DeepLoamSea

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AI in the Game of Diplomacy: the DeepLoamSea Bot

Outline

I am designing and implementing a DAIDE bot that I call DeepLoamSea. The bot and its development phase within my overall Diplomacy project are commonly abbreviated to DLS. I am concentrating on two areas that, to date, have been neglected in most other bots. Firstly to use (send and receive) all levels of press at an early stage of development, even if initially having weak abilities with any type of message. Secondly to concentrate on general mechanisms to enable the bot learn from its experience, rather than to fine tune it by hand. I am (slowly) implementing an extended framework in C++ (starting from David Norman's AiClient Framework). At present DLS only has some extremely weak ad hoc tactical code, just to check that my extended framework is correct, including a CPU-bound thinking mechanism that does not hold up the rest of the game and gets orders in on time. I have partially designed and implemented a lot of AI stuff, but not yet complete enough to enable! It also includes the DTDT tournament code that ran my Tournaments, and that can be used to run ad hoc tests for debugging and tuning. That version will not be released. Almost all of its current design and code, except DTDT, is superseded by that in BlabBot (BB), or will be better rewritten, given my later experience and ideas, pending release of that source. All BlabBot design and code, except that of the DumbBot AI part, will then become the foundations of an almost brand new DeepLoamSea (version 2), the binary, but not the source, of which will released. (At least I will not release the full source while I have any competitive spirit remaining, but I may, from time to time, release extracts for inclusion in newer releases of BBB, within BB.)

For a long time now, I have suspended all coding of heuristic components, and concentrated on algorithmic components, which were moved to BBB (within BB), and greatly expanded there. When BB source (including BBB) is released, DLS will be rebuilt, almost from from scratch, now based on BBB. (The few remaining parts of DLS that are still of value will be retained, but most of those now need major revision.) When it plays a worthy game (when it may be of value to the DAIDE community) I shall release an executable version.

DeepLoamSea 2 will be built on the BlabBot Base (BBB), in which the main foundational facilities are contained. See Roadmap for an outline of what I plan for BBB and specifically for DLS. Expected first release: end 4Q2009.

Symbolism

The name DeepLoamSea is best understood by saying it aloud, quickly, with emphasis on the Loam – it is what the whole project is about! Deep alludes to the Deep Thought computer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which calculated the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything, and (along with Deep Blue) to Feng-Hsiung Hsu's/IBM's famous chess playing computers – and the fact that DLS is intended to be an in-depth implementation and deep analysis. Loam (especially DeepLoam) is the mud of the trenches for the armies, and Sea (especially Deep...Sea), of course, is for the fleets. The icon, while comprising the DLS acronym, also represents a blood-red wound with yellow puss, pierced by interlocked once-green-covered land/loam and blue sea. (Loam ought to be brown, but it looks too dull here. In any case, the raw red, blue, yellow and green also allude to the tiddlywinks colours of a board game.)