Our current status is somewhere between desperation and hope.
It is a disappointment that our last two daily submissions did not improve the ranking.
We still have hope that this might change due to a little observation.
The evolution of our bots playing capabilities goes in steps. Innovation breakthroughs, as we like to call it.
• It starts with finding out that sending fleets is generally better than not sending fleets. Big deal.
• Then, they find out that it is important to select good targets. It is generally better to send fleets to enemies and neutrals than just in circles within the own territory. Near planets, fast growing planets and weak planets also make better targets.
• Then, the first real eye-opener: planet sniping. An innovative way to get planets cheaply.
• Next logical step is to avoid having your own planets sniped.
That's where we are now in our evolution, and that's all we have seen in our test runs. Our strategies are not perfect in these areas, but they are doing fine, and they slowly keep improving over time. The source of our hope is that we started to see a new pattern for the first time. One you all know well:
• Building supply routes.
Seems like you can't make it into the top 100 anymore without a decent strategy to distribute ship within your own planets. Our current bots don't have a good supply route mechanism, but we are excited to see them "playing around" with that idea. Look at this game:
http://ai-contest.com/visualizer.php?game_id=8651838. At turn 105, we see our right hand side planet sending ships to the center rather than directly to the enemy, and we see two small planets near the bottom sending ships to the bigger planet, which is closer to the enemy. Now, I understand that bocsimacko will not lose much sleep over that little hiccup in a third league match, that didn't even make any difference in that particular game. But the fact that our best bots start using that technique is a sign that they have successfully used it in their evolution, and if that is the case, I'm confident that they can improve it.
The next steps, which we will unfortunately not have time to see in our evolution run before Saturday night, would possibly be
• Find a way to play against good supply routes.
• Find solutions to all the little issues that we have not even identified as problem yet. That's where bocsimacko is already.