Bots shouldn't build too much unnecessary roads

21 Nov, '19
John

It's annoying, but effective.

14 Dec, '19
Bill Norris

The bots need work, although admittedly creating perfect AI players isn't easy. But little things like building roads to nowhere should be cut out. I've played in plenty of games where bots will build in directions where there aren't any eligible places to settle while also not helping them reach Longest Road.

check
1) can I settle in this direction
2) does this help for longest road
3) does this road segment help prevent somebody from getting longest road

1

23 Dec, '19
Esqarrouth Admin Merged

Is there a screenshot?

19 Jan, '20
Tiffany

Don't necessarily agree with the suggestion for the bot in your example (although i think it should have used its last 4 roads to build toward a sheep spot or wheat port).

However, i agree with the general notion that bots should not build "unnecessary" roads when they do it just to waste resources (roads to nowhere that cannot have a house on them).

28 Mar, '20
John Merged

Here we are with yet another game where bots just endlessly build roads, and don't build settlements, and because I actually built something I'm being largely exclusively targeted with the robbers and excessively aggressive use of knights. So I'm not able to do anything and the bots chew up all the available space on the board.

1

29 Mar, '20
John Merged

A single bot just built 12 road segments in a row, chewing up any space I had to expand, without building any settlements when it clearly could have

18 Apr, '20
Logan

Bots are definitely not being 'wise' in road building. Even after a bot has the longest road (/w comfortable lead eg.+2) and is well positioned to expand (no shortage of brick/wood) it continues to build roads. The bot should instead invest in building settlements along the road, which will immediately provide a VP.

It doesn't seem to matter that the bot has a pile of cards (5-6) it still builds a road instead of a settlement.

25 Apr, '20
Logan

Blue is a bot:
https://imgur.com/a/QXC7bgP

21 May, '20
Jarrod Merged

Hi team. Love your work!

In a recent match a bot had the chance to build a road towards a port that I was also building towards. They could have cut me off and significantly reduced my opportunities for the game. Instead the bot built a road from another settlement in an area of the board that was not closely contested.

I am guessing the bot may have been building toward a settlement location with higher production. However, it did not understand the priority of the situation, and the adva

10 Jun, '20
Chris Merged

Here's another, unrelated, bot road-building bug: there's lots of room to expand to the north from the right side of the board, but the bot just filled up space for no reason...
https://imgur.com/a/UivZOq4

18 Jun, '20
Reinato Merged

Sometimes bots spoils

27 Jun, '20
Chris Merged

For the fun of it I played a 2-player game against a bot with 99 max cards. After a while I noticed the bot was amassing more and more cards, so I decided to do the same ... to the effect of there being almost no cards left in the bank!!

27 Jun, '20
John Merged

Fun idea! The bots seem very hard coded to specific patterns and they aren't flexible/adaptable. Kind of like how the game hangs up with the bot stuck on the idea of building roads but has no roads left, or when the bot keeps building roads when it has enough resources for building a settlement or city. Or you know you can ignore a huge gap in your defenses because the bot always follows a specific growth pattern.

05 Jul, '20
svn Merged

Bots used to build settlements and cities. They aren't anymore.

09 Jul, '20
Julian Merged

I'm also pretty sure bots' only criteria during initial placement is highest number pip total, and random when tied. That said, I've seen a number of suggestions relating to particular aspects of bot behaviour, but instead of trying to make manual tweaks, a complete overhaul would be worthwhile.

16 Jul, '20
John Merged

Bot at 9 points with a place to build a settlement and a hand full of cards... and it just keeps building roads. I hate that the bots cheat and collude (intentionally or not, through all having the same arcane trading rules and patterns), but there are many games where the bot just doesn't end it with obvious wins.

18 Jul, '20
Austin Admin

"Bots are only building roads" (suggested by svn on 2020-07-05), including upvotes (2) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

18 Jul, '20
Austin Admin

"BOTS broken, they don't know how to win when they clearly would (road building bug)" (suggested by John on 2020-07-16), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

15 Aug, '20
Satoshi Admin

"Bot seems to be completely unsure of how to win" (suggested by Chris on 2020-06-27), including upvotes (2) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.

16 Aug, '20
Satoshi Admin

"Improve bot difficulty" (suggested by Reinato on 2020-06-18), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

18 Aug, '20
Satoshi Admin

"Improvement to bot road placement priorities" (suggested by Jarrod on 2020-05-21), including upvotes (3) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.

18 Aug, '20
Satoshi Admin

"fix your road spam bug already." (suggested by player on 2020-03-28), including upvotes (1) and comments (2), was merged into this suggestion.

18 Aug, '20
Satoshi Admin

"Make the bots less retarded" (suggested by Wanda Tinasky on 2019-09-28), including upvotes (5) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.

25 Aug, '20
Demiculus Admin

Cleaning up old issues:
http://prntscr.com/lka4h0 Nov 20, 2018
http://prntscr.com/lq7qn4 Dec 4, 2018
http://prntscr.com/lq7rv3 Dec 4, 2018
http://prntscr.com/lq7sny Dec 4, 2018
http://prntscr.com/lq7t0p Dec 4, 2018
Bots sometimes build towards existing settlements
Bot seems to make a road towards a good location, which is empty. But at 1 side there are other settlements so it is unbuildable.

