Hello,
This is how the league system works for the CodeBuster challenge.
On day one, the first three leagues will be open: Wood2, Wood1 and Bronze.
Extra rules for the game are unlocked in Wood1 and Bronze, after that there will be no more extra rules.
Every two days or so, we will open the next league. First Silver, then Gold, then Legend. In these leagues, the game remains the same but your AI will only be played against AIs of similar level.
To get from one league to the next, your AI must be better ranked than the current league’s boss. When opening a league, we will create a boss based on the code of one of the players in the highest available league.
To recap:
The contest lasts 8 days & 2 hours.
Wood2, Wood1 & Bronze is open as soon as the contest starts.
Silver will be opened 48 hours later.
Gold will be opened 48 hours later.
Legend will be opened 48 hours later.
The contest ends 50 hours later.
If your AI goes up a league, it is automatically pushed in the arena again. This means if you submit a really good AI on day 1, it will be in Legend league by day 7 without you needing to do anything.
We may open a league earlier or later than planned – or even add an extra Wood league – based on how the competition goes.
Please, feel free to post any questions if you need us to clarify something.
Alternatively, you can take a look at how the league system works by playing a league based AI game such as Coders Strike Back or Smash The Code.
I agree with royale. In the last days most of the time we just tune the AI to beat our particular opponents. It will be a little late for the legend league.
But it’s cleary faster in legend league. Because in the gold league, because of the ranking system your AI must stomp many many many AI to reach the top. And you sometimes have to do multiple submits because a lose at the start just waste all the submit. The legend league is clearly an advantage when you have to tune your AI, it’s way faster.
If we open the legend league sooner, it will be too difficult to decide which boss to use. You don’t want 300 people in legend league, nor 20… So, 2 days seems reasonable.
@flipp92
“professional” or “student” status for a challenge ? a bit too restrictive, isn’t it ?
Yeah, i wish there would be someting like “hobbyist”. Please upvote this comment so the CG team sees it!
I have a question on the league system… Right now in bronze league, high ranking AIs are often camping the opponent base, because most of the other AIs are just busting ghosts.
When the silver league will open some campers may be promoted in silver league. And if you submit an anti-camper algo you’ll be dead last in bronze league and first in silver league
I don’t know which algorithm is used to rank algorithms (I know it’s based on Elo but how is the opponent chosen ?). If you only battle against AIs with a similar rank the fact that AIs performance is not “transitive” may be a problem…
So the league system has advantages, you can be certain that your ranking will be at most Nth. But also drawbacks, as you can’t compare AIs from 2 different leagues (not possible to recompute everything at the end), you may need to have a different code for each different league.
if you submit a really good AI on day 1, it will be in Legend league by day 7 without you needing to do anything
So is this true ? I’m just worried to have to implement as many AIs as boss I’ll try to beat
Haha yeah I think that’s an idea ! My point was, it’s an example
I was more thinking about general trends different in each division (offensive / defensive). Of course if your code is modular it’ll always be easy to change it’s general behaviour !
I don’t know if this has been asked before but I do observe a certain symmetry regarding the distribution of the ghosts and their stamina on the map. It makes sense as in my opinion this is done on purpose to provide a fair game and I agree with that. However, can you confirm that this will follow until the end of the contest ?
Besides this is there a maximum value of a ghosts stamina ?
Honestly I enjoyed the contest a lot until now, so thank you codin dude(sse)s !
