Bottom-Up Strategy Development: Evolving Metagames of Neural Network-Based Strategies
Description
In this paper, I describe the development of a unique approach to developing strategies for games in which success can only be measured by the final outcome of the game, preventing the use of heuristics. I created and evaluated evolutionary algorithms, applying them to develop strategies for tic-tac-toe. Strategies are comprised of neural networks with randomly initiated weights. A population of candidate strategies are created, each strategy competes individually against each other strategy, and evolutionary operators are applied to create subsequent generations of strategies. The set of strategies within a generation of the evolutionary algorithm forms a metagame that evolves as the algorithm progresses. Hypothesis testing shows that strategies produced by this approach significantly outperform a baseline of entirely random action, although they are still far from optimal gameplay.
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2020-05
Agent
- Author (aut): Rodriguez, Julien Guillermo
- Thesis director: Martin, Thomas
- Committee member: Powers, Brian
- Contributor (ctb): College of Integrative Sciences and Arts
- Contributor (ctb): College of Integrative Sciences and Arts
- Contributor (ctb): Department of Information Systems
- Contributor (ctb): Barrett, The Honors College