Bots in the Azul Arena

[Zeus]

Three of last season's top 10 Azul Arena players, including the winner, are bots or AI-assisted players. This has been an ongoing problem for quite some time, and despite numerous reports by some of the strongest players in our community, no action has been taken.

For some context, these accounts share a number of characteristics that make them fairly easy to identify for experienced players:

- newly created accounts that immediately compete at the highest level, without being recognizable as any of the established top players in our community

- a very distinct, non-human playstyle, also reflected in their statistics: unusually low numbers of turns and completed columns per game

- unusual timing patterns: in high-level turn-based games, they generally respond within a minute or two of their opponents' moves and still crush them

- occasional inexplicable games

A couple of examples:

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=886766463

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=928135097

The latter was described by another high-level player as "the least human game I've ever seen."

Botting is becoming increasingly common, and it's actively discouraging competition among human players. We've even reached the point where members of our community have created a separate Azul Humans Group to organize tournaments from.

My questions:

- Is there any plan to add bot detection?
- What happens to reports of suspected bot accounts, and why is seemingly nothing being done even when multiple established players report the same accounts? At the moment, there is not even an appropriate option to report them.

I don't expect BGA to publicly discuss individual cases, but some transparency regarding how botting is handled, and whether there are any plans to improve detection and enforcement, would be appreciated

[DJOKER16]

I second everything Zeus said. Having people using bots to play Azul is really taking the fun out of competing for the top spots in Arena.

[tbhp]

I’m confused, because recently there were threads talking about how it’s almost impossible to create bots that play games well, and now suddenly there’s a bot that can beat the best players at Azul?

Also, how would you detect bots in general? Some people may be able to recognize them, but the mods of the site aren’t experts on every game on here, so they’d have to trust whatever top players are saying, which could open the door to false accusations if a bunch of players has a problem with another player.

Even good faith accusations are not always correct. I used to know a Harmonies player who had the most peculiar style, he seemed to randomly scatter tiles and looked like he was in a clear losing position, yet inexplicably managed to win in the end.

Not to mention the time when a top Arena player was accused of being a bot in this very forum, just because he apparently seemed to know what was coming. Which in Harmonies is usually just the result of playing well.

[Priptonite]

The existence of the bots is not speculation, we have multiple bot creators in our discord lol. And the community is not actually anti-bot, they are very useful for learning strategy. The problem is that it is pointless to compete in Arena when the bots are running it over. If someone wants to build a bot as a fun project, we’re happy to play against it to test its skill outside of Arena.

[Ceaseless]

I’m confused, because recently there were threads talking about how it’s almost impossible to create bots that play games well, and now suddenly there’s a bot that can beat the best players at Azul?

Also, how would you detect bots in general? Some people may be able to recognize them, but the mods of the site aren’t experts on every game on here, so they’d have to trust whatever top players are saying, which could open the door to false accusations if a bunch of players has a problem with another player.

Even good faith accusations are not always correct. I used to know a Harmonies player who had the most peculiar style, he seemed to randomly scatter tiles and looked like he was in a clear losing position, yet inexplicably managed to win in the end.

Not to mention the time when a top Arena player was accused of being a bot in this very forum, just because he apparently seemed to know what was coming. Which in Harmonies is usually just the result of playing well.

We're not talking just about general games. This is Azul specifically. While I'm not personally familiar with the bots, I do have secondhand recognition seeing other players reference these bots. So for Azul specifically it is known there are bots that can play well. And bot accounts have been spotted and nailed for Azul on BGA before as well.

A lot of the top Azul players do know each other to some extent and are familiar with how they play, as well as general human play to some extent. Bots also have time mannerisms human play doesn't, certain things that a human would have to think about a bot wouldn't. As well as playstyle features humans don't seem to have gotten down yet.

That's all to say this isn't just a random thread of one player randomly swinging at another. I'm not making a claim about who is or isn't a bot, not presently being in a position to judge for myself, but we are dealing with a thread with a bit more weight than the typical bot nonsense often seen here.

[tbhp]

I see, I’m not sure what people in those threads were on about then.

I was myself of the opinion that creating an expert level bot should be easy enough, but would become complicated for the ranks above that. I mean, in Harmonies top players already kind of play like bots anyway, I’m not sure how I would go about creating a bot that plays even better, aside from how it would be less prone to mistakes and could foresee things even further.

[Priptonite]

With the advances in AI it seems people are literally just saying “build me an Azul bot” and achieving good results haha.

I have minimal Harmonies experience but I believe the game is more complicated than Azul from a possible-actions standpoint. Azul is relatively simple in that regard.

[tbhp]

A lot of the top Azul players do know each other to some extent and are familiar with how they play, as well as general human play to some extent. Bots also have time mannerisms human play doesn't, certain things that a human would have to think about a bot wouldn't. As well as playstyle features humans don't seem to have gotten down yet.

It's common for top players to come seemingly out of nowhere, whether in rankings or in tournament play, but I don't assume they must be bots.

The point about mannerisms could be dangerous because like I said, humans with peculiar styles exist, so while we may have a certain level of confidence about our claims, how can we be sure we are not dealing with a human who is not typical?

I agree about the time thing, like if a bot always plays within a few seconds, but that's not very useful, because that's something a smart bot creator would easily get around, by simply making it play after a random duration of time has passed. So on the long term, that's not something I think will help us detect bots. Not competently made ones anyway.

That's all to say this isn't just a random thread of one player randomly swinging at another. I'm not making a claim about who is or isn't a bot, not presently being in a position to judge for myself, but we are dealing with a thread with a bit more weight than the typical bot nonsense often seen here.

I'm not putting into question the case of the thread, the people who looked into it probably have thought adequately about it. I'm just showing the flaws in the individual arguments, to say that they shouldn't be considered enough on their own to make an accusation. There needs to be a really well built case.

The argument also shouldn't be along the lines of "this level of play is just too good to be human", because then that's like we are telling people, be careful not to play too well or you are going to be accused of being a bot.

I have minimal Harmonies experience but I believe the game is more complicated than Azul from a possible-actions standpoint. Azul is relatively simple in that regard.

I've never played Azul, but I see its Elo goes way higher. But maybe it's a type of thinking that is easier to handle for an AI. Harmonies requires good spatial representation to plan things well, which may be something that is harder to program into a bot.

[RazorOz]

The easiest games for bots to exist are abstract games, because the information is all open. I'm not good enough at Azul to know, but I would assume it's much like chess where a computer can easily work out what the best move is.

[Priptonite]

The easiest games for bots to exist are abstract games, because the information is all open. I'm not good enough at Azul to know, but I would assume it's much like chess where a computer can easily work out what the best move is.

Yeah, there are unknowns but the unknowns have simple probability distributions. Eg you can’t know how many of each color tile will come out in the next round but you know exactly how many of each color remain