14 — Strategy

Due Sunday, 24 April, midnight, optional

Added in version 1.0.

Task 1 Software is never finished.

As many of you have noticed, the dealer’s assignment of unique IDs to external players does not allow the player’s developers to identify how well they are doing.

Integrate the info string that comes with the sign-up message into the presentation of the result.

Task 2 Software is never finished.

Two of your peers have started working on the optional strategy task below (anticipating its release as the last task) and request a revision of the remote protocol. Specifically, they request that the message include the food currently available at the watering hole.

They are correct. Players do take this value into account when they make decisions about how to play their cards, and currently only the player last fed knows the exact value.

I have modified the internal and remote protocols accordingly. Modify your software accordingly.

Task 3 Software is never finished.

You may wish to spend the last week working on your code base so that it is ready for the final code walk. Consider the first two tasks above as guidelines. Someone new to the code base should be able to find the relevant pieces and perform the modification easily.

Task 4 This task is completely optional and will not affect the base line score you can achieve for this course.

In my experience, the winners almost never need the extra credit. Their code already convinces me that they are ready to launch a career in software development.

You may wish to spend the remaining week implementing a non-silly strategy for playing Evolution. As indicated, building foraging and/or scavenging cooperation chains is an example of such a strategy.

Given sufficient interest and time permitting, I may run a quick tournament after the final code walks. If we run it before the final grades are due, I will assign extra credit (typically 5% of the total points) to all participants and substantial extra credit (perhaps 10%) to the winner.