[Icfp04-discuss] gb0505 performance against roadcrew and others

[Clive Gifford]

> On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 05:31:17PM -0500, James Edward Gray II wrote:
>
> > ....
>
> gb0505 did actually beat roadcrew in my first 1-on-1 test (an occasion
> much rejoicing:-) but I continued gathering ant opponents, and in the
> larger field I reported gb0505 didn't do as well as roadcrew. So my
> si mulator *could* have a bug, but it doesn't seem to follow from
> 1-on-1 results, where mine are consistent with yours. I suspect the
> difference is that gb0505 has absolutely no clue about defense. In the
> presence of competitors that are good at stealing gb0505's food and/or
> killing its ants, the absence of features like roadcrew's vault could
> be really expensive...
>
> I just finished another unscientifically sampled tournament (yet
> larger this time: all the all_ants.zip file entries with names
> [c-n]*.ant, plus a few entries I had heard of like redteam, roadcrew,
> and z25, minus a few .ant files my parser or simulator barfed on, on
> world 2 only) and roadcrew took 19th place, while gb0505 took 26th
> place (out of 37). Tentative conclusion: next year I should use more
> syllables in my program's name like the winner did.:-)

Interesting to note that (with my limited testing in one on one combat) we
have an non-transitive relationship between RoadCrew, Kiss2, and Graffiti.
RoadCrew beats Kiss2 (by a smallish margin but reasonably consistently),
Kiss2 beats Graffiti, and Graffiti beats RoadCrew! Maybe this means we need
to compare notes and combine our ants to get the best of all three... :-) I
presume they must have roughly complimentary strengths and weaknesses.

Hmmm. I changed my simulator to allow for up to six species to be included
(at the same time) a few days ago so I could try all three together, but I'd
also have to create a few more 3 anthill worlds I guess to have a fair
competition. I only have one at the moment and even that one is probably not
very "balanced".

Anyway, as you say William, more syllables is probably the best (and
easiest) way to go...

Cheers
Clive