It seems that whenever I respawn, (specifically having run into my own trail)
I lose all my land. I think its true globally.
I think that’s the intended behaviour.
Running into your own trail will do this.
When another bot cuts into your trail, your land will become theirs.
I thought the problem was like Paper.io
Where completing your trail gives you territory,
And then you will fight for control over lands but can still make mistakes…
The rules state:
" Throughout the game, farmers (bots) must gain as much territory as possible. To gain territory a player needs to completely encircle a group of tiles returning back to their own territory.
While player A is encircling a potential territory a trail is left behind. This trail can be cut off by player B and Player B will now gain all the territory of Player A (this is called Pruning) Player A will be respawned in the next tick. Similarly, if player A runs into their own trail, they will be respawned and their territory will become empty again."
This is a pretty ruthless environment…
A lot of my supposed bugs seem to not be bugs anymore.
But rather, Oh, the game is a lot different from what I saw in my mind.
Suddenly very glad our deadline isnt in 3 Days…
I have some reservations that a match can be decided by a single Prune.
Still going to be fun to write now that i know exactly how the game works.
Hi @WillieTheron , I understand what you mean by this being a “pretty ruthless environment”. We have actually deliberated on this point quite extensively, back when we were in discovery and analyses, but also recently in a team catchup.
We are trying to balance two priorities here. On the one hand, we do want bots that employ a good strategy to enjoy that strategy paying off. So it does feel like a bot might be very smart and do all the right things, only to make a minor mistake or get unlucky near the end of the game, resulting in it losing all its territory and losing the game.
On the other hand, we feel that carelessness will be the default behaviour. It’s certainly the easier behaviour if the developer does not build in specific strategies to favour carefulness. As such we do want to punish carelessness a bit more severely than simply having the bot lose its active trail and reset back inside its territory.
So while we agree with your sentiment, we still feel that the more ruthless environment will make for a better test of bot “intelligence” than a forgiving environment. However, we do have some ideas to mitigate for that. We probably won’t be making drastic rule changes throughout the tournament but we will keep an eye on how this rule is affecting the outcomes and could for instance introduce a higher spawn rate for “Unprunable” powerups with later rounds.
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