Bot games don't draw

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Ogion
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Bot games don't draw

#1 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:10 am

When the player puts up cancel or draw, bot games don't draw. That's fucking moronic.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#2 Post by bo_sox48 » Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:53 am

They'll cancel or draw if they're losing, but if any of them are beating the human player they will not match your vote.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#3 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:21 am

Which is, as I said, fucking moronic. What, the bots are trying to claim points? No. The point is for the human, the ONLY player that counts not to waste a shit ton of time just because devs can't figure out the implementation. As I said fucking moronic.
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#4 Post by DrugTito » Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:23 am

Thats certainly not fucking moronic as you say.
Not being able to Cancel at will might be dumb, but to Draw at will should not be expected.
The only real moronic thing is that failing to enter orders in a bot game affects reliability ratings - players rely on each other to enter orders in time so the game can move forward. Bots dont need to rely on anyone for anything.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#5 Post by PRINCE WILLIAM » Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:38 am

I think that cancellation can happen in the early stages of a game.
As for the drawing, I had drawn games with the bots. As bo said they will keep playing if one has potential for the solo, if not they will draw, I got a draw with only one SC left.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#6 Post by gimix » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:11 pm

Bots don't accept to draw or cancel if one of them is leading, and it has taken one or more sc's in the last four turns.
Since bots authors are collecting data which may be used for their research and perhaps also to improve the bots gameplay this sounds fair to me.
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#7 Post by Claesar » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:41 pm

Ogion wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:21 am
... just because devs can't figure out the implementation. ...
Your assumption is wrong. This was implemented on purpose.
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#8 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:28 pm

Claesar wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:41 pm
Ogion wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:21 am
... just because devs can't figure out the implementation. ...
Your assumption is wrong. This was implemented on purpose.
That is even worse. Anyone who knows anything about testing knows you shouldn't use data that don't simulate the right conditions (ie, against players trying to win). If you are training bots on data from players trying to lose as quickly as possible, you are actively making the bots worse. (Indeed, the bots are terrible at this. ( When I am done, I leave all my centers wide open for years trying to end the gane and the bots just ignore them.) That is terrible practice.

I recommend just leaving the cancel button active. Once a player wants to concede, that need to be the end of it. Wasting people’s time with a frustrating experience is just pointless or worse, actively harmful to the effort

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#9 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:37 pm

Don’t get me wrong: overall the bots are absolutely fantastic and a massive achievement. I have a sense of what has gone into them and I am very impressed with how well they perform. I know of some best selling games whose AI performa far worse (*cough* CIV *cough). A simple game, but really well done

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#10 Post by bo_sox48 » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:05 pm

I'm glad to see how appreciated the thousands of hours and thousands of dollars spent on artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning implementation featured in numerous research papers and articles worldwide is on this site. Can't figure out the implementation my ass.

As everyone here understands, the purpose of the bots is to learn from human players. The weakest part of their game is the endgame because they have a smaller sample size of games that actually made it that far, and that sample is small enough such that bad human play really stands out. Likewise, the bots don't suffer from an easy takeover; they'll still try to support their orders where necessary and may even learn to balance their resources against an opponent that isn't trying - again, an example of human behavior that is more than appropriate for them to identify and master, and one that as you point out they aren't particularly keen on taking advantage of to this point. If the human player were simply to cancel a game when they're losing, the bots not only don't gain any data from defeating a human player for any future improvements we may try to make, but they also lose anything else they may have picked up from a canceled game. There's room for improvement here, and while making improvement to the bots is difficult we actually do know how to do it despite your preconceived assumptions to the contrary, but that's not acceptable.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#11 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:42 pm

If the aim is to collect data from the end game, then recruit people to do it. Because right now, you're collecting *bad* data from the end game. Yes, I appreciate the field of AI because I used to be a modeler and designer myself, which is why I know this is not very helpful practice and needs significant improvement. It's such an obvious methodological problem, I'm surprised you bother to get offended that it is pointed out to you. IN fact, it's not at all clear to players as implemented that they're participating in research trials. If that's the intention, it might be worthwhile to tell people that and ask that people play out their games. If you want good data, then get people to play that out to get good data. Using research subjects who don't know what they're supposed to be doing is, well, inefficient at best.


