Combat strategy for ants

Question

This question refers to the Google-sponsored AI Challenge, a contest that happens every few months and in which the contenders need to submit a bot able to autonomously play a g

Answer 1

I think your problem can be solved by turning the problem around. Instead of calculating the best moves - per ant - you could caclulate the best move candidates per discrete position on your playing board.

• +1 for a save place
• +2 for a place that results in an enemy dying
• -1 point for a position of certain death

That would scale in a linear way - but have some trade off in not providing best individual movement.

Maybe worth a try :)