Introversion

Does the bot know what county the other player picked? ( to make it easier to direct the scouting )

tllotpfkamvpe wrote:This bot made properley, will be almost unbeatable

The whole idea of this AI api is to let players create their own unbeatable bots, and pit them against each other.

LordSturm wrote:Does the bot know what county the other player picked? ( to make it easier to direct the scouting )

Yes

LordSturm wrote:Does the bot know what county the other player picked? ( to make it easier to direct the scouting )

tllotpfkamvpe wrote:This bot made properley, will be almost unbeatable

The whole idea of this AI api is to let players create their own unbeatable bots, and pit them against each other.

As Sfericz said, yes the bot can know. However Joshua works in a slightly different way - it surveys the entire globe and builds a map of territories/oceans/land etc - so it can work on non default maps

And I'll be happy when Joshua beats a high ranking human, then I can enter him into the 1v1 defcon ladder

Here's my 5 cents, but that depends on whether it would be possible for AI to spot incoming AA fire.
If the answer is yes, then it would be very easy for the AI to 'figure out' where exactly enemy silo is located and organize a perfect 'beam' attack to nuke the silo yet invisible.

A human can spend 3 to 5 fighters to 'triangulate' enemy silo's position. If its lucky, AI can spend 0-1 fighter to do the same.

Also I'd recommended writing a 'quality' function that will determine target priority for nukes. It should work the same way as in chess. Some logic calculates the 'current quality' and then evaluates the quality after the move. Add the probability of nuke being shot down to this. Should add to the scoreboard when time comes to nuking cities.

And if you're making an invincible bot the finest aspect of it should be the timing. It should take advantage of perfectly calculated bomber approach times, nuke launches, etc to make sure that every nuke would count. This is what defcon is about, after all - making every nuke count.

Sounds like a fun project, can I help? I got basic Java skills, a bit of assembly (for if we want to make our AI mobile ) but most of all just curious.

Yeah, I'm thinking about swapping this over to Java, I know I promised I'd look in the holiday but at the moment I have tonsillitis and I'm not up to much

martin wrote:Yeah, I'm thinking about swapping this over to Java, I know I promised I'd look in the holiday but at the moment I have tonsillitis and I'm not up to much

Ewwww had to wiki that one, get well soon! I'll just start with reading the API material.

Got a problem, can't load the java bot it gives the error can't load the dll.
Logged; Failed to load the DLL! Path: AI/javabot/javabot.dll

Is Joshua dead?

For now yes he is, I'm afraid I got distracted by exams, and now I'm working with people from uni on a game which we're aiming to sell - so this got pushed waaaay down my priority queue!

I might be interested in picking this up.. Or at least use some of the advice and design derrived from this thread.
Being currently unemployed leaves me with time on my hands, and I have a long history with programming games. Not to mention I love wargames and Defcon

I plan using Java for my bot, as I'm fluent in Java and imo it allows access to far more resources. I find it silly to think that a Skynet grade AI would be confined to a scripting language on a single cpu

I'll start a new thread here when I get the framework setup and running. Any name suggestions ?

Feel free to steal the name Joshua if you like

He was/is going to be java too, since I like the idea of having a continuous thread making decisions and then defcon simply picking up state changes every time it ticks.

Any design/programming help I can give will be freely given - I have time to help with a bot just not to lead designing my own and building it!

Still dead?

It is at the moment, but I've been investigating scripting languages recently, and I need to learn LUA before I can properly compare them. So I may put some work into this again soon ish

Joshua lives!

I've just got the javabot sample working, so I'm going to be playing with that. I'm considering making a C# API version for Joshua, obviously I would release that for others to use

Project Gamma has a competitor

Update

So I've been playing with named pipes, the idea being I write a bit in C++ which simply sends events down a named pipe, and listens for commands on the same pipe. Then I can write the bot in C# which is a language I'm more familiar with. Problem is, I know essentially no C++, and named pipes are pretty complex, are there any more experienced coders out there who would be willing to help with just the named pipes part?