Halite C# bot and tools used to train this bot

Actual content of the submitted zip file is in https://github.com/cbovar/Halite/tree/master/Submission.
Halite server only compiles two files (HaliteHelper.cs and MyBot.cs) so I had to fit all the code in those files which is not a common practice in C#.

Networks were trained using ~300 games from erdman v17 for a few hours using CPU.
Three different networks were trained and used in the same bot:

• ‘Early network’: early part of the game
• ‘Strong network’: to play strong pieces (> 200)
• ‘Normal network’: the rest

The idea is to try to copy the strategy of another player.

Steps to train an Halite bot using ConvNetSharp

This will train a single network, you can use TripleFluentNetTraining instead of FluentNetTraining to train a bot similar to cbovar V45

1) Get games historical data

• Download games historical using HltDownloader. Downloaded games will stored in ‘games/{UserId}/‘ folder. (e.g. games/2609/ for erdman)

2) Train a network

• Update downloaded games location here
• Update the name of the player to copy here
• Update network structure here. By default it is:

var convInputWith = 11; // Will extract 11x11 area
var net = FluentNet.Create(convInputWith, convInputWith, 3)
                    .Conv(3, 3, 16).Stride(2)
                    .Tanh()
                    .Conv(2, 2, 16)
                    .Tanh()
                    .FullyConn(100)
                    .Relu()
                    .FullyConn(5)
                    .Softmax(5).Build(); // 5 classes (1 for each direction)

• Update trainer algorithm here. By default it is:

  var trainer = new AdamTrainer(singleNet) { BatchSize = 1024, LearningRate = 0.1, Beta1 = 0.9, Beta2 = 0.99, Eps = 1e-8 };

• Run Training project. Downloaded games will be loaded and training will start. Four files will be created:
  • Loss_single.csv
  • Test_Accuracy_single.csv
  • Train_Accuracy_single.csv
  • net.dat (trained network)

Run locally your trained bots

You can use ComparerRunner to make your bots fight each others.
By default, version V28 and V45 will fight each others. You can add your newly trained bot by modifying the following list:

            // List of bots
            var bots = new List<Func<IPlayer>>
            {
                {() => new ThreeNetBot{Prefix="../../../networks/V45/", Name = "V45"} },
                {() => new SingleNetBot{Prefix="../../../networks/V28/", Name = "V28"} },
            };

In order to easily debug bots, Halite.cpp has been ported to C#. Halite.cs