Competitions Thread - TrAInsported

Hi Germanunkol,
first I'd like to congratulate you for that cool game you are making! Yesterday I uploaded my first AI, although it actually does not deserve the term intelligent^^
Coming to my feature request:

What do you think about changing the way AI compete with each other? This "global" competition maybe is suitable for a small number of AIs, but with more and more AIs spawning, maybe you could think about going to some sort of league system?!

I am pretty sure that you already at least thought about it and was wondering what you think about it.
Keep up the good work!

Cherio
Woltan

Thanks a lot for the nice remarks!

I must admit I've thought of different ways to let the AIs compete, but a league was something I didn't think of so far. What a great idea!
I'll put it on my TODO list and think about how to implement it.

Off the top of my head, something like this sounds good:
The normal System that's currently running will stay. But the scores will be reset at the beginning of each month, and the top ten at the end of the month will get credits (So that in the end, you can see how many times you've been in the top ten during the last year, or something like that).
In addition to this, each week, a league is started, with all AIs that are currently uploaded. The competitors of each round are chosen randomly, and only the top 2 AIs of a round will continue to the next step on the ladder. There's currently 66 AIs online, so the first ladder would be 66/4 = 17 matches, the second round would be 33/4 = 9 matches, the third round 5 matches and the last 3 and then 1 match - or similar. That's 17+9+5+3+1 = 35 matches. At 5 minutes a match, that would mean a league would take about 3 hours... And it could be run every sunday.

What do you think?

Wow, I am really impressed! Here, take my like :

Moinsen Germanunkol,
there are endless possibilities how competitions could be setup. The Cup-like one you suggested definitely has its charm, just like weekly or monthly ladder reset. The leagues I have in mind, however, have, for example, the best 16 AIs in the top league followed by two or four leagues where again 16 AIs battle to advance into the first league, etc. building a tree like structure of leagues. This would allow that AIs with similar strength are competing, making games where one AI scores 40 points and the other three only a couple obsolete.
However, there are a few drawbacks of this approach:
AIs can change drastically by simply committing new code, this would need to be controlled in some manner. For example by only allowing one AI per user to compete, and the code is not allowed to change for the duration of one season (which could be a day or a week). Another way would be to rank not AIs in a league table but the users themselves...
As I said, possibilities are endless and some of which are not easy to implement not even talking about balancing...

Hm. I like this league-system that you're talking about much more than mine. And you're right, it would make following the progress of your own AI much, much more interesting.
I will give this some more thought. But I've basically decided to implement it, so it'll probably be only a matter of time.

Any thoughts on what to do with freshly uploaded AIs?
Sort them into the lowest league? And if there's more AIs than fit into the leagues? Add more leagues?
Any ideas?

Edited by: Germanunkol

Hi Germanunkol,
there are plenty of ways this league system can be setup. The difficulty lies in the rapid change an AI can be subject to and new AIs that can spawn at any time. Therefore I'd suggest the following:
- Don't put AIs in leagues but their users or owners instead. This way, it is a lot more personal, which will be more exciting. Every user can send one AI to the league system. If it is the first AI of the user it will automatically start at the lowest league.
- A season should take a reasonable amount of time (e.g. a week). This allows for some dramatic build up at the season final and is not over within hours.
- There should be one first division. The number of lower divisions need to be doubled. So there are two 2nd divisions four 3rd. etc. This allows for rapid relegation thought the leagues. So with 4 leagues one can reach the top league within a month.
- Maybe you could link the reputation of an AI to the number of lines it is allowed to execute. This would encourage users to relegate though the divisions and AIs are more stable at the top of the system. The randomness will be somewhat limited then.

A lot more suggestions run to my mind. The above is only a suggestion and can be altered in many ways. (e.g. a season could last 2 weeks) or there are four 2nd divisions etc. However, I think your game would greatly benefit from a more exciting competition system.

I hope I can find some time to improve my stupid random AI!
Best regards
Woltan