Whats Going On Here?

Hi all, and welcome to my little corner of the interweb. My name is Marcus Lund, and I live in the city of Melbourne in Australia. I'm an experienced software developer who specialises in agile management and loves refactoring. I also have two young daughters who keep me very busy outside of work.

I have always had a strong amateur interest in artificial intelligence and game theory, which I guess started in earnest after studying a Cognitive Science unit at university and spending lots of my time playing MUDs (multi-player online virtual worlds). I peruse the occasional academic article online, and have read a book or three on the subject too. My particular interests tend towards intelligent agents, emergent behaviour and generic algorithms.

I am also an avid gamer; cards, board games and miniature wargames in particular. I like the challenge of pitting my wits against my opponents as well as the social aspect. It seems that I also spend a lot of time thinking over strategies and tactics of my favourite games throughout the day, such as when commuting.

So what is this blog all about? I have always wanted to build some kind of intelligent agent that learns from its environment and its own behaviour, continuously improving itself through feedback loops that empower it to become more that its original programming. I'm well aware that this is an incredibly challenging field with a long way to go in theory and practice - and I want to be a part of it! The thing is, although I have dabbled with ideas before I have never committed myself to a serious attempt to design and build the agent of my dreams.

That is where Diplomacy comes in. Diplomacy is a board game with simple rules, simultaneous turns and no randomness. Players declare their moves secretly and then all moves are revealed and resolved simultaneously. But put this all together and you end up with an incredibly rich gaming experience full of alliances, bluffing, strategy and game theory. I have played Diplomacy online (on and off) for several years now and find it a rewarding challenge.

So I'm gonna build me a Diplomacy bot! This blog will serve as a way to force me to marshal my thoughts into some kind of coherent document. I'm going to write about all the stuff I want to do, then hopefully do it and keep you all informed as to the outcome. Lots of the early articles will be to introduce the resources and tools that I will be using as I engineer my bot, then it will quickly get into theory as I consider possible ways to craft the ultimate autonomous Diplomacy player. The next article will be a Diplomacy rules summary.