France vs Austria Bot Challenge

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MerryBBuck
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#201 Post by MerryBBuck » Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:13 pm

I defer to RJ. I lack the perspective to give a useful answer. Apart from 3 aborted attempts, I've never played FvA against a human. I fear that my "expertise" is not actually in FvA. Instead, I think fairbot itself has simply trained me in ways to exploit fairbot.

At the moment, I find it lots easier to beat fairbot when I play as Austria. My intuition does says Austria has a moderate advantage in FvA. Googling, I've seen 2 datapoints that might support this: a 2018 tournament result (53% Austria win vs. 47% France), and RJ's Tableau database (a 57-to-43 "advantage" for Austria after 1 year). I'd love to hear others answer this question. I wonder if anyone who has the "webdiplomacy dataset" has shared the historical FvA win/lose/draw split.
https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/vie ... 45&t=58794
https://public.tableau.com/profile/jens ... ublish=yes

RoganJosh
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#202 Post by RoganJosh » Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:08 pm

I think it's generally agreed upon that Austria has an advantage. That's why most tournaments has France progressing if the tiebreaker game ends in a draw. Nothing new there.

In addition, Austria is much easier to play. France has a narrower path to victory. As France, you must win all three fronts (Tunis, Germany, and Scandinavia) to win the game. Against a good Austrian player, the only way to win all three fronts is to win each front narrowly. So you have to constantly react to what choices Austria is making, and there are few good options, easy to misstep. Austria has so many different options that it can be difficult to blunder as Austria.

The bot is very good at closing out the game early as Austria. That's where the bot is better than humans, I'd say. And it has made me think that the map is more unbalanced than what I originally though. Maybe more like 87.2% A than 75% A. Maybe even worse.
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#203 Post by jasnah » Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:26 pm

People don't like to play messy positions with lots of uncertainty. The bot doesn't give a shit, so it doesn't ever do the usual hedging moves that people are prone to when playing Austria, which somewhat reduce tactical efficiency while simplifying the position and make it easier for France to catch up. No way around it, to beat the bot as France requires getting every guess right.

And so yeah, 87.2% is oddly specific, but like somewhere around that to 15%-ish France without a simplification bias sounds about right.

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#204 Post by RoganJosh » Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:40 pm

Yeah, I should've written something like "net 3 guesses to win" in stead of .875... Also, not all guesses are 50/50.

.75 is "net 2 guesses to win", and .50 is "net 1 guess to win".

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#205 Post by MerryBBuck » Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:17 pm

Congrats to Myth1202 for the victory as France against Fairbot: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameI ... #gamePanel
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#206 Post by jasnah » Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:51 pm

MerryBBuck wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:17 pm
Congrats to Myth1202 for the victory as France against Fairbot: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameI ... #gamePanel
A remarkable and innovative victory, don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#207 Post by MerryBBuck » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:02 pm

MerryBBuck wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:13 pm
I wonder if anyone who has the "webdiplomacy dataset" has shared the historical FvA win/lose/draw split.
Answering my own question for posterity. In ~19400 FvA games, Austria won 53.7% of the time, France won 39.7% of the time, and 6.7% were draws.
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#208 Post by Tjappator » Fri Apr 16, 2021 12:03 pm

MerryBBuck wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:17 pm
Congrats to Myth1202 for the victory as France against Fairbot: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameI ... #gamePanel
I believe that the Austria bot might have made a mistake in Fall 1902, when it disbanded the army in Ven instead of retreating it to Tus or Apu (probably Apu would have been the best)? I'm not sure what the benefit is of building a new army in Bud instead of a retreat.
Especially since the Bot then selfbounced in Spring 1903 instead of taking an SC in Ser/Rum.

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#209 Post by MerryBBuck » Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:07 pm

Today I learned a DATC rule interpretation on which Fairbot occasionally relies.
Example: Autumn 1901, Fairbot as France https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=349632
  • The army at Picardy move to Belgium via convoy.
There's no fleet for this convoy. But per DATC 6.G.8, "Explicit Convoy that Isn't There" http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/#6.G.8, the "via convoy" is ignored, and the army moves by land.
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RoganJosh
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#210 Post by RoganJosh » Tue Apr 20, 2021 8:58 pm

DATC is not the rules. On Conspiracy, that move order would fail.

(Though, by the official rules, the move should succeed.)
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#211 Post by Peregrine Falcon » Thu Apr 22, 2021 5:44 am

That is an odd quirk of the bot! Good find!

And to add to what RoganJosh said, the DATC is also just a series of things to decide upon based on multiple conflicting iterations of the rules. (Although conforming to the most recent rules, published in 2000 [the 2015 rulebook doesn't contain any wording changes], is typically what people mean when they say DATC compliance.)
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MerryBBuck
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#212 Post by MerryBBuck » Sat Sep 04, 2021 2:23 am

I figured out enough about Python and Keras to scrape game data and create models to predict moves. I trained one set of models to predict Fairbot's moves as France. I played a game where my "bot" was France, versus the real Fairbot as Austria: https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=373463

I know my efforts are like a caveman throwing rocks at a starship.
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#213 Post by MerryBBuck » Thu Oct 07, 2021 11:15 pm

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#214 Post by Jamiet99uk » Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:21 pm

MerryBBuck wrote:
Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:07 pm
Today I learned a DATC rule interpretation on which Fairbot occasionally relies.
Example: Autumn 1901, Fairbot as France https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=349632
  • The army at Picardy move to Belgium via convoy.
There's no fleet for this convoy. But per DATC 6.G.8, "Explicit Convoy that Isn't There" http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/#6.G.8, the "via convoy" is ignored, and the army moves by land.
How does it "rely" on it?
There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. - Lenin.

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#215 Post by MerryBBuck » Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:33 am

Jamiet99uk wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:21 pm

How does it "rely" on it?
I just meant that the bot is coded/trained that that order results in the army moving. If the bot played on a different website, it might lose games that it would win here.

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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#216 Post by Puddle » Fri Dec 17, 2021 8:45 pm

My second victory against FairBot today!

https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=387564
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MerryBBuck
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Re: France vs Austria Bot Challenge

#217 Post by MerryBBuck » Wed Feb 02, 2022 8:38 pm

I think Fairbot (FvA) is broken. It's not moving, and is starting to resign games.
https://webdiplomacy.net/userprofile.php?userID=128943

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