Robot's strategies
Robot's strategies
Hi Guys,
Can someone please tell me how the "Nefarious" robots is playing ?
Or even better, is it possible to find its code somewhere?
Thanks
Inon
Can someone please tell me how the "Nefarious" robots is playing ?
Or even better, is it possible to find its code somewhere?
Thanks
Inon
Hmmmm, trying to describe a complex AI's behavior in a few sentences is not easy. I know I wouldn't know how to describe my AI. As others have said, the best way to know how an AI works is to play with it.inonzuk wrote:Is there any way to get some description of his strategy?
Let me turn your question around: what you are trying to accomplish? Why the sudden fascination with Nefarious?
Well, that is true for all the bots I guess. It's very hard to make an AI flexible enough to adapt to the multitude of maps/settings available in Lux.Kef wrote:No, Nefs are solid on some maps but total crap on others, sadly
What settings/maps are you using for your tests?inonzuk wrote:I'm running some experiments to see how he is ranked {easy,medium or hard} with him playing against trotsky, yakool, que, pixie and he seems to be allot better then the others (he did better then few other robots in previous experiment including reaper).
Reaper was originally designed for high cards games, while I think Nefarious was designed to play well on low cards games. And it's impossible to tune an AI for all the maps in Lux - there are too many. I tried my best with Reaper, but there are still many situations where he does poorly. For example, Reaper hates maps with no continents, and low cards games.
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Well, most bots do poorly on maps without continents because they don't have a "goal" to work to, no defined borders to fortify. Maps with a one-way connection has the same problem (scaluxtric for one).
Nef will try to break continents early on but will occasionally shaft when it seems like a lost cause, I'd define her as "heavy offensive with pretty weak defence", but it all depends on the map as Bertrand said.
BotofDoom is the most addaptive to game-types, Jack off all trades but master of none.
Nef will try to break continents early on but will occasionally shaft when it seems like a lost cause, I'd define her as "heavy offensive with pretty weak defence", but it all depends on the map as Bertrand said.
BotofDoom is the most addaptive to game-types, Jack off all trades but master of none.
I've just made some games with the following bots (on the classic risk 5-5-5 game): Pixie, Nefarious, Shaft, Communist, Sparrow and Brainiac.
and this is so far nefarious's record line !!!
"Nefarious 62 1 61 1.6 123.0 4.0"
i.e. 1 win in 62 games.
and that after it was the best bot in previous runs (with different opponents every time of course).
Can anybody think of a reason why those specific opponents makes her record looks that bad ?
and this is so far nefarious's record line !!!
"Nefarious 62 1 61 1.6 123.0 4.0"
i.e. 1 win in 62 games.
and that after it was the best bot in previous runs (with different opponents every time of course).
Can anybody think of a reason why those specific opponents makes her record looks that bad ?
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Nefarious was originally built to play in exactly the same way that humans did at the time - this is about 3 or 4 years ago, when the only map played was Classic and the only card settings used were 456 or 468. This meant that her basic strategy (if I recall correctly) was to sit and farm until she had enough troops to a.) take and b.) defend a continent. She would then sit and build there until she had enough troops to either take an adjoining continent and defend that too, or kill a human player, or if another human had become larger than her, in which case she'd go careening across the map and punch holes in their income. She had a bunch of human based strategies built in which included mutually beneficial farming agreements, the sense to block humans when she realised they needed to farm, etc, etc. She was a pain in the ass to play with, to put it bluntly.
The next version introduced the concept of teaming (this is during the big 'Bots First?' debates of the time) whereby she would automatically team up with all other Nefarious AI's on the map in order to eliminate other bots and humans first. This meant that she would not defend borders that she shared with other Nefarious bots, she would only kill them if they had high cards, etc, etc. She was at this time (IMO) as good as she was going to be. She didn't play as well when she was the only Nef on the map, but when there were two or more she was a very tough opponent.
Then it all started to go downhill - the number of maps available exploded, followed by some variations in what was normal in the way of card settings, continent bonus increases, etc, etc. I started customising her too much, trying to make her play as well on other maps as she did on Classic. This was a success to a point, but the nail in the coffin I think was when maps like the Castle series were introduced - this was the first time we in Lux had seen big maps with lots of countries that were not associated with continents. She would recognise these maps OK, and switched to a 'land grab' strategy rather than a continent based one, but it was never as successful as it could have been, and unfortunately I never got the chance to really develop her further as I'd have liked. She's a shadow of her former self now as most Old Skool players will tell you.
Anyway, that's her basic potted history - I still enjoy playing her as games with multiple Nefs involved are always still fun and somewhat more unpredictable than they are with subsequent bots like Reaper and BotOfDoom - both of which are far, far superior in terms of doing what they should be doing, which is winning games.
The next version introduced the concept of teaming (this is during the big 'Bots First?' debates of the time) whereby she would automatically team up with all other Nefarious AI's on the map in order to eliminate other bots and humans first. This meant that she would not defend borders that she shared with other Nefarious bots, she would only kill them if they had high cards, etc, etc. She was at this time (IMO) as good as she was going to be. She didn't play as well when she was the only Nef on the map, but when there were two or more she was a very tough opponent.
Then it all started to go downhill - the number of maps available exploded, followed by some variations in what was normal in the way of card settings, continent bonus increases, etc, etc. I started customising her too much, trying to make her play as well on other maps as she did on Classic. This was a success to a point, but the nail in the coffin I think was when maps like the Castle series were introduced - this was the first time we in Lux had seen big maps with lots of countries that were not associated with continents. She would recognise these maps OK, and switched to a 'land grab' strategy rather than a continent based one, but it was never as successful as it could have been, and unfortunately I never got the chance to really develop her further as I'd have liked. She's a shadow of her former self now as most Old Skool players will tell you.
Anyway, that's her basic potted history - I still enjoy playing her as games with multiple Nefs involved are always still fun and somewhat more unpredictable than they are with subsequent bots like Reaper and BotOfDoom - both of which are far, far superior in terms of doing what they should be doing, which is winning games.
Your results are typical: trying to determine which AI is the "best" one is like herding cats. The results change depending on the map/cards/continent bonuses, and vary depending on the other players.inonzuk wrote: ... Can anybody think of a reason why those specific opponents makes her record looks that bad ?
If A is better than B, and B is better than C, in Lux it does not imply that A is better than C. For example, an aggressive AI could do well against passive opponents like Communist, but do very badly against more advanced AI, even worse than Communist does.
Well, she *is* a female AI after all...Preacherman wrote:... games with multiple Nefs involved are always still fun and somewhat more unpredictable than they are with subsequent bots ...
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