Tutorial

In this tutorial we will aim to find the best Finite State Machine against a collection of other strategies from the Axelrod library [Harper2017].

First let us get the collection of opponents against which we aim to train:

>>> import axelrod as axl
>>> opponents = [axl.TitForTat(), axl.Alternator(), axl.Defector()]
>>> opponents
[Tit For Tat, Alternator, Defector]

We are now going to prepare the training algorithm. First of all, we need to prepare the objective of our strategy. In this case we will aim to maximise score in a match with 10 turns over 1 repetition:

>>> import axelrod_dojo as dojo
>>> objective = dojo.prepare_objective(name="score", turns=10, repetitions=1)

The algorithm we are going to use is a genetic algorithm which requires a population of individuals. Let us set up the inputs:

>>> params_class = dojo.FSMParams
>>> params_kwargs = {"num_states": 2}

Using this we can now create our Population (with 20 individuals) for a genetic algorithm:

>>> axl.seed(1)
>>> population = dojo.Population(params_class=params_class,
...                              params_kwargs=params_kwargs,
...                              size=20,
...                              objective=objective,
...                              output_filename="training_output.csv",
...                              opponents=opponents,
...                              bottleneck=2,
...                              mutation_probability=.1)

We can now evolve our population:

>>> generations = 4
>>> population.run(generations)
Scoring Generation 1
Generation 1 | Best Score: 2.1 0:C:0_C_0_C:0_D_1_C:1_C_1_D:1_D_1_D
Scoring Generation 2
Generation 2 | Best Score: 2.1 0:C:0_C_0_C:0_D_1_C:1_C_1_D:1_D_1_D
Scoring Generation 3
Generation 3 | Best Score: 2.1 0:C:0_C_0_C:0_D_1_C:1_C_1_D:1_D_1_D
Scoring Generation 4
Generation 4 | Best Score: 2.1 0:C:0_C_0_C:0_D_1_C:1_C_1_D:1_D_1_D

The run command prints out the progress of the algorithm and this is also written to the output file (we passed output_filename as an argument earlier). The printing can be turned off to keep logging to a minimum by passing print_output=False to the run.

The last best score is a finite state machine with representation 0:C:0_C_0_C:0_D_1_D:1_C_1_D:1_D_1_D which corresponds to a strategy that stays in state 0 as long as the opponent cooperates but otherwise goes to state 1 and defects forever. Indeed, if the strategy is playing Defector or Alternator then it should just defect, otherwise it should cooperate.