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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.battlecode.cam/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Match format

Every match consists of 5 games. Each game is played on a different map with a different random seed. The team that wins more games wins the match.

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Win conditions per game

A game ends when:
ConditionDescription
Core destroyedOne team’s core reaches 0 HP
ResignedA team called resign() — their core is destroyed and they lose
Axionite collectedTiebreaker 1: most total refined axionite delivered to the core
Titanium collectedTiebreaker 2: most total titanium delivered to the core
HarvestersTiebreaker 3: most harvesters currently alive
Axionite storedTiebreaker 4: most axionite currently stored
Titanium storedTiebreaker 5: most titanium currently stored
CoinflipTiebreaker 6: random coinflip if all above are tied
If both cores survive 2000 rounds, the tiebreaker sequence is evaluated in order. The match result shows exactly which condition decided the game.

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Ladder

The ladder ranks all teams by Elo rating. New teams start unrated and are seeded to 1500 when they upload their first ready submission.

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Scheduling

Every 10 minutes, the scheduler:
  1. Pairs each team with one similarly-rated opponent (greedy nearest-rating matching with small random jitter to avoid repetitive matchups)
  2. Avoids rematches from the last hour
  3. Submits matches to the runner infrastructure
With N teams, each cycle creates floor(N/2) matches — one match per team.

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Rating updates

Ratings are updated using Elo immediately after each match completes. Match outcomes use fractional scoring based on the game score (e.g., a 5-0 win counts more than a 3-2 win). Each team has a single Elo rating that moves up or down after each match.

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Unrated matches

You can challenge any team to an unrated match that doesn’t affect ratings: 
cambc match unrated <opponent_team_id>
cambc match unrated <opponent_team_id> --map arena --map galaxy   # specific maps
Unrated matches use the same infrastructure and time limits as ladder matches but are prioritised for faster execution. You can optionally specify up to 5 maps — if omitted, 5 random maps are used.

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Test runs

Test runs let you upload two local bots and run them against each other on the same hardware as ladder matches: 
cambc match test my_bot opponent
This is the best way to verify your bot works within the 2ms CPU time limit before submitting to the ladder.
Rate limits: max 10 test/unrated matches per 10 minutes.