any updates yet ryan?

What information is available to the bots? Firstly map information is needed. A function that returns a full graph may be more complex then you intend. A simplification would be:

Node[] getNodes(int distance, Node n);

i.e. a list of Nodes (or lands or territories) that can be reached in a minimum of distance steps from Node n.

Other info which would be needed is

int getPlayerNumber(); // return 1-7 depending on which player you are
int getTotalDice(int playerNum);
int getReserveDice(int playerNum);
Node[] getNodes(int playerNum);

The Node object should look something like:

class Node() {
int numDice;
int playerNumber;
int id; // unique id or address of the node
}

I can't yet think of anything else needed that can't be derived from the above.

Also, I think the starting player should always be player 1, since the bots are seated in a random order. This will make ordering code a little simpler.

One other class of data that could be useful is player statistics aggregated over the whole game, and also at the end if the players last move. Useful info would include:

total attacks
% successful attacks
average advantage on attack
number of times attacked

Also, is recursion ok?

I think the best way to approach the map would be using the graph theory. Each territory would be a node and borders would be weighted edges. Such a graph would have a single component and have the property of non-transitivity, anti-reflexivity and symetry (a non-oriented non-pseudo planar graph).

Once you have that it should be fairly easy to program the bots if you assign each edge with a weight based on "deciding factors". Using the knowledge of the graph theory would help a lot. Of course that would be the most tedious part of the program, that's why I leave it to someone else.

"and THE WINNER IS...": ***GENOBOT***
(after billions of crossingovers)

I've finished MadWilly's bot and have done one of my own. There are three others that need to be done. Mine and MadWilly's do well and nearly always win over the dumb/aggressive bots.

I think once I have a bunch done I'll do a daily bot tourney. I might use some good bots for the iphone version.

Also, if you can write a simple bot on someone's playing style we can add them in for fun (they don't all need to be good).

As far as algorithms and data available anything is possible (just not too cpu intensive). At minimum theres a list of regions with dice and player ids. Each region has a list of neighbors. For MadWilly's bot I needed to add a graph theory algorithm - so anything is fair game.

So what ever came of this?

Oh, is kdice running on JBoss or just Apache?

...or something else?..

Missed this post... I would have been nagging you about this since the first day had I seen it. I love this idea... I think it would be great fun to develop bots to do battle. I've played with similar types of bot programs before (especially microsoft's terrarium) and they are lots of fun and can really help people learn to code.

If you were to really spend some time on this, it could be quite a money maker. You could attract tons of young developers and hobbyists to your site if this was done properly... this is the type pf thing that spreads by word-of-mouth through dev communities quickly.

You should really think about putting out an api to code against... forget the pseudocode. And it might be smart to make it available in multiple languages... I would think .Net and/or Java would attract a bunch of people. This idea has legs, Ryan... run with it! I have lots of thoughts on it already...

Is there any chance that this idea will be bringed back to life?