https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/bot-programming/volcanoes
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Created by @skotz,validated by @Trilusion,@FDA44 and @Dartisan.
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Iāve been trying to figure out how a strictly random move bot can beat a directed bot so readily. And after reviewing the referee and board .java ā¦ I think itās because java is ensuring an even distribution. Meaning that a cluster has a high probability of blocking the shorter paths. Where Iām enticed to ābattle it outā, my bot fails, where the random bot naturally finds empty positions by the random number distribution. Iām not sure if line 332 of board.java if (growthMoves && expandMoves & captureMoves && maxGrowthValue >= Settings.MaxVolcanoLevel) { is even correct. It probably doesnāt even get called, but it looks suspect to me anyways. As for how to combat a random move botā¦well thatās another matter entirely. Moving to either enhance path options or blocking in 2 or 3 steps from desired path or enemy path to create a cluster would seem the logical conclusion. But with so many options of algorithms, Iām kinda stumped - because if you block one the random bot will naturally find the other 2 for multiple junctions so a ābest guessā is so close to random imho Iām finding it hard to be worth the time. Although I appreciate the 100ms. tx.
Itās important to take eruptions into account as they will automatically expand your territory. Thatās why itās rarely a good idea to play on tiles directly adjacent to an already-owned tile.
Hi!
I encountered a weird behaviour, where level 4 volcano gets ādeleveledā to level 3, but remains unplayable.
Most of my games against burger4d are like this:
Seems fixed to me. At least I canāt reproduce it anymore. 
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Sorry if I duplicate but I donāt know the hell where my first post landed!
Hi skotz,
I have been trying a few test case to better understand the eruption rule. Here is an example. Player 1 plays N28 then always N29. Player 2 plays N25 then always N26.
At frame 8 it is time for grow, and the result is strange to me. It is not symetric anymore and some tiles close to eruption have grown by 2 instead of one. Tell me what you think.
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I believe I have a fix, but the contribution uploader has been down for at least several hours now. Iāll try again tomorrow.
I guess it is in processEruptions(). When you process deltas, you should work with a copy of Tiles instead of testing and modifying in place.
CU
@EricSMSO The change should be out there now. Let me know if you run into any more problems.
The issue was with how I was handing dormant volcanoes. It was possible under certain conditions for a volcano to double erupt before being marked dormant.
Thanks skotz,
Hope Iāll manage to develop a better botā¦
Hi - nice puzzle. I was looking at your github entry. Is there a way to run the script to just produce outputs from inputs ? I know this is probably a dumb question (warning-iām just a hobby coder), but I just want to execute the game locally by feeding it values and getting the resulting game states so I can play with an ML approach.
@picoplankton There are some community tools out there that can run the referee logic locally for this very purpose, but I havenāt used any of them personally.
you wouldnāt be able to point me at one, would you ? I guess I could write a wrapper myself. The graph is in the input layer.
Iām at no.1 of wood league 2 with a score of 25.7. Iām so close to beating that second boss, but I canāt figure out what the AI is doingā¦ ever so slightly better than me 
Youād probably get a better answer by just asking in the global chat to see what people are using. Iāve always just used something I wrote myself.
The second bot is using MCTS.