After I realized that my Castles strategy was buying Duchies and Estates and Provinces for no reason (I borrowed some lingo from basic Big Money and forgot to clear those), I wiped those and I noticed a noticeable improvement in my Castle Bot. It still is awful and cannot even beat Basic Big Money, but at least I've gotten the basic hang of Geronimoo's Simulator, right?
Conclusion 1: Pure Castles Big Money is freaking awful, don't ever do it. Basic Big Money beats it 100% of the time.Real Conclusion 1: Castles BM is better than Basic BM, but it's still almost a coin flipNow that the super obvious is out of the way, I will begin work on something else: Castles Engines, or Castle + BM + something else, like Wharf.
The real question is if Castles BM beats Scout Big Money.
Another edit: I increased the win percentage of Castles Big Money against Basic Big Money by a whopping 52.7%, because I simply neglected to have Castles BM pick up Provinces or Duchies after the Castles pile was empty. Dumb me.
the (bad) code: Buys Province, Duchy, Estate if the Castles runs out. Otherwise, buys Castles > Gold > Silver. I'll probably try some continued optimization with Castles BM instead so that it buys things that aren't Castles in the opening and beyond.
edit 2: Buys Province <= 4 in supply, buys Province, Duchy, Estates if Castles are out. Otherwise, buys Castles > Gold > Silver. It's a little better in improved odds, but still basically a coin flip.
edit 3: Continual improved odds! I simply programmed a buy Castle over Province if <= 3 CastlesInSupply and it jumped all the way to 67% winnings. Excellent, excellent. Continuing with optimization and screwing around with some numbers.
Big Money Ultimate (by WW) flattens my poor little Castles code 56% to 40%, so there's still work to do.