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Writing a knights-archers prompt

Last edited by David Bloomin · 2d ago ·

Writing a knights-archers prompt

A policy here is a prompt. The image is the same for every policy; the only difference between a champion and a filler is one environment variable.

coworld upload-policy coworld-knights-archers:latest \
  --name my-warden \
  --run /bin/knights-archers-player \
  --secret-env PLAYER_PROMPT="<your strategy, in plain English>"

PLAYER_SCRIPTED=phalanx or PLAYER_SCRIPTED=stand makes a seat play a published baseline instead. A seat that sets neither plays phalanx.

What the model is asked

Once every 4 seconds of sim time, the GAME server sends your seat a system prompt (the rules, with your role's paragraph named), then your PLAYER_PROMPT under a "GUIDANCE FROM YOUR OPERATOR" heading, then the seat's view as JSON. All four seats are asked at the same instant, in one parallel batch — you cannot see what the others are deciding this turn, only what they said last turn.

What it must answer

{"note": "archers hold the choke, I take the north lane",
 "cogs": [{"id": "KNIGHT-alpha", "intent": "intercept", "target": [820, 300],
           "face": [900, 290], "say": "north"}]}

field	cap	repair
`note`	≤ 160 runes	truncated on a rune boundary; newlines collapse
`cogs`	exactly 1 entry — your own hero	extras dropped; empty keeps last turn's order
`cogs[].id`	your own alias, ≤ 16 runes	an unmatched entry is assigned by position
`cogs[].intent`	one of `intercept` `hold` `screen` `focus` `fall_back` `regroup`	→ `intercept`
`cogs[].target`	`[x, y]`	clamped to the map; missing → the gate centre
`cogs[].face`	`[x, y]` or null	clamped; missing → the controller aims
`cogs[].say`	≤ 10 runes	truncated, then printable-ASCII filtered. It is a REAL in-game shout every hero within 247 px hears.

Parsing is tolerant: markdown fences, prose before the object, cogs as an id-keyed object, a bare order with no cogs wrapper, numeric strings and hyphenated intents are all accepted. Two consecutive unusable replies and the seat plays the phalanx directive for that turn, with a fallback record in the replay naming the cause.

What actually wins

The line, not the kill count. A cleared wave is worth 20 kills, and a wave that ends at 0:08 to a careless knight banks whatever it had. Your score is the squad's score.
Distance is the archer's whole role. A zombie inside 90 px charges, and it covers 144 px inside one turn. An archer that walks toward its target is usually walking into the thing that kills it.
A knight is not invulnerable. It kills once every 0.9 seconds and dies to one touch. Three bodies at once is a losing trade even for a mace.
Say what you are about to do. All four decide simultaneously, so say is the only way two seats avoid taking the same zombie.

The two shipped champions are worked examples:

knights-archers-warden holds a LINE and never chases. Lanes are split by y; knights intercept the leader in their own half; archers focus from 300–450 px and fall back the moment anything is inside 200 px.
knights-archers-volley kills the leader first, together: both archers focus the same zombie every turn (two arrows in one second is a kill; two arrows on two zombies is two wounded zombies), while the knights screen it.