DAIDE

Diplomacy Artificial Intelligence Development Environment

Summaries - DumBot Algorithm

This document describes the algorithm that DumbBot uses to determine which orders to submit. This information has been sought on the DipAI and RTNow mailing lists on several occasions.

This document contains the comments in the source code for DumbBot. The copyright statment on this document is reproduced here.

DumbBot - A Bot which runs under the DAIDE project.



        This file contains the entire code for the Bot to run within the
        Client Framework

        (C) David Norman 2003 david@ellought.demon.co.uk

        This software may be reused for non-commercial purposes without
        charge, and without notifying the author. Use of any part of this
        software for commercial purposes without permission from the Author is
        prohibited.

Here's the description.


		
        How it works.

        DumbBot works in two stages. In the first stage it calculates a
        value for each province and each coast. Then in the second stage, it
        works out an order for each unit, based on those values.

        For each province, it calculates the following.

        
          If it is our supply centre, the size of the largest adjacent power
          If it is not our supply centre, the size of the owning power
          If it is not a supply centre, zero
			

        Then

        Proximity[0] for each coast, is the above value, multiplied by a
        weighting.

        Then

        Proximity[n] for each coast equals...
		sum(proximity[n-1] for all adjacent coasts * proximity[n-1] for this coast) / 5

        Also for each province, it works out the strength of attack we have
        on that province - the number of adjacent units we have, and the
        competition for that province - the number of adjacent units any one
        other power has.

        Finally it works out an overall value for each coast, based on all
        the proximity values for that coast, and the strength and competition
        for that province, each of which is multiplied by a weighting.

        Then for move orders, it tries to move to the best adjacent coast,
        with a random chance of it moving to the second best, third best, etc
        (with that chance varying depending how close to first the second place
        is, etc). If the best place is where it already is, it holds. If the
        best place already has an occupying unit, or already has a unit moving
        there, it either supports that unit, or moves elsewhere, depending on
        whether the other unit is guaranteed to succeed or not.

        Retreats are the same, except there are no supports...

        Builds and Disbands are also much the same - build in the highest
        value home centre disband the unit in the lowest value location.