AI Battle Royale

[Roujin]

Hi guys, half a year ago I already made something like this (thread).
Here's a new issue of the AI's battle royale featuring some old veterans as well as some fresh contestants

My motivation for doing this was seeing how many new AIs we have lately. I was able to fill all 14 available slots with different(!) AIs.
Remember that the "results" of this tournament do not directly translate into how "good" or "bad" an AI is. Some AIs are suited for direct competition with a lot of competitors, others aren't. Some AIs go for maximum profit, others have different goals like building a nice looking or sophisticatedly structured network.
Lastly, this is only one game I played with those AIs. Some of them may have gotten lucky, others had a bad start.

Every AI author has put a lot of effort into his AI, and that is to be respected.

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That said, let's get it on

The contestants:
AdmiralAI - v22
ChooChoo - v301
Clueless(Plus) - v6
Convoy - v11
Denver & Rio Grande (aka DustinAI) - v1 / RC12 from the forums
FaniozAI - v90318
MedievalAI - v2
NoCAB - v324
OTVI - v283
PathZilla - v5
PAXLink - v13
Rondje om de kerk - v2
TransAI (former FaniozAI) - v90713
WrightAI - v3

(edit: added versions)

Unfortunately there were two KOs right at the start: rondje was killed by the game for taking too long to load, and MedievalAI crashed after seconds, probably it is not up to date with the current API.

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The arena:
I chose a 512x512 map with freeform edges, relatively easy terrain (flat, smooth) and no newGrf sets to make it a bit easier on the AIs.

AI Tournament, 1950-01-01 map.png

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Next posts will show the first results after 5 game years.

[Roujin]

After 5 game years - Part 1

Here's the map after 5 years, with the company colors inserted.

AI Tournament, 1955-01-01 map.png

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Next, the graphs for all AIs. NoCAB seems to be the clear winner profit-wise. He used a lot of Airplanes, which explaines that a bit. They're relatively easy to build for an AI and generate quite some money

AI Tournament, 1955-01-01#4.png

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To be able to compare the other AIs a bit better, here's the same graphs again, but without NoCAB:

AI Tournament, 1955-01-01#5.png

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[Roujin]

After 5 game years - Part 2

Finally, the individual vehicles and company value of each AI:

AI Tournament, 1955-01-01#6.png

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Comments:
Of the remaining AIs (excluding Rondje and Medieval who died right at the start), unfortunately some more don't seem to be able to compete:
FanAI and PathZilla built nothing and PAXLink went bankrupt and was just restarted prior to the screenshot (see "Inaugurated: 1954")

The other AIs all built a lot of stuff each, some of them competing with RVs in the biggest towns (as expected), others building away their railway lines
All in all the map is quite well filled with transportation already (for only 5 years), and has a nice variety in it. Especially those AIs building rail infrastructure each have their own distinct style, which makes it nice to look at

[Zutty]

YAY! Thanks for being the tournament master again Roujin.

PathZilla built nothing

Oh no!

It may have sold all its vehicles, though I thought I had added checks to prevent that.

Is there any chance of seeing a debug log at all?

[Yexo]

Nice work Roujin. Can you perhaps add the versions of the AIs used in the first post?

From those screenshots it's not very clear, but it looks like there are no longer 5 or more AIs competing for the same industries / towns.

[Michiel]

Very cool! Nice to see ChooChoo doing its job

rondje was killed by the game for taking too long to load

Doh, I thought we fixed that.

[Roujin]

YAY! Thanks for being the tournament master again Roujin.

PathZilla built nothing

Oh no!

It may have sold all its vehicles, though I thought I had added checks to prevent that.

Is there any chance of seeing a debug log at all?

Yes, the game is still running, I can take a screenshot of the debug log...
Hmm, oh dear. It seems I have been running version 5, whereas the newest version is 6.
I thought I had downloaded all "upgrades" from the content download.. let's check... oh, PathZilla is not there at all . On the other hand, it's listed here. Maybe some setting is wrong so it's not displayed in the ingame content download?
I'm using r16968 btw.
Nevertheless, here's the debug shot:

PathZilla debug.png

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But at the time of my last post (after 5 game years) it was not yet crashed; I am not quite sure how far it was there, but I think it was up to the line "Trying to find path between ...". That could mean that it just took a very long time to find the path...
However, some time between year 5 and year 10, it crashed with what you see in above screenshot.

