Co-Evolving Influence Map Tree Based Strategy Game Players

We investigate the use of genetic algorithms to evolve AI players for real-time strategy games. To overcome the knowledge acquisition bottleneck found in using traditional expert systems, scripts, or decision trees we evolve players through co-evolution. Our game players are implemented as resource allocation systems. Influence map trees are used to analyze the game-state and determine promising places to attack, defend, etc. These spatial objectives are chained to non-spatial objectives (train units, build buildings, gather resources) in a dependency graph. Players are encoded within the individuals of a genetic algorithm and co-evolved against each other, with results showing the production of strategies that are innovative, robust, and capable of defeating a suite of hand-coded opponents