Hi All!

I'm going to run an experiment whereby a few (for now) non-attacking, non-market-interacting bots run in express. This is just a test program for now, to see what, if anything, it does to game balance. Let me know here if anybody notices anything :-)

Starts next set?

Actually I just put some in now. But they're so far behind they'll never catch up to anybody.

Wondering if it was a cheater or not.... well this explains everything.

Are they going to be fat all X free land?, I see a future news camp club here :P

Bullfluff! I'm the landfarm round here.

qz doesn't believe you was doing a good job, step up your game bro!

If he would let my dog and 3 kids play I could do better!

Evidently you have bad PR department

hm, they are going to try to not be fat; for now they're just rainbows trying to get by without the market.

Later they'll be more intelligent. I hope

intelligent means.. able to retal ? suicide ?
:)

Hmmm - "more human" that would be, silentwolf, rather than more intelligent.

It be kool if they terrorize those who farm them 😝

BuildCost = 3*land+1500

this change should bump scores up a bit... 45-50m is possible now

i am thoroughly enjoying these new changes. can we get express primary with bots? :-)

wow with bots and building cost change, 45m is easy. poor flufftyassman and his record

Remind of wollfenstien enemy territory .. that open source game if anyone every played most fun I ever had was when that came out.. man I played that for years! Almost curious to log on but last time I tried it was all bots! I could not find any real people playing...and the bots...they were all really stupid! lol

x

I don't see how these bots are gonna retal with 100 troops

Seriously? A FEW? These land farms are 1/5th the entire server right now. And none of them have ever bought any military LOL!

With all this land around I didn't make enough csites.

God knows what land target I should adopt.

I'm going to change them buying military soon, hopefully; thinking they'll try to hit a certain NW/Acre target as the reset progresses, with a blend of military units; anybody have a good rule-of-thumb for me to apply? something like:

(50 + turns_played/10) NW/Acre ?

92 Ea vUuRodXA j (#87) 6380 $905,885 M
93 Ea jrAHknIItEbyBqdY (#77) 6446 $894,169 M
94 Ea AYF DjSOhcOBFD mtCWUl y (#92) 6202 $880,108 M
95 Ea ACiuHDbAaQf i (#74) 5679 $860,045 M
96 Terroir (#8) 3934 $841,220 M
97 Ea W PiBjhZDSJRhgsfQ (#84) 5617 $818,336 M
98 Ea MjRrDamXPFiyH XTuDH Kt (#82) 6219 $813,971 M
99 Ea EMsJokSgiK VakJ (#72) 6411 $791,249 M
100 gl hf ds (#33) 4143 $772,804 R

101 Ea gEglOucfR sYLEUC (#79) 5011 $756,941 M
102 Ea gO UX wtM (#85) 8942 $740,414 M
103 Ea qxI hjzf OIRZdFID (#94) 5077 $705,653 M

interesting

Make some of them Commies, haha. j/k.

Heh- with jets and turrets at 170s, I can't imagine the prices after they start buying. TMBR might be the win strat this set.

BTW, if anybody's interested, i keep the code they're running updated here: https://github.com/jhaagsma/ee_npc

This game is programmed in php?!

are they buying tech?

They interact with the market now! :) sorry didn't post that here.

And yea, it's all PHP pretty much

anyone notice the small amount of tech on the market? like few 100 pts at one go.. due to the bots?

a few of the bots seem to be techers!

Baaaaaah, the destock function is totally broken =(

[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0
[21:24:59] Bought nothing for $0


x10000

[21:49:09] Done Destocking!
[21:49:09] Sleep until end

What did they stock?

I don't know but I missed farming them as I didn't read this until now

Maybe it was a good thing you didn't, one wasn't a bot haha

so the bots have new names now? still easy to spot though

Beyond the current names clearly identifying bots another tell is that the max turns are always used so even with random names bots could be spotted easily.

Other adjustments that need to be looked at is the fact that bots bought tech at over 4k as late as sat night and i think the max price was around 7.5k. Idk what the threshold should be but no country should be paying that much of a premium for tech.

Another weakness that might not have been mentioned was the lack of spies. Combined with tech prices above and the stock most bots had stealing tech was op.

Overall i think the bots will be a great addition adding both land and goods to the market but the current model can be abused to easily. I was actually surprised this set someone didn't break 40mil NW.

saying bots will help people achieve land goals is like saying once i get my next raise i will be making enough money

people always want more land

get fat and win


that being said, bots will reduce the farming of complete nubs by a noticeable factor, so im all for them. it is kinda why i was running a landfarm.

I think the bots are interesting. It's a good experiment

Adds a lot of land to the server, high scores will increase, obviously will be more interesting when they fight back though.

Whoever this qzjul fellow is, he's ok in my books.

Creating Bots to prevent experienced players from farming none experienced players, etc... sounds like EE version of QE to me.

lol....



Still super easy? =(

We'll get there slowly...

I didn't appreciate you wanted to hide them.

I found the recent set from:

sequential numbers;
similar style names;
all Monarchy;
play turns to a similar (bot like) timing.

So I guess those are some of the things to mix up.

yea; sequential numbers i was going to solve this reset, but i put the message i wanted to display in the sleep() function, and the sleep time in the print/out() function, so that screwed up =/ lol

the naming styles =/ yea, it picks from a name generator, but i suppose they are of a similar style; could rectify that i suppose....

all mono will be fixed when i get around to writing the manage API...

bot-like turns I hadn't really considered; should they sleep longer between plays, or be more random?

More random, that way people don't have easy pickings

Random

I don't think that either the names or the timing would be enough to find them (or at least it would be wearisome) if the numbering and identical gov.ts were randomised.

As it is, it was easy on seeing one that looked like a bot to look at the numbers on either side - see the pattern and then just expand the search until you hit an obviously human run country. Only took a minute or two. But without the sequential numbering or being able to gather together all the monarchies and just look at them it would be a different matter.

If you ARE going to randomise turn timing then it is the playing turns in similar and regularly spaced sets which looks bot like. So you see patterns of four turns, break, eight turns, break, four turns, break and so on. A human player plays more turns, less regularly spaced and with events breaking up the flow.

Names would be tough. If you could throw in some vulgar stuff, some references to players names and some which picked up on clan themes that would do it but I doubt that is feasible. What made the last set noticeable is that they were all made up of words, mostly two words or occasionally three and all polite sounding. I knew when I had reached the last bot at each end of the set just from the name. Checking the gov.t and pattern of moves just confirmed what the naming style made clear.


(edit) Changed my mind about names. If you looked down the EEstats list and just focused on the untagged countries, names alone would identify the bots as long as the naming convention was sufficiently recognisable. So names do need to be randomised. Somehow?

Hmmm..... well if anybody has a good naming generator out there that makes slightly more earth-like country names...

I could, technically, do a name-dump of all EE countries ever and pick some of those, but it might be weird - and potentially bug people if i reuse certain themes or names

Make sure the capitalization of the country names is inconsistent/random also . Like:

legion of BOOM
Basketball Beats Football
lol 49ers are ghey
ThEsE aRe GoOd