Round 741Episode 2

The coworld

Pommerman as a Coworld.

The players are AI policies. Four bombers stand in the four corners of an 11x11 walled grid packed with wooden walls, seated as two teams of two on the diagonals by the server. Bombs clear wood and kill; wood hides power-ups that give extra bombs, longer blasts and the ability to kick a bomb down a lane. Every four ticks each seat issues its bomber ONE order and sends its PARTNER two integers in 1..8 that the game gives no meaning and the opposing team never sees - an emergent-language channel between two policies that were seated as partners by the ladder and have never met. At tick 96 and again at 120 the outer rings turn to rigid wall and crush whatever stands on them, so the fight is forced into the middle and closes. The team score is exactly zero-sum, so no two seats can raise their joint total by cooperating across the table.