My understanding is that EBMB doesn’t directly feed off the clones—they mutually cooperate until round 90, so EBMB helps them as much as they help it. It’s just that the clones start attacking everyone else in the midgame and leave EBMB alone while EBMB continues to cooperate with everyone. Thus the clone army and the rest of the pack tear each other down while EBMB pulls ahead.
A larger clone share would indeed end up benefitting EBMB relative to MB, but if ASTB is more effective than the clones in the early game, I’m not sure its presence in the midgame would be more helpful to the clones than a typical chaos or silly bot. I guess it depends on how effectively the clones’ aggression can convince ASTB to fold. The clones may or may not get enough back to compensate for their reduced share in the early game.
(Aside: I continue to be quietly amused at how much AbstractSpyTreeBot has ended up affecting the game (by partially inspiringEarlyBirdMimicBot and getting exploited by MeasureBot and accidentally spawning a new timeline), given how little I’ve invested in the game compared to others—the backstory is not one of strategic thinking about how to compete, but rather, I was feeling bleh in the afternoon of 9 October, and writing a simulator-bot using the ast module just seemed like a fun exercise that should only take a couple hours.)
It also significantly affected people’s expectations of the metagame and made them prepare for simulators. BendBot and CloneBot were made deterministic so that simulators could efficiently cooperate with them.
My understanding is that EBMB doesn’t directly feed off the clones—they mutually cooperate until round 90, so EBMB helps them as much as they help it. It’s just that the clones start attacking everyone else in the midgame and leave EBMB alone while EBMB continues to cooperate with everyone. Thus the clone army and the rest of the pack tear each other down while EBMB pulls ahead.
A larger clone share would indeed end up benefitting EBMB relative to MB, but if ASTB is more effective than the clones in the early game, I’m not sure its presence in the midgame would be more helpful to the clones than a typical chaos or silly bot. I guess it depends on how effectively the clones’ aggression can convince ASTB to fold. The clones may or may not get enough back to compensate for their reduced share in the early game.
(Aside: I continue to be quietly amused at how much
AbstractSpyTreeBothas ended up affecting the game (by partially inspiringEarlyBirdMimicBotand getting exploited byMeasureBotand accidentally spawning a new timeline), given how little I’ve invested in the game compared to others—the backstory is not one of strategic thinking about how to compete, but rather, I was feeling bleh in the afternoon of 9 October, and writing a simulator-bot using theastmodule just seemed like a fun exercise that should only take a couple hours.)It also significantly affected people’s expectations of the metagame and made them prepare for simulators. BendBot and CloneBot were made deterministic so that simulators could efficiently cooperate with them.