Nice work Roujin. Can you perhaps add the versions of the AIs used in the first post?

From those screenshots it's not very clear, but it looks like there are no longer 5 or more AIs competing for the same industries / towns.

Right, can do that. Should have checked the versions before actually, as my mishap with PathZilla shows.

Indeed, it seems to be distributed nicely over the whole map. Then again, I do not run multiple instances of the same AI (which would probably be more likely to cause what you're describing).
For towns though, it's still a bit like that: most RV AIs concentrate on the biggest towns, so they get stuffed with buses while some smaller, far off towns aren't touched at all.

edit:

Very cool! Nice to see ChooChoo doing its job

rondje was killed by the game for taking too long to load

Doh, I thought we fixed that.

Hm, I hope I did not make the same mistake here as with PathZilla. :/ Ingame it says I'm using Rondje v2. However, I've downloaded the newest version from the online content download, and there it says v290... list_ai in the console also gives me Rondje v2
Do you maybe have two different versioning schemes parallel?

[Zutty]

Yes, the game is still running, I can take a screenshot of the debug log...
Hmm, oh dear. It seems I have been running version 5, whereas the newest version is 6.
I thought I had downloaded all "upgrades" from the content download.. let's check... oh, PathZilla is not there at all . On the other hand, it's listed here. Maybe some setting is wrong so it's not displayed in the ingame content download?
I'm using r16968 btw.

Ah thats why! I put "nightly" as the maximum version in bananas, cos I've never actually tested it with anything newer than 0.7.1. I've changed it now.

[Roujin]

@Zutty: sorry again I'll continue this game now as it is, next time I'll make sure to have the newest version of your AI first!

But for now,
After 10 game years - Part 1
let's look at the game five years later

First off, the map:

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01 map.png

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Company graphs - NoCAB has managed to keep its pole position.

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01#4.png

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For comparing the other AIs, again without NoCAB:

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01#5.png

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(continued in next post)

[Roujin]

After 10 game years - Part 2

The individual vehicles and company value of each AI:

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01#6.png

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Comments:
NoCAB is still clearly in the lead, but if you look closely, it doesn't seem to have improved much since 1956 (game year 7), while others, esp. AdmiralAI, ChooChoo, OTVI and WrightAI are still growing. Maybe some competition about the first place will emerge if the game runs longer...
(of those four, OTVI probably will fall back soon because it solely relies on RVs and has nearly hit the limit of 500 vehicles)
Looking at the map (esp. by comparing with the one from year 5), you can see ChooChoo extending its network in the center of the map. While it sometimes creates absurdly long routes for trains going from one town to the town just next to it, I think its concept works really nice (and is nice to look at . Also, in the south, you can find several train routes built by TransAI. Before, he only had road vehicles.

Misc.:
To fill the 3-attachments-limit, here are two scenes from the game:

Competition in big towns
A lot of the AIs still focus on the same big towns, for building their RVs in. Other towns (smaller, far off) are not connected at all.

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01#7.png

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Evil OtviAI!
I don't know if it's doing this on purpose to disturb their opponents, but using drive through road stops in towns AND setting the orders to "full load" sure causes a nice traffic jam

AI Tournament, 1960-01-01#8.png

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I thought about doing little "spot on"s for some of the AIs, so maybe that will be my next post...

[Zutty]

@Zutty: sorry again I'll continue this game now as it is, next time I'll make sure to have the newest version of your AI first!

Thats ok Its still cool to see the results.

[Dustin]

Wow, thanks for running this. Any chance I could get a peek at the Denver & Rio Grande debug log? Just want to be sure it's not locked in a loop. It should print the date every few months or at least once a year.

Denver & Rio Grande is non-confrontational by design. It will only build links at industries that have no stations yet. So I think it was lucky to get started and will probably live it's life just 9 trains.

[Roujin]

It's time for a
Spot on! (#1)
I decided to make a few screenshots of individual AIs and write a few lines about them.
Note that they are choosen randomly, not by my preference or anything. Please don't hold a grudge against me if you're an AI author and your AI has not been covered by a spot on (yet ).

