least hardcoded. I'm really surprised not to see you on #1 at the moment.

Oh and Norman, it's fun to see you having switched to Europe in the old one as well ;)

Ikalgo: frankly, im surprised too! Current top players did fast investigation of macro mode of play on such big maps and use it, which gives them advantage usually at the beginning. I mean for example:
1) From start of game prefere expand over fight, because it will give more advantage after bonuses will be captured.
2) capturing bonus even if enemy is near its border -> it could work because if players has many contacts of armies in different places then no guaranty that enemy will try to attack exacly that bonus.
3) when many contacts of armies on map prefere attack over defend -> because usually its not enough armies to defend every region.

GreenTea operates usually more safely, which works fine on Small Earth but not working on bigger map. Thats why players who discovered and implemented the right macro mode for big maps are now in top.

+ We have different way of picking, and GreenTea uses the old implementation, which not taking into account information where enemy is picked.

But I have many ideas and currenly had not much time to start coding seriously, so wait for good fight in future!

Edited 1/3/2015 01:37:33

Hello

Yea, you guys call it Tasks, I call it Plans like the famous Risk AI paper written :-)
Can you give a link please?

In other words, expect some "real" competition soon Norman :) In the mean time, I noticed your bot still has several flaws, but I guess you don't have so much motivation to improve.

My current bot is still just a showcase of the tasks that I have implemented. First task 1 (BreakSuperRegionTask) gets all armies needed then task 2 the remaining, then task 3,... there is nothing integrated yet and all tasks work on the initial visible map without puting the changes of the board after the execution of previous tasks into account. If after the execution of all tasks there are still some armies left then I still got some code from the Java starterbot to handle the remaining stuff.

These are my current 'tasks' btw:
- BreakRegionsTask (only break one of the specified regions)
- BreakRegionTask
- DefendRegionsTask (defend all of the specified regions)
- DefendRegionTask
- DefendSuperRegionTask
- DelayTask
- JoinInAttacksTask
- MoveIdleArmiesTask (make sure that all armies join in to the attacks)
- NoPlanBreakBestRegionTask
- NoPlanDefendBestRegionTask
- OneHitBreakRegionTask
- PreventRegionsTask (Prevent the opponent from taking over all of the specified regions = SuperRegion)
- TakeRegionsTask
- TakeSuperRegionOverTask (completely push the opponent out of a SuperRegion.)

Some of the more high level tasks use the more low level tasks. For example DefendSuperRegionTask is responsible for defending a SuperRegion under threat. Therefore it can use the task DefendRegionsTasks (which uses the DefendRegionTask again) to deploy at all borders under threat or it can use the OneHitBreakRegionTask to hit an attacking region with a single attack. Since this attack should happen first order a message is inserted to this attack so that the MovesScheduler makes sure that this move gets executed first.

Edited 1/3/2015 04:12:09

Version 25. Only picking algorithm changed. And fixed one rare bug when bot starts breaking wastelands on start of game. Now interesting to see how only this changing in picking will affect winrate..

Version 16:
-Added some predictions about enemy bonuses, income and deploy.
-Greatly expanded the attacking functions of the bot.
-Delay moves. Any decent WL player know the value of delaying big attacks... I wonder how long the non WL players in the competition will take to incorporate this into their bots.

Edited 1/8/2015 20:02:45

To Pedrito: I like your delay moves :) Should implement something similar..

Version 46.
Prediction of enemy income improved. Now bot has 2 alrorithms for predition of where enemy will deploy his armies:
1) combinatorical algorithm: where we generate all possible income usages and take combination with max scores for enemy.
2) history algorithm: where enemy income usage from previous turn is taken as prediction of income usage for next turn.
And I use some criterias to enable 1st or 2nd alrogithm. Also in some situations prediction is not used.

Edited 1/10/2015 18:04:12

Guys, I'm wondering what would be the closest settings here on the Warlight website, so that I can practice these kind of maps with these settings myself :). Any advice?

Hello

Guys, I'm wondering what would be the closest settings here on the Warlight website, so that I can practice these kind of maps with these settings myself :). Any advice?

The settings part of your question is easy:
- 16% luck straight round
- random warlords distribution
- 2 neutrals, 2 starting armies
- Wastelands of 10 and amount of wastelands = amount of bonuses / 2
- Enough picks for both players to fill all bonuses
- everything else set to default stuff

Problem with finding a good map is that there is to much variation. As a human I would play those small maps with only 1 or 2 (or 0...) versatile bonuses completely different than the big maps.
--> http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge-2/games/54b221f04b5ab219f054bbf5 very poor map

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=12501
Should be a good map where you can also find some good opponents joining your games. Just as in our AI maps this map is pretty much open, it has a good size and I believe the way you priorize expansion vs fight should be quite similar. You can set the value of the magabonuses to 0.

Hello

Since I can't finish coding my bot on my own I'm looking for an experienced Java coder (or maybe more than one) to keep coding RealityBomb. The bot is relatively well structured and I still want to participate with giving specifications on how to solve WarLight problems (which bonuses to pick, move order,...)

The bot will then be our common bot and if someone wants to quit particpating he can use the already present code to write his own bot. However as I said I'm not looking for complete programming beginners but for guys who know how to code in Java.

Hi Norman
What is reason, lack of time ?

Hello

What is reason, lack of time ?
That and it's a bit boring to just code alone. I have many ideas that are easily specified but when it comes to coding / debugging this takes quite some time. Also I appreciate a second opinion and input from other guys. Also I think that stuff like which starting regions to pick or the move order need some serious specification and when I'm just coding alone I'm usually tempted to go with the "third best" solution that also "kind off" works.

I still haven't found anyone willing to keep coding RealityBomb. If nobody shows up I will probably just upload my bot at git again.

seems i won't have enough free time to participate with something this time around :(

Norman, please don't upload RealityBomb to public storage to aviod free creation of clones. Only after end of competition.

Hello hello, fellow Muli is climbing up the ranks :)

I found some time since yesterday to start coding my Bot...hoping to find some more