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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Bot Ladder
        
(Message started by: Victorwss on Feb 19th, 2010, 10:12pm)
Title: Bot Ladder
Post by Victorwss on Feb 19th, 2010, 10:12pm
Hi people.

I am stuck in the bot ladder, I lost to bot_OpFor2008P1 ten times and this is very frustrating. This was enough to momentainly made his ranking be swapped with bot_Arimaazilla.

I played bot_Arimaazilla just one time and won.

So, I want to suggest an enhancement in the bot ladder, to avoid frustration in cases like mine.

Instead of being forced to defeat them in the order, why not keeping the bottom three undefeated bots open to play? This way, when a human is particularly weak against one bot, he/she does not get stuck and may skip that bot. Some games does this, you always have three open levels to try out.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by 722caasi on Feb 19th, 2010, 11:30pm
I know exactly what you mean, and I think that it should be 100 rating points, instead of 3 bots. This will have a similar effect, but will ensure people don't play up too high when there is a large rating gap between two consecutive bots.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by novacat on Feb 20th, 2010, 6:59am
Ironically, limiting the rating points between the top and bottom playable bots to 100 will make Victorwss have to play only bot_OpFor2008P1 again.  The next bot after bot_Arimaazilla is more than 100 rating points higher. :P
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Eltripas on Feb 20th, 2010, 11:13am
Oh, the memories, I lost 13 times against opfor before defeating it, and won against arimazilla on my first try too, we must have a similar game style, well, maybe not anymore but a similar game style that the one I used at that time.

Advice: use all the time you got to think, be careful, specially don't do moves that can be undone with less steps than the steps you used.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by omar on Feb 20th, 2010, 2:18pm
Thanks for that suggestion Victorwss. Sometimes the bots do move up and down in ratings and change positions on the ladder anyways, so allowing to play a few bots above you seems like a good idea.

Unless someone points out something that can go wrong with doing this, I'll make this change.

Also I recently added a link next to the bot to show games that the bot recently lost. This could be used to study the bots weaknesses and learn how to beat it.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Victorwss on Feb 21st, 2010, 9:20am
omar: Thank you. I hope to see this implemented soon.

722caasi: As novacat said, the 100 rating points would not be so effective like 3 bots. I think that the 3 bots rule is very simple and you never get stuck on a particular single bot.

omar and Eltripas: Yes, I studied some games against OpFor. Apparently it is weak against Horse Elephant attacks. However I never managed to make one such attack that worked correctly.

I played arimaazilla again yesteday and lost. However the game was very equilibrated. Different from the usual shameful humilhation massacre against OpFor.

I don't understand why OpFor is not rated higher, maybe because there are so many people exploiting its bug against Horse Elephant attacks? If so, I wonder what would be its ranking if that bot did not have such weakness or if somebody did not wanted to exploit it?
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Eltripas on Feb 21st, 2010, 1:42pm
The bot is not underrated it is all about the game style, I have a friend 1porkesi, he started playing time after me, he is not more skillful in arimaa than me (at least not much), but he won its first game against opforp1, he didn't checked other games, he didn't know of the HE attack, and he won, but when he played arimaazilla he lost twice before winning...
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Victorwss on Feb 21st, 2010, 11:28pm

on 02/21/10 at 13:42:24, Eltripas wrote:
The bot is not underrated it is all about the game style, I have a friend 1porkesi, he started playing time after me, he is not more skillful in arimaa than me (at least not much), but he won its first game against opforp1, he didn't checked other games, he didn't know of the HE attack, and he won, but when he played arimaazilla he lost twice before winning...


I finally defeated bot_OpFor2008P1. ;D

It was my hardest game that I won. I was in very large disvantage, have lost half of my pieces and captured just one dog, but I managed to cross a rabbit to the other side, while trying to hold and slow down his camel, his two horses and two advanced rabbits using just a horse and my elephant. Luckly, he sent his elephant to the other side of the board to kill my abandoned other horse, just like a HE, though not planned.

The game: http://www.arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=135580&s=b
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 22nd, 2010, 9:57am

on 02/21/10 at 23:28:50, Victorwss wrote:
I finally defeated bot_OpFor2008P1. ;D

Congratulations!
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by 722caasi on Feb 22nd, 2010, 3:34pm

on 02/21/10 at 23:28:50, Victorwss wrote:
I finally defeated bot_OpFor2008P1. ;D

It was my hardest game that I won. I was in very large disvantage, have lost half of my pieces and captured just one dog, but I managed to cross a rabbit to the other side, while trying to hold and slow down his camel, his two horses and two advanced rabbits using just a horse and my elephant. Luckly, he sent his elephant to the other side of the board to kill my abandoned other horse, just like a HE, though not planned.

The game: http://www.arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=135580&s=b

That reminds me of this game:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/showGame.cgi?gid=101059&s=w&client=1
Good Job!
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by omar on Mar 3rd, 2010, 12:43pm

on 02/21/10 at 09:20:38, Victorwss wrote:
omar: Thank you. I hope to see this implemented soon.

Made the change. Best of luck.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Victorwss on Mar 5th, 2010, 4:54pm

on 03/03/10 at 12:43:01, omar wrote:
Made the change. Best of luck.


Thanks  ;D
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Hippo on Mar 7th, 2010, 5:01am

on 02/20/10 at 14:18:06, omar wrote:
Thanks for that suggestion Victorwss. Sometimes the bots do move up and down in ratings and change positions on the ladder anyways, so allowing to play a few bots above you seems like a good idea.

Unless someone points out something that can go wrong with doing this, I'll make this change.

Also I recently added a link next to the bot to show games that the bot recently lost. This could be used to study the bots weaknesses and learn how to beat it.


:) I did it myself when climbing the ladder ... if you lose several times with bot in a short time, it went's up with rating so you can/must play another :) but I'ts probably no problem to allow that.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Sconibulus on Mar 8th, 2010, 9:33pm
A slight bit of oddness with this near the top of the ladder.

I've got only Bomb-Blitz left to beat, and it shows up in line with the center of the three play now buttons. Lined up with the second, the problem with this is that the first and second buttons give me the following message:
"Need First Bot

The first bot was not found."

I need to click the third to start my game with Bomb.


I don't know if this can be duplicated easily or not, because I was already stuck on Bomb-Blitz when the option to play three different bots was implemented, which might just have been an uncaught special case.

Edited to add: This happens with Firefox and Chrome.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Hippo on Mar 9th, 2010, 2:35am

on 03/08/10 at 21:33:29, Sconibulus wrote:
I don't know if this can be duplicated easily or not.


omar (as anybody else) can look on your profile, so he can easily checked it.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by omar on Mar 11th, 2010, 10:26am

on 03/08/10 at 21:33:29, Sconibulus wrote:
A slight bit of oddness with this near the top of the ladder.


Thanks. Took care of it.
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Victorwss on Mar 11th, 2010, 6:24pm
[EDITED: nevermind]
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by Eltripas on Apr 1st, 2010, 1:19pm
Is the bot ladder going to be updated with the new bots this year?
Title: Re: Bot Ladder
Post by omar on Apr 1st, 2010, 9:29pm

on 04/01/10 at 13:19:50, Eltripas wrote:
Is the bot ladder going to be updated with the new bots this year?


Yes, after the server is transfered. Sometime this summer.


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