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MrCushtie



Joined: Aug 10, 2018

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 19:51 Reply with quote Back to top

I was reading over the FFAI documentation this morning, and it got me wondering - would a way to solve for the difficulty in finding games during American hours be to run bots in the Box?

I had a quick search for "ai" or "AI" or "bots" in the forum and couldn't find much (apart from Bangalore Packers & Movers, but that's a different thing entirely). I also don't see anything in the rules explicitly prohibiting bots from playing, although I may have overlooked that.

So, say you only have 2 people activate in the box on one schedule - how about filling the remaining spaces with bot coaches, so that everyone gets a chance to play?

Here's a few objections that I can think of:

    * People play for the social elements, and unless we built chat bot functionality as well, playing the bot would be as much fun as any silent opponent. But is that worse than no game at all? (I really don't know the answer there, not making a rhetorical point for the sake of it)

    * Bots aren't good enough to present a reasonable challenge for a coach (I don't know if that is the case or not, and the FFAI efforts may have improved that - guess I need to play GrodBot and find out

    * This is open to some form of abuse I've not thought of - eg you activate when nobody else does, and your team gets an easy match where you farm SPP or boost your CR or whatever motivates you (which alludes to the previous point - or else somebody builds a monster-bot that wipes the floor with new players)

    * It's a lot of coding work to distract Christer from more valuable things like the new client (but maybe he doesn't have to do anything - he doesn't run the bots, and somebody could write a job on a different server that looks at 1 minute to activation to see if there's less than 4 coaches, and then activates bots as necessary)

    * NO BOTS ALLOWED - which if I have missed that prohibition, sorry for taking up your time


What else have I missed?

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Christer



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 20:01
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I would love for someone to spearhead a project like this. It'd be great to integrate bots to the site. L would be the first step of course.

However, I simply don't have the time to spend on making this work so it would need some heavy lifting by someone else to begin with and approach me with some solid groundwork before I spend 100s of hours into something like that.

Between the site and the FFB client/server we already have, I simply don't have more energy to take on a large project like that myself.
awambawamb



Joined: Feb 17, 2008

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 20:03 Reply with quote Back to top

If there would be a bot service of some sort, I'd play compulsively against them for the sake of it. I'd eventually master the countermoves to a point where I'd be probably able to manage the random dice failure to a point where it wouldn't matter anymore. This will ultimately lead to an automatism of some sort, and it would either turn BB into an addiction or turn off the interest completely.
So, while it would be kinda fun to play against bot from time to time, in my opinion it would be detrimental to the game, and the website in general, in the long run.

There is a feature called test game where you can play against youself, by opening two clients at once. You can play like you would play against a regular opponent or tune the teams and the luck to your liking from adding and removing skills to decide the outcome of the dice rolls.

Once I've tried to field a 10/10/10/10 player with ALL THE SKILLS. I had to prepare a long text file with the command list to create such aberration...

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koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 21:02 Reply with quote Back to top

Bots are a nice feature for rookies to learn the ropes and get used to the client.

I can't see bots being good enough to rival a human opponent.

If the bots were good enough, or even nearly good enough, they would end up taking coaches away from the main divisions. I'd imagine that a bot would have to be pretty good to be allowed in R or B.

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Mnemon



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 22:35 Reply with quote Back to top

koadah wrote:
I can't see bots being good enough to rival a human opponent.


I can if you have the hours and knowledge to develop a good base, and the processor power to train them. Neural networks have mastered GO - and Bloodbowl is simple in comparison. I doubt you'd need something equally as complex.

Obviously the luck factor and various skills would matter - but give it enough games to learn and test itself and it'd probably optimise movement and movement order better than any of us can.
Christy



Joined: Jul 19, 2007

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 22:36 Reply with quote Back to top

Theoretically a not should be able to beat a human. We have it in many games already. Obviously bb is not there yet but might be handy for league or
ArrestedDevelopment



Joined: Sep 14, 2015

Post   Posted: Jul 11, 2019 - 23:36 Reply with quote Back to top

Run them in L sure. Not the box Smile

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kummo



Joined: Mar 29, 2016

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 00:00 Reply with quote Back to top

Christy wrote:
Theoretically a not should be able to beat a human. We have it in many games already. Obviously bb is not there yet but might be handy for league or


Those bots are coded and have kinda like list of things it should do, what to avoid and specific scenarios.

That kind of bot is easy to play around when you learn what it can do, what it can't do, what it will try and what it avoids.

Learning bot tho... one of those that has capability to win Dota 2 championships. That kind of bot would probably become really good at blood bowl. The Dota 2 bot calculates its chances on different situations and that kind of calculating is quite similar how some legend coaches think about how to approach on how their turn should go around.
smallman



Joined: Sep 24, 2007

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 01:46 Reply with quote Back to top

Mnemon wrote:
Neural networks have mastered GO - and Bloodbowl is simple in comparison.


