Developing a Splinterlands Bot is both fascinating and frustrating at the same time. I've been working on mine for 6 months, but I'm still not in the Top 50 and neither in the Top 10.
Procrastination
The main issue is my unyielding determination to procrastinate. Pretty much since the start, I intended to implement the universal "algorithm" to get good at any game. Alpha Zero. Or by now, Mu Zero.
The method requires no human input, just a computer program trying to beat itself indefinitely. Nothing but the game rules. Plus some machine learning magic. It's younger brother Mu Zero works even without rules.
Now, what did I actually do in those 6 months? I implemented the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm from scratch, wrote a simulation of the Splinterlands Battle Simulator. The first part is needed for Alpha Zero, the second is optional. But for some reason, I didn't program the rest. Probably because of my irrational distaste of neural networks.
But now I've started working on that part. Pretty much because I can't do anything else. Classic Temporal Difference Learning- doesn't work. Breadth-first initialisation - nope. RAVE - double nope. Thompson Sampling - comparable. I hope I'll finish soonish because @wonsama with his Deep Reinforcement Learning approach plays pretty successfully. He did pretty good work on his bot.
Current Season
In the current season, Aicu performs as always. Somewhere between rank 110 and Rank 50.
Win streaks followed by loss streaks.
Some work out: https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=5ff9d7f40ac52835c6631a18ff198bcc7f09cb6c&ref=aicu
Some matches are close: https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=b73020be7ab6fb4b7dab59b5e3eedb49a64d62f1&ref=aicu
Some just fail miserably: https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=d75bee665c448829d70b7ed9c8093ab8d8587481&ref=aicu
Anyway, lot's of works to be done until rank 1.
Giveaway
Onto the giveaway:
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The giveaway works as usual. Comment down below with your Splinterlands username. And after seven days I'll draw the winners randomly.