Evolvers of Catan

Abstract

For our Comps project, we created an evolutionary AI that plays Catan. Recently, AI methodologies have been increasingly tested against a wide variety of challenges. While not the most common of those methodologies, genetic programming is one which we thought might have interesting potential. In this project, we tested the application of genetic programming to the eurogame Settlers of Catan using the existing JSettlers implementation. We extended the built-in AIs logic to use genetic programming to better inform its decisions. Our results showed that while there are limits to genetic programming\u27s power, it can create reasonably competent players which are competitive with or somewhat better than the preexisting heuristic bots of the JSettlers program