Lol you could not be more wrong. Go is just black or white or empty and position. Bb is infinitely more complex.

Making a bot competitive in bb is impossible, would just be embarrassing for whoever attempted it.
Mnemon



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 03:17 Reply with quote Back to top

You underestimate the complexity of Go. By a lot. Chess is childs play in comparison. And the 16 turn limit and maximum of 22 pieces on the board in Bloodbowl cuts down permutations drastically.

A bot / neural network that is really, really, good at positioning, blocking, and limiting opponent movement is probably pretty possible. The only real difficulty are the large variety of skills - but, at least the basic important ones, oughtn't be impossible hard to train.
thoralf



Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 04:29 Reply with quote Back to top

smallman wrote:
Go is just black or white or empty and position. Bb is infinitely more complex.


Some ballparks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity

Chess has the same complexity as Go. Backgammon is unclear but if memory serves well machine learning got stronger earlier. One relevant concept is PSPACE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSPACE

Whatever you can solve with an automated problem solver lies in that space. An important result is Savitch's theorem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitch%27s_theorem

I believe this means you can add an RNG to a game for free, i.e. without adding any complexity. This may be incorrect, it's been a while I checked this stuff. If it's correct, then the idea that BB is more complex because it's non-deterministic is incorrect.

This concept of complexity is theorical. It has practical applications, but it does not imply that writing a Go program is similar as writing a Chess engine.

BB seems to share properties from the three games mentioned above. From my experience, tactics are simpler in BB than in Chess, positional play is simpler than in Go, but the odds calculations are more complex than in Backgammon. I'd be very surprised if it could not be tackled in a hybrid fashion.

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smallman



Joined: Sep 24, 2007

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 05:53 Reply with quote Back to top

I am not underestimating the complexity of Go at all. Yes Go is way more STRATEGIC than BB. But we are talking about coding a bot. Both Go and Chess are ONLY about whoever can plan ahead the furthest for all possibilities wins, which is understandable that can be programmed well by a PC. And if was possible to program flawlessly, would always have the same winner.

The random dice factor of BB, make the risk vs reward factor too complicated to program well. Too many skills change the best choices. When do you stall, when do you chain push? When is it worth using a reroll?

It would still be a nice feature, especially for new players wanting to get a feel for the interface.
madvig



Joined: Feb 10, 2008

Post   Posted: Jul 12, 2019 - 09:07 Reply with quote Back to top

kummo wrote:
Learning bot tho... one of those that has capability to win Dota 2 championships. That kind of bot would probably become really good at blood bowl. The Dota 2 bot calculates its chances on different situations and that kind of calculating is quite similar how some legend coaches think about how to approach on how their turn should go around.


I will quit fumbbl when i loose to a bot in the black box.

I would say bots must be kept outside the ranked and box divisions to keep the game fair for everyone. In the ranked division you are able to play opponents at your own level, and in the black box... Well you know how it works! Wink

If a bot is included in the Black Box division i fear that it will be either too easy to predict, or it will be to clever to ever make a small mistake. Both of these would be equally bad!
If you face a bot that is too easy in the box, you will have a chance to build up a team that would have been way harder to build when facing a coach, due to the level of opponents in that division. If you face a bot that is programmed to beat you every game, people will stop activating when they have lost 50 games in a row.
Furthermore people need this game to be balanced with coaches that a beatable and coaches that are more difficult. I would say a bot removes this mixture of opponents if it is fixed at a certain coach-level.

Last comment on the bots is that this game isnt like chess where your pawns are limited. In Blood Bowl your players devolp and die! This will be ruined if you play a bot that is either too easy or too hard

A bot division that could make it possible to get a game 24/7 sounds fine with me. Sometimes we all play fumbbl just to get a quick BB fix Wink

Create a Bot-Division? Hell yeah! Mixing it with the Ranked or Black Box? Hell no!
thoralf



Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Post   Posted: Jul 18, 2019 - 01:21 Reply with quote Back to top

We are doomed:

In recent years there have been great strides in artificial intelligence (AI), with games often serving as challenge problems, benchmarks, and milestones for progress. Poker has served for decades as such a challenge problem. Past successes in such benchmarks, including poker, have been limited to two-player games. However, poker in particular is traditionally played with more than two players. Multiplayer games present fundamental additional issues beyond those in two-player games, and multiplayer poker is a recognized AI milestone. In this paper we present Pluribus, an AI that we show is stronger than top human professionals in six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, the most popular form of poker played by humans.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/07/10/science.aay2400

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MenonaLoco



Joined: Jan 05, 2016

Post   Posted: Jul 18, 2019 - 02:28 Reply with quote Back to top

BB ai is way more complex than go ai.
But i guess its possible today (and not a crap version like the computer game ai). Question is if somebody here can do it and how we want to use it for fumbbl.
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