Having now looked over the codes, it looks like no-one expected so many silly bots that would play 0 every round is simulated correctly. So, a bot that did some checking and cooperated with complex things, simulated and crushed silly bots, and folded to the clone army would probably have gotten a superior early lead, and possibly held onto it.
Especially if luser was re-loading the source code from the original file each round, and you took advantage of the rules loophole that prohibited:
Hacking your opponent’s source file (but not your own)
Looking at the game engine stuff
Saving any “information” from one round to another.
But, crucially, not replacing your own source code file deterministically after a particular round. So, after you finish exploiting the silly bots for the first 10-20 rounds, replace your source code with a compliant Clone Bot with an aggressive payload to win after round 90.
I mean I did include an explicit “if they seem to be playing 0 then don’t be an idiot and play 5” line and a similar one to play 4 if they kept playing 1. I had complexity restrictions that prevented me from doing more than that, but I’m confident those lines of codes did good work.
Having now looked over the codes, it looks like no-one expected so many silly bots that would play 0 every round is simulated correctly. So, a bot that did some checking and cooperated with complex things, simulated and crushed silly bots, and folded to the clone army would probably have gotten a superior early lead, and possibly held onto it. Especially if luser was re-loading the source code from the original file each round, and you took advantage of the rules loophole that prohibited:
Hacking your opponent’s source file (but not your own)
Looking at the game engine stuff
Saving any “information” from one round to another. But, crucially, not replacing your own source code file deterministically after a particular round. So, after you finish exploiting the silly bots for the first 10-20 rounds, replace your source code with a compliant Clone Bot with an aggressive payload to win after round 90.
I mean I did include an explicit “if they seem to be playing 0 then don’t be an idiot and play 5” line and a similar one to play 4 if they kept playing 1. I had complexity restrictions that prevented me from doing more than that, but I’m confident those lines of codes did good work.