Procrastinating Rank 1 in Splinterlands

in #steemmonsters5 years ago (edited)

Developing a Splinterlands Bot is both fascinating and frustrating at the same time. I've been working on mine for 6 months, but I'm still not in the Top 50 and neither in the Top 10.

Procrastination


The main issue is my unyielding determination to procrastinate. Pretty much since the start, I intended to implement the universal "algorithm" to get good at any game. Alpha Zero. Or by now, Mu Zero.

The method requires no human input, just a computer program trying to beat itself indefinitely. Nothing but the game rules. Plus some machine learning magic. It's younger brother Mu Zero works even without rules.

Now, what did I actually do in those 6 months? I implemented the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm from scratch, wrote a simulation of the Splinterlands Battle Simulator. The first part is needed for Alpha Zero, the second is optional. But for some reason, I didn't program the rest. Probably because of my irrational distaste of neural networks.

But now I've started working on that part. Pretty much because I can't do anything else. Classic Temporal Difference Learning- doesn't work. Breadth-first initialisation - nope. RAVE - double nope. Thompson Sampling - comparable.
I hope I'll finish soonish because @wonsama with his Deep Reinforcement Learning approach plays pretty successfully. He did pretty good work on his bot.

Current Season


In the current season, Aicu performs as always. Somewhere between rank 110 and Rank 50.

Win streaks followed by loss streaks.

Some work out:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=5ff9d7f40ac52835c6631a18ff198bcc7f09cb6c&ref=aicu

Some matches are close:
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=b73020be7ab6fb4b7dab59b5e3eedb49a64d62f1&ref=aicu

Some just fail miserably:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=d75bee665c448829d70b7ed9c8093ab8d8587481&ref=aicu

Anyway, lot's of works to be done until rank 1.

Giveaway


Onto the giveaway:

The giveaway works as usual. Comment down below with your Splinterlands username. And after seven days I'll draw the winners randomly.

Sort:  

Such an interesting project. I'm a bit afraid of the future capabilities of aicu now you've stopped procrastinating, lol. I suspect it's going to beat us all ;0)

@monstermother

Never underestimate the power of procrastination ;) especially if if kicks in again.
But for now aicu remains beatable as always.

And good luck in the giveaway :)

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I didn't realise @wonsama was also a bot. Did you find the new cards affect the AI at all? Interesting project, looking forward to future developments :)

He said so in the discord, and I've had a short chat with him about it :)
And the new cards created some issues. The main issue is, that with my algorithm the more cards are available the harder it gets to find a good solution. I had to find a way to deal with that. But now it works fine.

That's where a machine learning model would come in handy. It could estimate which cards to look at first for a given position. Especially neural networks work great for that.

But there's a speed tradeoff. Without a machine learning model it can look at more combinations than without. By doing that it can discover more promising teams by "accident", which it would ignore with the model. The model would help looking at promising cards first. Right now I added a simple statistical model to guide it. Because earlier experiments with ML models showed that most models are too slow. But I'm working on that. And Thanks :) are you taking part in the giveaway?

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Sure thing, of course I'll put my name in... username is @synrg... see 'you' in the arena!!! ;)

Great giveaway thanks! Wish I could code. It sound fun. Splinterlands username @gillianpearce.

I think learning to code is worthwhile :) but you need a high frustration tolerance. Thank you, and good luck :D

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jLCCs3ZQdiv.png Hi. Your post has been selected by @splinterzine!
It will be upvoted on by some friends and will be in the next edition of our newsletter. Congratulations on the great work.

Oh wow, thank you for picking my post :) where can I find your newsletter?

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As always: Interesting updates, great giveaway!
@handtalk5

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Thanks, glad you like it :)

and good luck :)

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ugh, programming... I'd rather get a root canal again. More power to ya with your bot-work. I would have given up long ago. See ya in-game (same name as here)

That sounds like there a story behind you and programming :D

I think programming is interesting. Just like solving many ever changing puzzles.

Posted using Partiko Android

It's been a while since I checked in to see how the bot was getting on. You're still doing far better than I am.

I'll take cards off your hands - @welshstacker

I think it's mostly due to the deck :) with a high level deck you'd be playing in the same league as well :) and good luck in the giveaway !

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Very interesting to apply machine learning to all of this. Damn it, I'll have to start programming something if I want to climb in the top leagues with my rewards cards.

My user is @darthgexe, thanks for the giveaway.

Give it a go, Splinterlands is a fun playground for that.

It's simple enough, that many "traditional" techniques work, but complex enough to still get a benefit from more sophisticated approaches :)

And good luck in the giveaway :D

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