My bot used Heuristics, At least I do not know if I used something fancy.
The simulation part of my bot was the following lines:
for(yT=0; yT<mapY;yT++){for(xT=0; xT<mapY;xT++){if(b[0][yT][xT]!=“N”||xT>=pZ){continue;}for(m=0; m<3;m++){end=false;scorelog="";
if(li(1,xT, yT)){continue}
sM(1, xT, yT, m);
for(r=1;r<=rM;r++){if(end==true){continue;}pR(1);
}
eM(1, xT, yT);
}}}
Basically just simulating every possible move for the 400 rounds.
So at the end I only simulated around 192 full games. And my bot generally ended in around 20MS.
In terms of tactics, I used 2 different scoring algorithms.
Firstly while I had an energy advantage I would go for the quickest kill.
If I would fall behind on energy I prioritized points.
The only sad thing here was I never added survive-ability. (I literally left both my opponents on 5 life when they killed me at comic con. ) and I did not bother defending. But it cannot be helped. I left my submissions and updates for last minute. and I got to go to the finals.
So that was basically my tactics. To give every possible move a score.
I did try going 2 levels deep but did not like the results as the opponent’s move would stuff me up. Because if you try and defend first often times you give your opponent a major advantage especially against aggro bots.
I definitely need to read up on Monte Carlo Tree search, I mean I thought I knew what it was until they started explaining it and I realized I had no idea what it was really.
Really amped for next year’s challenge, But with the launch of Artifact next month I should be good till the next challenge.
Also asked Entelect and they are allowing me to do a YouTube series on building a bot, Since Im doing hueristics It should be easy enough to do for any person as Im using a bunch of if statements and for loops (Will try and trim down on my array usage…).
This might take a while to get into place though as I am not built for video.
Anyways, I am digressing. Enjoy your day all. And I am hoping to bring it at the next challenge… I see the competition is getting much harder. Compared to the last 2 years. But its always so much fun.