Considering that I’m new at the game, I’m a bit fuzzy about which strategies work and which ones are dead ends.
My first instinct would be to try simple strategies (cluster with my ants, follow walls, avoid my ants, just charge straight forwards, etc.) and then use a mixed strategy whose parameter I can vary, possibly function of simple environment metrics (so I can systematically explore one bit of the space of possibilities).
But I haven’t read through all the site yet, and didn’t even get my local version to run correctly either (I need to use the right version of Python or something, the bots all crash). So my understanding of the kind of strategies involved is still very detached from reality.
Watch some of the games of the top bots. One thing I haven’t seen a top bot do yet is identify situations where they have an impasse (e.g., three ants holding off an entire horde) and try another route.
I’ve been doing that, it’s interesting indeed, thanks : I probably won’t have the time to make a good enough bot to compete with the top of the top, but I’ll do what I can.
Considering that I’m new at the game, I’m a bit fuzzy about which strategies work and which ones are dead ends.
My first instinct would be to try simple strategies (cluster with my ants, follow walls, avoid my ants, just charge straight forwards, etc.) and then use a mixed strategy whose parameter I can vary, possibly function of simple environment metrics (so I can systematically explore one bit of the space of possibilities).
But I haven’t read through all the site yet, and didn’t even get my local version to run correctly either (I need to use the right version of Python or something, the bots all crash). So my understanding of the kind of strategies involved is still very detached from reality.
Watch some of the games of the top bots. One thing I haven’t seen a top bot do yet is identify situations where they have an impasse (e.g., three ants holding off an entire horde) and try another route.
I’ve been doing that, it’s interesting indeed, thanks : I probably won’t have the time to make a good enough bot to compete with the top of the top, but I’ll do what I can.