I just played an experimental 8-game series against Goko's stronger bots (2 games each against Bottington, Conqueror, Defender, and Banker). The bots lost 1-7. I say "the bots lost," rather than "I won," because I was playing a strategy that you could teach to an illiterate meth-head. On each board, I chose the single strongest action card for Big Money and just played X-BM.
I did use a modicum of human intelligence: when to buy Duchies, what to discard against Margrave, etc. But that was about it... I played every action, even if I'd just drawn Island + $8 or both Witches at the bottom of my shuffle; I always bought Province > Gold > X-Action > Fool's Gold > Silver, adding Duchies when provinces got low; I ignored combos as straightforward as Beggar-Gardens; and I passed on Jester-BM lest I be compelled to make a judgement call. You could program that strategy with an ordered list of which X-Action to prefer and a few dozen lines of Dominiate code for issues like when to green and what Jack should discard and trash.
The only game the bots won was when I went straight Witch-BM and ignored Border Village, Hunting Party, Caravan, and Fishing Village. In one particularly unimpressive game, Banker Bot picked up 5 Kings Courts (all for $8+) along with several Treasuries, Cultists, and Monuments, and still managed to lose to Cultist-BM.
Are Goko's bots really that bad? Eight games is a small sample, but doubt I could tolerate doing this for hours. Has anyone else tried a similar experiment?
I feel bad for new Dominion players who start out by playing against and learning from the bots. I remember getting my ass handed to me by Village Idiot Bot when I first started playing. Even worse, I remember trying to
learn from those losses... like the time a bot crushed me by buying all the Spies.
Goko must aware of their bots' incompetence. Either they don't know how to fix it or they're too busy with other problems. What would it take to write a BM bot that was more-or-less compatible with their system and just hand it to them?