Declaimer
I haven't done a lot of testing with this, this is just off the top of my head. I would much rather take the time to sit down and do the math to see under optimal situations (meaning, not getting killed by the other team and open space on the map) which combinations would give you the most bang for the buck.
Honestly, I would love to test those values under each scenario, record which are the best under each set of circumstances and then monitor those factors on the fly so that I could set my build priorities to meet the needs of what I have learned is out there on the map. That would then dynamically change as the match went on, but this is really starting to get into my ideas for machine learning (which the naysayers will tell you isn't possible, but I know they just are thinking of applying it in the way that I am).
Prioritizing Your Build Order
- Gardeners, build first, build often
- Scouts, these can quickly localize your team on the map, collect bullets and gather recon information about the enemy. Of course though if you have a different strategy worked out you may want to change this up.
- Lumberjacks
- Trees
- and finally Soldiers
Don't take my word for it, that's a pretty untested strategy, but if you are struggling to think of your own I suggest starting with this until you find something that works better for your situation.
Take A Census
Periodically you will likely want to keep track of how many of each of these types you have still alive, and then based on your current strategy replace any of those that were killed off to keep of the ratio you think will be most effective at the time.
Of course you can easily do this across the broadcast channels, but as soon as the enemy picks up on the frequency that you do this, or as they happen to be listening at the right times) they will have full knowledge of where all of your troops are.
There are more covert ways of doing this. They won't be as reliable or supplied to you as often, without a lot of overhead and cost. So you have to make a trade-off between not hiding very well and not having completely up to the moment solid data.
The covert way I am thinking is by using your scouts, have them go around and learn where your troops are. They can then broadcast from anywhere, assuming they don't die. In this way the can lead the enemy off to any location you wish to drag them into, instead of bringing them right to you.
Prioritizing Your Attack Order
In a perfect world you would also want to prioritize your attacking order. When you have several enemy units around you, each of the same type will have the same bullet strength. So the trick here is to first kill off the ones with the lowest health who are able to attack you. Meaning less bullets to dodge and higher odds of being able to take out the rest of them.
If you knew which of their units were where, you would always want to target archons first, with everything you have. The two main reasons for this are that the archons will often do most of their logic. Taking out the archons will likely slow down how fast they can manage their own team bots.
Yes, most players will be agile enough to hand processing over to other bots as soon as the archons are gone, but also likely is that they planned on the archons to have a lot more processing power. So unless they also broke down that logic to hand off to a few other bots working together, then that same archon logic will now lag into several clock cycles with the other bot who becomes a leader.
Yes, most players will be agile enough to hand processing over to other bots as soon as the archons are gone, but also likely is that they planned on the archons to have a lot more processing power. So unless they also broke down that logic to hand off to a few other bots working together, then that same archon logic will now lag into several clock cycles with the other bot who becomes a leader.
The second, and huge, reason for aiming everything you have at archons first whenever possible is that fact that their entire supply change for gardeners will be cut off. From that point forward they can only survive on what they have build or what they find in the trees. Many bots can be found in trees, not sure if that will be a thing for archons, but even if they could regain some by chance in that way, you have really given a good blow to their abilities.
After archons, if you had a choice you would want to kill off gardeners. Once a team has lost all archons and all gardeners, it is only a matter of time until they die out. They will have no way to build more bots of any kind. Unless they happen to find some guys hiding in trees, their clock is ticking. They have to be in complete survival mode.
After that it's all up to you and your strategy you want to go with but always kills off archons and gardeners first if you can. Soldiers, tanks and scouts can all attack you, so I'll let you think about what works best for your strategy as far as those go.
Countering The Counter Attack
Knowing that you have lost all archons and gardeners (or either for that matter) means your bot should be intelligent enough to realize the predicament and dynamically change the over all mission of your team.
Lose all gardeners? Okay, guess what? That is now your most important thing to work on, before you loose your archons also.
Loose all your archons? Okay, guess what? Now you need to be in survival mode, protecting at all costs, not taking crazy risks, protecting your gardeners much more than you ever did before.
No archons or gardeners left? Ok, don't panic. It's not over yet. Switch it to making your victory points a priority if you are close to them, or make an all out attack if you think you have any chance of winning it in now because the odds are likely only going to get worse for you from that point on. Make that last ditch effort attack or decide to run and hide. No shame in that, you just need to rack up victory points and survive till the match is over. Also it would be great to start prioritizing checking the rest of those trees for extra guys, that's your only way of getting more bots now so use it.
Lose all gardeners? Okay, guess what? That is now your most important thing to work on, before you loose your archons also.
Loose all your archons? Okay, guess what? Now you need to be in survival mode, protecting at all costs, not taking crazy risks, protecting your gardeners much more than you ever did before.
No archons or gardeners left? Ok, don't panic. It's not over yet. Switch it to making your victory points a priority if you are close to them, or make an all out attack if you think you have any chance of winning it in now because the odds are likely only going to get worse for you from that point on. Make that last ditch effort attack or decide to run and hide. No shame in that, you just need to rack up victory points and survive till the match is over. Also it would be great to start prioritizing checking the rest of those trees for extra guys, that's your only way of getting more bots now so use it.
