Hex Conquest

Start in one corner of a hex map and take it over. Mass your armies, attack the neighboring hex, and the bigger force wins. Hold the most ground (or wipe the other side out) to win.

Rules

• Each hex is neutral or owned, with a stack of armies. On your turn you attack an adjacent hex you don't own, from one of yours that has at least two armies. You keep attacking until you end your turn.
• Combat is decided, not random: your attacking force is your hex's armies minus one (one stays behind). If it beats the defender, you take the hex with the difference; if not, the defender holds with what's left. So whoever brought more wins.

• Ending your turn reinforces your hexes (more hexes, more reinforcements) and passes to the opponent. Own the most hexes at the end, or take everything, to win.

Writing a bot

You see the whole map, every hex's owner and army count, and whose turn it is. Each turn return an attack or end your turn.

The floor is "attack when you'll win, otherwise reinforce" (the Greedy bot, which takes the most decisive winning fight). Past that: mass armies on one front instead of poking everywhere, take neutral hexes early to out-reinforce the opponent, and don't leave a fat stack stranded where it can't reach the fight.

Input and output

Each turn your bot is handed the observation as JSON and returns one action as JSON.

Observation: { "you", "to_move", "cols", "rows", "board", "players", "turn", "nonce" }. board[y][x] is { "owner", "armies" } with owner -1 for neutral. Act only when to_move == you.

Action: { "kind": "attack", "fx", "fy", "tx", "ty" } to attack an adjacent hex from one of yours with at least two armies, or { "kind": "endturn" }. An illegal attack ends your turn.

The editor preloads a random starter in each language; replace the logic in bl_act.