Analysis of a Pairwise Dominance Coevolutionary Algorithm And DefendIt

While competitive coevolutionary algorithms are ideally suited to model adversarial dynamics, their complexity makes it difficult to understand what is happening when they execute. To achieve better clarity, we introduce a game named DefendIt and explore a previously developed pairwise dominance coevolutionary algorithm named PDCoEA. We devise a methodology for consistent algorithm comparison, then use it to empirically study the impact of population size, the impact of relative budget limits between the defender and attacker, and the impact of mutation rates on the dynamics and payoffs. Our methodology provides reliable comparisons and records of run and multi-run dynamics. Our supplementary material also offers enticing and detailed animations of a pair of players’ game moves over the course of a game of millions of moves matched to the same run’s populations’ payoffs.