The first "spot on" is a double feature presenting a veteran of OpenTTD AIs, as well as a newcomer!
I hereby present:
AdmiralAI and Denver & Rio Grande

AI Tournament, Admiral, D&RG.png

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(AdmiralAI: yellow; Denver & Rio Grande: purple)
AdmiralAI is an AI by Yexo, one of the first AIs available (june 2008), and was the first AI with train support (after it had become possible in the API). Yexo is not only the author of this AI, but has also become developer of OpenTTD and is responsible for the NoAI framework.

AdmiralAI supports trains, road vehicles and planes.
Regarding railway transportation, AdmiralAI tries to reuse its existing tracks. It will start with connections between two points, but if there's existing track somewhere nearby and going in the right direction, it will hook its new route up to the existing one and thus start to build up a "network".
In the screenshot, you can see this principle in action. Early in the game, AdmiralAI built a coal line to this power plant. Later on, it decided to build a second coal line ending at this location, and instead of building a seperate station for the new line, AdmiralAI hooks up the new route to the existing one right before the station and thus reuses its infrastructure.
This is a feature, to my knowledge, yet unique among all OpenTTD AIs.

--
Denver & Rio Grande is a brand new AI by Dustin. It is still under development, only Release Candidates are available yet. The first public version was made available only this month (July 11th)!

Denver & Rio Grande is a freight train-only AI.
It builds no network, only point-to-point connections that are single track with passing lanes to allow multiple trains on them (kind of like the original AI). To construct its tracks, unlike most AIs that use the library or a modified A* pathfinder, it has a very different approach with the aim of making pathfinding much faster. The main pathfinder will just try to take the most direct path, and if it hits an obstacle, it calls different sub-pathfinders specialized in finding a way around the obstacle.
Unfortunately I found that the pathfinder, while doing quite well on "natural" obstacles (towns, industries, lakes) does not behave very well with existing tracks as an obstacle. It has only very slim chances of going over them, then it will try to find a way around them, which will most probably fail. This is an explanation for Denver & Rio Grande not doing very well in this battle royale, where there are tracks all over the place
As this AI is still under development, I hope the author further improves it and includes a sub-pathfinder able to cope with existing track better looking forward to seeing a more competitive version of this AI in the next battle royale


That's it for now, see you next time with a new AI at "spot on!"
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PS: @Dustin, your post came inbetween - hope my post answers some of your questions. Yes, your AI is alive and kicking, it even managed to build a new line just recently (at the very edge of the map where no competitors' tracks were in the way).

[Roujin]

After 15 game years

Map as of 1965:

AI Tournament, 1965-01-01 map.png

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Graphs:

AI Tournament, 1965-01-01#4.png

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Individual stats:

AI Tournament, 1965-01-01#5.png

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Comments:
Regarding company value, NoCAB is still clearly leading. But if you look at the Operating Profit or Income Graph, as predicted AdmiralAI, ChooChoo and WrightAI are gaining. Also as predicted, OTVI has lost momentum because it hit the vehicle limit of 500 RVs.
If you compare the map to the one from 1960 (10 game years), it has gotten a lot busier! It seems the AIs now have sufficient money to start churning out those rail lines. AdmiralAI (yellow), ChooChoo (green) and TransAI (peach) each added a bunch of colorful lines to the map.
Also I'm happy to report that PAXLink finally got started after going bankrupt for the second time in 1958. Well, how goes the saying? Third time's a charm. TransAI also seems to be gaining momentum, building more and more train routes. However I think it's too late for those two to really stand a chance against the leading AIs...

[Roujin]

After 20 game years

Map as of 1970:

AI Tournament, 1970-01-01 map.png

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Graphs:

AI Tournament, 1970-01-01#4.png

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Individual stats:

AI Tournament, 1970-01-01#5.png

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Comments:
If you compare the map to the previous one, you see some more rail lines. Most were built by ChooChoo (green), which can now be titled as the first and only AI to have a rail network across the whole map, more or less (except it's not really one network. In fact it sometimes spawns a crossing somewhere as a starting point for a new network. If you look at the map carefully you can see that not everything by ChooChoo is interconnected). Some were built by TransAI. But, wait... NONE were built by AdmiralAI??
Indeed, just look at the graphs! Five years ago, Admiral was still one of the three companies struggling to reach NoCAB, but in the last 5 years, it has stalled and thus fallen back in both Operating Profit and Income. What's the reason? I looked at the finance window and it seems it just didn't build anything anymore. Maybe it could not find anything to connect anymore.
At the same time, both ChooChoo and WrightAI have reached the level of NoCAB and are fighting for the first place...
Furthermore... wait, what is this? Look closely above AdmiralAI's line at the end of the Operating Profit Graph, there's some faint line... It's PAXLink! What a surprise! The same Paxlink that bankrupted twice and the current one was founded only in 1958! In the last five years, it has skyrocketed from somewhere down in the lower field to above AdmiralAI. Just imagine it had started off well in the first place (= in 1950)...
Looking at the individual stats, PAXLink has already close to the number of road vehicles of NoCab, and more aircraft than anyone else. Nice job!

(as a side note, between the last post and this post, another AI died unfortunately. This time, it's CluelessPlus. I will post a debug log in its thread...)

[Roujin]

After 25 game years
Normally, I would have ended this after 20 years (as nearly everything already seemed to be connected), but the development last time (Admiral stalling, PAXLink skyrocketing) kept me going. So here's the final update for this battle royale.

Map as of 1975:

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03 map.png

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Graphs (two days off, meh):

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#4.png

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Individual stats:

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#5.png

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Comments:
After the last update I wanted to know if PAXLink would continue to grow so fast. Unfortunately it more or less stayed (look at graphs). However, AdmiralAI came back to life in 1972 and built stuff again - and promptly overtook PAXLink again. I think AdmiralAI was doing some intensive computation that took five years, in which it didn't build anything. I'll add a screenshot in the next post which I think shows what Admiral computed there.. maybe this is something worth improving, Yexo, as it has a bad influence on Admiral's performance as seen in the above graphs.
Looking at the map, not too much has happened. A few more connections, mainly by AdmiralAI and ChooChoo... and some green garbage - hmm, a bug in ChooChoo - will post about it in the next post

Okay, let's sum this up. If you take company values, NoCAB is the clear winner. However if you take Operating Profit or Income, I'd rather call it a tie between NoCAB, ChooChoo and WrightAI. AdmiralAI was long time on par with the latter two, but lost some due to its five-year construction pause because of (presumably) some expensive computation.
The special prize goes to PAXLink who scored big in terms of Profit/Income, despite starting 8 years late due to going bankrupt two times

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With this, the battle royale has ended. Thank you for your attention and thanks to all AI authors for their work! I am sorry for those whose AI was not able to participate for some reason. I'll try to manage it better next time

[Zuu]

Very nice done Roujin! Nice to see that PAXLink after two bankrupts is able to take off. Now, I would say that PAXLink in its third try has a big advantage of not having any small airports that requires to be upgraded as it currently can't upgrade airports.

Thank you for doing this tournament.

[Roujin]

Bugs & Mishaps

1) AdmiralAI
Here's what I *think* is the output after AdmiralAI did not do anything productive for a quite long time.
If this is correct, and if I interpret it correctly, AdmiralAI doesn't have anything to connect anymore in his list, and thus scans again the map to see if any new industries have appeared in the meantime. This takes quite some time and Admiral does not build anything in the meantime. Which is bad for its performance.
This is only a guess. Maybe I'm completely off. The AI author (Yexo) will know best.

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#8.png

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2) ChooChoo
As stated above, at the very end of my test game ChooChoo started to put a bunch of useless pieces of rail on the map in several places.
Here's a screenshot.

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#6.png

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3) CluelessPlus
After doing fine for a long time, Clueless crashes. Here's the debug window:

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#7.png

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Hope this helps.

[Zuu]

3) CluelessPlus
After doing fine for a long time, Clueless crashes. Here's the debug window:

AI Tournament, 1975-01-03#7.png

Thanks for noticing it. The crash is known but the reason why it fails building the bus stop is unknown. I'll probably just upload a fix to the crash as I have not been able to reproduce it and your game demonstrates that it survived for long time before it happened so it should be a corner case that it fails building a bus stop in a town.

[Dustin]

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With this, the battle royale has ended. Thank you for your attention and thanks to all AI authors for their work! I am sorry for those whose AI was not able to participate for some reason. I'll try to manage it better next time

Thanks again! Thanks for the "spot on" too. Was D&RG still updating the date in the AI Log at the end? If it didn't stall, bankrupt or crash it might be about ready for bananas.