25 Aug, '20
Demiculus Admin

While lengthening road, bot missed the opportunity to connect to itself http://prntscr.com/o7kxc8 http://prntscr.com/o7kzlv
https://i.imgur.com/8pY1jOK.png
https://imgur.com/j6bzxW0
https://www.reddit.com/r/Katan/comments/cee93a/testing_v43/eufbvqh/

https://github.com/colonistio/katan/issues/182

25 Sep, '20
JUAN Admin

"Bot's Road Placements" (suggested by Halnon on 2020-09-25), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

25 Sep, '20
john Merged

But it's also sad because the bots fail to block the right positions to slow the leader. Hey, let's block 3 ignoring the Bot has cities on 6 and 8 and those are rolling significantly more. Which is ironic because the bot seems to try and avoid blocking 4/10 when those are rolling off the hook. It's mindblowing... I have no idea the ruleset that leads to absurd plays

25 Sep, '20
john Merged

[And I'm only pointing out those low odd numbers as having inconsistent blocking rules around them. I sort of get that blocking low odd numbers is a low priority in the 4/10 case, sort of, but here it is blocking 3 when it's the worst choice. But hey, have to block 2 players right!? (unless it's a human player... then it's good to block only 1 person)]

26 Sep, '20
JUAN Admin

"Bugs: Bot used monopoly, got 27 resource in hand, 9 points and had port... then only build roads" (suggested by john on 2020-09-25), including upvotes (1) and comments (2), was merged into this suggestion.

30 Sep, '20
john Merged

rather than just win... It's like it's going to keep doing stuff until it's forced to win or stumbles upon it. This is so absurd.
bot had 2 knights and has a third knight it refused to play until the end of it's turn, choosing to trade with the bank and build roads aimlessly... it's like it avoids winning at times

30 Sep, '20
JUAN Admin

"Bot has longest road, largest army, 15+ resources in hand but just continues to screw around rather" (suggested by john on 2020-09-30), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

03 Oct, '20
JUAN Admin

"BUG: Bot built road over settlement, loses road immediately" (suggested by player on 2019-12-21), including upvotes (1) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.

03 Nov, '20
nickey#8226

feels unfair to play with a bot who can win longest road but constructs it to nowhere. that plus too many "extra point cards" (two or more) has made me hold my moves in order to hace a nice match. (maybe it could be good to restrict those cards (to 1) when playing against machines as the length of matches is sustantially shortened for this.)

08 Dec, '20
David Bodycombe

I've noticed this too. Bots seem to spend a lot of resources on pointless roads, even if it is (a) impossible for it to get to any available settlement sites or (b) become Longest Road. It is almost behaving as if it doesn't realise that settlements 'interrupt' the longest road calculation.

13 Dec, '20
SillyWords

In general, the bots are very bad players. However, the following three items would vastly improve their skill level.

1) the bots build roads into dead-ends. It's incredibly stupid. Even when they could be opening up new intersections to build on, they build a road to into a dead intersection. This has to be fixed.
2) the bots will trade with anyone, at any time. The simplest rule should be the following. In a game to X, the bot does not trade with any player who has a score greater than X-2 - (number of hidden DEV cards). So for example, in a game to 10, if a player is on 7 and has 2 dev cards, then the bot will go 10-2-2 = 6, the score 7>6 so no trades with that player. This could be implemented in 3 minutes.
3) When placing the robber, the bot needs to factor in both largest army and longest road possibilities and hidden dev cards into it's calculation about who is winning. At the moment it just goes on points. I will detail this below.

13 Dec, '20
SillyWords

Regarding point 3 above.

The opponents scores should be evaluated as following before placing the robber1
a) ) their visible points
b) the distance a player is from largest army
c) the number of roads needed to make longest road

b) can be calculated as follows. N is the number of knights needed to get largest army (3 at the start of the game, it goes up later) X is the number of robbers a player has played. Y is the number of hidden dev cards a player has and Z is the number of hidden dev cards the player with the largest army has (will be zero if no-one has the army yet). About half the dev cards are Knights.

b = 2vp * (X + (Y-Z)/2)/N

Examples a) a Player has played 2 knights and has 1 hidden dev card and no-one has the robber. X = 2. N= 3. Y = 1. Z = 0 b = 2vp * 2.5/3 = 1.66 i.e. almost 2vp.
Example b) a player has played 2 knights, and has 1 hidden dev card, someone already has the largest army and also has a hidden dev card X= 2 N=4 Y =1 and Z = 1. b = 2vp * (2/4) = 1vp

30 Dec, '20
JUAN Admin

"Bug - bot builds upon roads that have breaks" (suggested by Giselle on 2020-12-28), including upvotes (2) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

11 Jan, '21
timi

the bots don't seem to try to win, actually. i just played a bot game with a 40 card discard limit. the bots hardly built anything! they just hung out with 30+ cards in their hands and did nothing. (2 of them upgraded their initial settlements to cities and built a couple roads. 1 of them built a bunch of roads, then did nothing for like 10 turns, then suddenly built a bunch of roads and a couple settlements.) so it seems the bots are just trying to play cards before a 7 rolls. and they're not trying to maximize points

Bots shouldn't build too much unnecessary roads

Comments: 38