Early version of an AI you can practice TFM against

[FrankJones]

Frank AI doesn't think, you can exploit that, it's really fun to string AI along. Think about how it behaves right now and you will always win(mostly). I messed up twice, but that's on me, I have yet to have an unwinable game.

True. My 3 losses were by:

Zero points (I lose on tiebreaker) and I made errors.
4 points, and I made errors.
10 points, and I made errors, but, wow, it had tremendous cards from start to finish.

I played again and won 158-88.

[FrankJones]

Weird game against tfmBot:

https://boardgamearena.com/tableview?table=887908980

1) FIFTEEN generations with preludes. Where the hell were all the temperature cards?

2) The deck was drawn down to the last 10 cards, and only 9 science tags played. WTF?? And .. where were the temperature cards?

3) I had to pass at the end with 29 dollars because ... I couldn't do anything.

4) I had to end greenery placement at the end with 11 plants because ... the map was full.

5) tfmBot funded banker with nothing to back it up.

[schulni]

Played a couple, definitely interesting but has some quirks.

Eco experts > trophiles - any other prelude is better than that play
Eccentric sponsor > virus - any other prelude is better than that play

Seems like those two preludes that involve playing a card right after result in problems.

Production attack cards it seems to only wait one turn to see if you'll play the production, and then attacks itself. Once it had AMC and skipped the second action, so I stalled, and then it played AMC on itself, allowing me to play my titanium production unmolested. The second time it did an SP power plant, skipped the second action, and then played energy tapping on itself.

Award funding can legitimately be tricky on Tharsis, so I'm not surprised that's hard to program. Flipping awards it funded was pretty easy though.

It doesn't seem to prioritize heat production at all. I controlled that track comfortably in the games so far.

Overall though, pretty impressive. It's a very complex game.

[FrankJones]

A few things to take a look at, some minor inefficiencies (And one major error):

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=888263405

Start of generation 10 around move 325:

1) It buys medical lab for no reason; it already had more point-scoring cards than it could play. Medical lab did not help toward any awards or anything else.

2) It plays Phobos space haven immediately, allowing me to get 2 of the 3 remaining oxygen TR when it could have taken 2 of them instead.

3) It could have played its city next to 2 greeneries, eventually getting 5 city points minus 2 for corporate stronghold. This would also have given some ocean adjacency bonuses for the city and the subsequent greeneries.

4) Despite having enough plants to finish the oxygen, and holding decent point cards, it played a SP greenery with most of its remaining money. It seems to have wanted the far west 2-plant spot, but this could have been accomplished by placing the corporate stronghold in the center 2-plant spot.

5) For 8 MC, it could have played birds, gaining a bird and costing me a greenery. Then for 9 dollars it could have added 2 birds with Imported Hydrogen. It also had predators for 12 dollars, gaining a predator and costing me a fish.

6) It played Flooding with no oceans left (!?), costing it 3 dollars after factoring in the media group rebate, and taking a minus point. (This was the major error; everything else has a plausible explanation.)

7) Rather than Flooding, it could have played Corporate Stronghold (if it had not sold it on the previous action) for a net gain of 3, and then played birds for a net gain of 3. So, by selling corporate stronghold and playing Flooding, it took a negative 1 instead of +6.

8) tfmBot usually looks at its cards first, but this gen it didn't use inventor's Guild for some reason.

9) As played, at move 378 it could play one more card: Predators for 2 point gain, Birds for a 3-point gain, or medical lab for one point. It played Medical Lab.

10) After playing Medical lab, it could still play Birds after placing its two remaining greeneries next to the oceans. Not easy to code, but doable. Predators can easily be calculated as being worth 2 points as long as I have a 1-point per animal and I am not protected. 3 points if it has viral enhancers (It didn't). And perhaps add some code to further calculate the value of getting a 1-point per animal down if it also has local heat trapping (It didn't) or Imported Hydrogen (It did).

Calculating Birds as +3 wouldn't always be easy but in this case, I had already passed and I was going to have 9 plants in the greenery conversion stage, so having a line of code to calculate the value of my losing 2 plants from birds is feasible.

As played, it ended up with 11 MC after selling Birds for no reason, and had nothing to do with the 11 dollars.

[FrankJones]

It doesn't seem to prioritize heat production at all. I controlled that track comfortably in the games so far.

This is situational. In my games, it tends to go crazy with heat. In the above game I detailed the final generation of, it had 52 unused before passing the final gen, and ended with 63.

[RicardoRix]

All in all, really awesome job.

The only strange things:

It funded miner and then spent minerals until it lost.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=888609156

The very end of the game, if it needs to close it out because it's ahead - it failed to do so.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=888199659

[kingdedede745]

Somehow the bot kept 5 cards in the draft

https://imgur.com/a/wzWFt7Q

[AReallyGoodName123]

Somehow the bot kept 5 cards in the draft

https://imgur.com/a/wzWFt7Q

The replay seems corrupted too

I haven't seen this elsewhere so going to put it down to something odd on the bga side for this one.