The issue of losing the data from a canceled game sounds like a mere data capture issue. If the cancellation also deletes the data up to that point, that's not something that is inherent to canceling, but rather in how the data is captured for training purposes. Again, that's an implementation issue.

What I am hearing is that playability isn't of interest at the moment. Up to you. I think it's an error, but at least I will play out those draws to the conclusion to get you better data, now that I know it's not just wasting my time. I still think your experimental protocols could use some work.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ogion, Ph.D.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#12 Post by bo_sox48 » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:56 pm

Perhaps the offense, as has often been the case if I my memory of our conversations of the past serves me correctly, is drawn not from what you say but how you say it. You'd think someone who parades around wearing their expensive and hard-earned credentials on their sleeve would understand that while there are many components to getting your point across, basic rhetoric indicates one should be cautious not to piss off the person that has control over whether or not their point falls on deaf ears.

As I said, there is room for improvement. I said that to indicate to you that I am receptive to your ideas, but I'm not receptive to people telling the developer team on this site and the external developers and researchers who initiated this project that we don't know what we're doing. Currently, you're being one of those people. Stop being one of those people please or I'll stop reading what you say.

As indicated, we are not actively making further improvements right this second, but the efficacy of the dataset will always be of the utmost importance. The details of how game data may be used to make improvements and how it may be used by future research endeavors can be found on our help page here.
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#13 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:59 pm

Look, i am sorry for being cranky as hell. Now that I understand what you are up to, I would love to help think through how to avoid reaction

Having done human subjects experimental design, I mght suggest a couple of ideas:

1) a notice on launch that these games are still being used for AI development and would players please play through to completion, Lusthog style. I bet youll get a lot more games going longer with that notice

2) have a cancel option sp people dont get frustrated and disengage. (Not everyone is going to be helpful)

3) perhaps have two draw functions. One as it is now (four turns without taking a center). One a “draw when stalemate is set”. Actually, maybe this one isnt useful because the human player can just wait until the stalemate lines are set anyway.

Of course capturing data up to the moment a cancel or draw button is pushed.

Anyway, I am sorry for my poor reaction here
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#14 Post by Ogion » Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:22 pm

bo_sox48 wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:56 pm
Perhaps the offense, as has often been the case if I my memory of our conversations of the past serves me correctly, is drawn not from what you say but how you say it. You'd think someone who parades around wearing their expensive and hard-earned credentials on their sleeve would understand that while there are many components to getting your point across, basic rhetoric indicates one should be cautious not to piss off the person that has control over whether or not their point falls on deaf ears.

As I said, there is room for improvement. I said that to indicate to you that I am receptive to your ideas, but I'm not receptive to people telling the developer team on this site and the external developers and researchers who initiated this project that we don't know what we're doing. Currently, you're being one of those people. Stop being one of those people please or I'll stop reading what you say.

As indicated, we are not actively making further improvements right this second, but the efficacy of the dataset will always be of the utmost importance. The details of how game data may be used to make improvements and how it may be used by future research endeavors can be found on our help page here.
Yep. You are not wrong here. My apologies
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Re: Bot games don't draw

#15 Post by Ogion » Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:31 am

You are certainly right the bots don't know how to make a draw stand up. Here's hoping I can give them some more data on that.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#16 Post by Nescio » Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:34 am

It's perfectly reasonable players can't cancel games against bots whenever they please. That would be quite prone to abuse: just cancel any game you're not winning to get your solo-victories count to 100%. Moreover, there is a risk of misclicks, since the cancel button is close to other buttons, and more importantly, cancelled games can't be analysed and thus distort the data.
As for bots never drawing, that's simply not true. I've actually drawn many bot games.
What is rather annoying is that bots immediately draw once the human player is destroyed. It would be quite interesting to see how they would continue and play out against each other.

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Re: Bot games don't draw

#17 Post by Claesar » Sun Apr 18, 2021 3:08 pm

Nescio wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:34 am
...
What is rather annoying is that bots immediately draw once the human player is destroyed. It would be quite interesting to see how they would continue and play out against each other.
We've found out this causes severe server stress because they go through the turns so quickly. We had to change it to make them draw immediately..

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