Creating your first bot/AI on CodinGame can be daunting, even scary for some...

If you know the basics of programming, you can write bots.

If this is your very first experience with bot programming on CodinGame, it is recommended to look into Coders Strike Back game first.

Disclaimer: this guide below by [CG]Thibaud aims at showing how easy and straightforward it can be to get started into a bot programming game, using Ghost in the Cell as an example. There are plenty of classic algorithms you can use in bot programming, however it's not the focus here.

Even if this guide contains a few Java snippets, it is language-agnostic.

Understanding the game

First things first: play the default code to see what the game is about visually. Then you can quickly scan the statement for the main pieces of information. You don't need to worry about details right now.

After two or three minutes of reading, we quickly understand that:

• you control a factory that automatically creates cyborgs
• you can move cyborgs between factories to extend your territory
• you win if you have the most cyborgs, or if all opponents cyborgs are destroyed

This is enough for now.

The dumbest bot

Let's get into the code already and try to implement the first simplest strategy that comes to mind:

Find a factory that I control and send any cyborg in it to a random factory

I don't even need a class for this! I just need to get some data from the input. For this, I quickly check out the game protocol (below the statement). I need:

• the list of factories (list of entities) and for each one
  • its id (entityId)
  • its owner (arg1)
  • and the number of cyborgs it contains (arg2)

A few if conditions later, I play my first code against the boss and notice 2 bugs:

• I mistook a cyborg given in input for a factory because I didn't check the variable entityType
• I need my bot to WAIT (do nothing) if I don't own a factory (it happens when all my cyborgs left are on route to their destination). Probably not critical to fix right now, but it's also cool to ensure I output valid commands only.

Let me fix that quickly...

int entityCount = in.nextInt(); // the number of entities (e.g. factories and troops)
int myFactoryId = -1;
int enemyFactoryId = -1;
int troopsNb = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < entityCount; i++) {
    int entityId = in.nextInt();
    String entityType = in.next();
    int arg1 = in.nextInt();
    int arg2 = in.nextInt();
    int arg3 = in.nextInt();
    int arg4 = in.nextInt();
    int arg5 = in.nextInt();
    if (entityType.equals("FACTORY")) {
        if (arg1 == 1) {
            myFactoryId = entityId;
            troopsNb = arg2;
        }
        else {
            enemyFactoryId = entityId;
        }
    }
}

if (myFactoryId != -1 && enemyFactoryId != -1) {
    System.out.println("MOVE "+myFactoryId+" "+enemyFactoryId+" "+troopsNb);
}
else {
    System.out.println("WAIT");
}

or in pseudo-code for people who don't read Java:

init myFactoryId and enemyFactoryId to -1 and troopsNb to 0
for each entity given in input
    if it's a factory
        if it's mine
            update myFactoryId and troopsNb to their corresponding values (`entityId` and `arg2`)
        else
            update enemyFactoryId
        end if
    end if
end for

if myFactoryId and enemyFactoryId have been updated
    output a MOVE command from myFactoryId to enemyFactoryId with troopsNb units
else
    output a WAIT command
end if

I'm sure you agree it's not rocket science. The code is not pretty at all but it's normal and for now, we don't care. Bear with me, we'll improve it.

This bot somehow beats the boss in the IDE 🎉

For the Wood leagues, it's usually a good sign that you should submit your code right away because you have a good chance to get promoted. So let's submit. It gets me in the top 10 of the Wood 3 league. Not bad for the dumbest bot ever.

Let's see how to improve it.

Iterate with simple improvements

From there, we can start to list all the simple ideas we have to improve the bot and make it a bit less dumb.

• #1 Ignore factories that don't produce any cyborgs

They are useless (for now), and the cyborgs I'll use to take these factories (by fighting enemy or neutral cyborgs) will be lost.

• #2 Use the factory where I have the most cyborgs to send troops from

We want to avoid sending too few troops (or even 0) every turn while there are dozens of cyborgs sleeping in an another factory.

• #3 Focus on the closest factories first

We want to take new factories and start producing new cyborgs as soon as possible.

These ideas seem simple enough to code. Idea #1 is one if condition. Idea #2 is a search for a max. Idea #3 may a bit more complex for now so I'll implement the first two and keep the last one in store.

It took me longer to write this than to code it. Let's submit!

I'm promoted to Wood 2 🚀

And already ranking in the top 10 of the Wood 2 league! That was easy, wasn't it?

Discover new rules

Every new Wood league usually comes with a new rule to learn. Here, I'm told I can now output several commands per turn.

It's giving me a new simple idea that I add to my list:

• #4 For each of my factories, send troops every turn.

More actions, more movements of cyborgs, better control of the map

So, I'm implementing idea #4 before #3 because I'm lazy and I don't want to store the distance between factories yet...

Now I'll start writing classes to store the input.

Some players like to store all input directly; I prefer to pick only the data I need, and add new variables only if I need them. Up to you.

10 minutes later, I've got a list of all factories and a for loop in which for each of my factory, I send all its troups to the same random enemy factory. Submit and... no improvement. This bot is still reaching the top 10 of Wood 2 though.

Let's look into idea #3 then. At least, my code is cleaner and I know how to output multiple commands in one turn.

So, until now, I only focused on some entities. Now, I need to focus on the map, here, a graph. Let's store the distances between factories during the first turn (since it's given before the while loop). I'm using a Map of Map in Java.

I'm adding a bit of logic before my loop to output the commands to get the closest enemy (or neutral) factory which produces cyborgs, and this for each of my factories.

It's simply done with 2 for loops.

After a few minutes of coding, I submit again! Wood 1, here I come 🎊

And it seems this code is good enough to even be promoted to the Bronze league. Not even 100 lines of code of Java!

Don't worry if you miss some Wood rules, you can quickly scan the statement to check for the new rules in the updated statement.

What's next?

My advice is to continue iterating. Just continue implementing the simplest ideas you can find to improve your bot's decision making.

Sometimes, it can help to consider the game as if it was a board game: "With this board state, what is the best action I can do?"

With this kind of strategy, you should be able to reach Silver in most of bot programming games.

Then, you can start working on some more complex algorithms but you don't necessarily have to. I've managed to reach the Legend league with a good strategy and a proper computation of which player will own which factory based on the movements of all the troops.

Your turn now, good luck!