[Icfp04-discuss] K.I.S.S. Team Ants

[David Brown]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:10:52AM +1200, Matt Kearse wrote:

> I have no idea why the strategy of surrounding my anthill doesn't
> work. When I read about that idea I thought my ants would easily loose
> to it.

It takes a lot of ants to surround the anthill.  I found, as I was
developing mine, that many trials, it did worse, when I tried guarding
the hill.  It seems those ants could be put to better use gathering
food.

On the other hand, ants that are good at getting back to food they have
found will just use your gatherers to help themselves to your food.

We also had some ants that would detect enemy food, and just start
carrying it a few cells outside of the hive.  It doesn't help local
score, but might lower the other score.  If the other ant is good at
gathering, though, it still doesn't help much.

Dave