AI Tournament #2

What format would be best for the next AI tournament? I'd like to get 3 or 4 suggestions, and then we can have a poll to decide which is most popular.

Maybe like:

1v1 GUI - the rematch
2v2 GUI - each player submits 2 AIs
1v1 JASS from scratch - Can use JASS, but no stealing code
1v1 AMAI - Build off the AMAI framework
Giant FFA - 8 players per game, last team standing

I think if we can ask the participants to run some of the games, it would be pretty easy.

What do y'all think?

As we talked before, the next AI constest should be different, so 1v1 is discarded at once.

I proposed 2v2 GUI, because we can get more possibilities and the game would be more interesting. This is the best option IMO.

Jass AI, it would be more powerful, but it would imply a reduction of contestants.

About AMAI, the only issue would be the coding... I think it would be a good idea when we have a more developed AI fanbase.

Giant FFA... hmmm... what would be your idea??

As I commented before, the next AI tournament must be more interactive, I mean, that all the contestants must run some games, save the replays and post them here, in order to make it faster and dynamic.

Doing that would allow us to make a more fair evaluation, that would be all against all, and we would use the game scores.

Perhaps once i get off my lazy but and start working on cracking the WAI format, It could allow GUI editing of JASS scripts and to convert back and forth. It would take some time but it would be a nice tournemant idea. I am always looking for people to help me because I am not a 'veteran programmer'. Just throwing things out

I am very anxious for this next contest, and I have a few ideas.

The 2v2 could be either each person making one AI, and then they get randomly paired. Or we could do what us magic players do, create two AIs, and team them up for a collaborated strategy. Either would be lots of fun.

Or maybe we don't do doubles, but rather shuffle the pairs each round. Say we have 20 contestants. Divide them into 4 groups. Randomly assign each player from group 1 a teammate from group 2, and assign each group 3 player a player from 4. Then fight the 1+2 teams against the 3+4 teams. After that, switch it up, and re-pair them by 1+3 and 2+4.

I really like this concept, because It basically means your AI has to fight and ally with each other player, making it fair and interesting.

Just load up max numbers of AI's into one map and fire it off as a free for all. Then you keep repeating that, but each time eliminating the AI from the game who had the previous lowest score. Eventually you wind down to 2 AI's, and the winner of that is your winner.

how about paired AI, you get yourself a partner, you both make an AI each and then submit it, and each team is randomly paired up with another team they verse, the winner goes on to vs another team and the loser is elimited, and to attract people, everyone who enters revieves 1 rep AS LONG AS THERE AI ACTUALLY WORKS AND DOES STUFF. If you can't find a partner you submit 1 AI of your own and your AI is randomly partnerd with another AI and the 2 AIs are teamed up for the contest

Well, last tournament were more solo based.
I would like to see every contestant create 2 AIs and making 4v4 then.
So there you would really require ideas for 2 different AIs and how they work with / against the AIs build by other contestants.
Also it would allow to extend the dimension of strategy used in this tournament. E.g. my AI in the last tournament were mass fiends so i could build the 2nd AI on mass abominations or even on orcs / humans to counter a mass melee run.
However it would be massive amount of work, but would still join even if i need to make 2 AIs.

I have an idea for a interesting AI...maby have a rush game that you get points based off how fast you win.... i dunno its an idea :/

I see. Well, in the First AI tournament, when I was doing the testing with a FFA map, I notice somthing that would make me avoid that possibility.

• The game has a high tendency to become sloooooooow
• The game becomes more dependable of luck (FFA games implies more slots, then the player start locations are narrower, allowing an unfair harassment and eliminating quickly some AIs.
• For the reason mentioned before, the game has more chances to finish in an endless battle, because two players have the luck of survive, they get a lot of resources, they build huge armies, and they fight until get exhausted without defining any winner.

One thing that didn't like in the past tournament was the elimination, and I agree with that, because using elimination one good AI (Zycat one) lost in the first round in the first game against emeraldemon one, and I was pretty sure it deserved at least a second place, it was a really good strategy, very powerful, but it had the bad chance to start against its perfect counterpart :P


Now I want to propose this idea, and I think this one will satisfy your interests. First let's assume that all that have posted thus far are going to participate, so we will have this table:


Da Rulez:

• We'll use the game scores to define the winner.
• Only ONE game will be played.
• We'll select the map that we'll use for this tournament.
• We'll modify the selected map in such way that it can store the AIs, a script that controls the score and will detect iff the game has a winner so it can automatically end the game. This script could be done in GUI so any people can see how is it and ensure contest transparency.

Who will win?? The three AI with more score.

About the table:

• This table will be used to define the games, save the scores and define who will make the replay.
  
• Obviously, the diagonal is not allowed, so we won't have me vs me.
  
• The Tournament would start with emeraldemon vs me, the winner of the game will be inserted in the upper half of the table with the game score and the loser will be put in the lower half of the table. As an example, let's say emeraldemon wins, so the table will be filled in this way:

• Who will do the replay?? the next to the right, in this case, TheSecretarts. And if Emeraldemon is playing against Rising_Dusk, then I will do the replay.
  
• It doesn't matter if you win or lose, the scores will be added to the total.

Doing it in this way, we will ensure that ALL the AIs will play against ALL the AIs, and evaluation the game would be more interactive.

Tell me what do you think.

That will be nice to do

-Av3n

What?? Why not use the winner of the game to define the winner? The winner gets 2 points, loser gets 0 points, and 1 point each for a tie (if both AI's stall or something). If there is a tie for the top number of points, they could play each other to determine the winner.

That's just an example of course, but I really do not like the whole points thing - even if your AI wins the game you can still lose due to points. Other than that it sounds good though, thanks for organizing this.

.... didnt you completely read moyack's post?
and i think my idea to give rep to all the contestants is a good one, that way there will be more paticipants

I did, did you?

I was thinking in the scores because that value obtained takes in account how many buildings units the player has, the level of heroes reached, etc, so it gives a more fair evaluation IMO. Anyways I think this is something that can be discussed, for me it's not bad your proposal.

Actually this contest (and any kind of contest here) wants quality of submissions rather than amount of submissions, I prefer few participants with good AIs than defective AIs submitted only for get one point rep, we just fuck the tournament purpose. Besides, the bounty is good, if we do the AI with 2v2, I'll propose a reward of 30 - 40 rep for the first place and proportionally for the second and third place, because the testing part in this is really long.

Well, I have a question.
The techniques to build an AI does include the standard WE: AI Editor, right? The one that comes with WE?
I have an AI that I would like to try out against other AI's, just to see what happens. And then if my AI actually wins, well I'd have hit 2 birds with one stone.

Give us teh replays! Please!