Better, Simpler Programming Contest

[LaFollet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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Originally posted by LaFollet:
I have to ask, how did you come up with the "value" for the units? Are you just pulling numbers out of nowhere, or are these bassed of of acctual units in game?

There are 5 possibilities here. It is not a "solved" problem yet, but rather "the other half" of this problem.

1) People could look at each of the 1080 units (or just each of the units in a national lineup) and assign them fixed values. Then, when the game runs, a "Heavy Cavalry" always has a value of, say, 51. This would take a bit of human work and be subjective.
2) The game could dynamically adjust values of units by tracking them. In other words, every unit could start a game with a value based on their resource cost, or based on (1) above. But each turn, that cost would be adjusted by the success rate: If all the Heavy Cavalry units had (overall) 35 deaths and 76 kills, then heavy cavalry would be valued at 76/35, or 2.17. Whereas if Militias had overall 346 deaths and 13 kills, they would be given a value of 13/346=.037. That way, units that are useful in the current strategic climate would be favored.
3) Numbers could come from the Combat Simulator. Unfortunately, that only works for melee units, and ignores some factors like trample and routing.
4) Somebody could develop an algorithm that assigns a value to a unit based on its stats and special abilities. This would be objective, but imperfect. Probably the best bet, though.
5) I'm sure there are others=)

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I wasn't particularly asking for the big picture of values, just the ones in the test case. (But I'd have to say that way #2 sounds very interesting. ) Cause the program I made came out with 4c 3d with a score of 110 (113 for the units and -3 for resources), and when I pluged in data from a game I'm playing now all it made was Black Hunters.
(which is why I'm now trying to force it to make a combined arms aproach)

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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Originally posted by LaFollet:
And wouldn't it be more beneficial if the code made sure that a percentage was archers, or mounted, or footsoldiers?

I know there was mention of a combined arms approach and how that would increase the value of units over others, to attempt to convince the code to use different types, but why not just make it take a certain percentage of each type?

No. This problem is intended to be perfectly generic, objective, and pure. That way, it can apply to any game regardless of the game's specifics, and solves a clearly-defined problem.

What you suggest can be done within the existing problem statement: Create 3 new resources, "bows", "saddles", and "boots", and give archers, cavalry, and soldiers a cost of 1 in that respective Category. Then give those resources a very high value, and give the province a certain number of each (maybe 2 bows, 4 boots, and 1 saddle) so that the algorithm will attempt to produce a minimum of 2 archers, 4 soldiers, and 1 cavalry each turn. It is best to keep the overall problem and algorithm as simple as possible and achieve complex results by adding parameters to the specific case.

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It wouldn't be as simple as adding in more resources, at least with my first program, it would take too much computer power to find the "best" use of all those resources. (Unless you math majors out there want to give me the best way to combine 16 different value sets...)