Gladiabots Tips and Resources

This guide is a collection of videos, articles, and links to Gladiabots resources. There are a lot of good resources out there, but I wanted to help people wade through duplicate content and avoid outdated information. The best sources for new information include the official Gladiabots wiki and Discord. Those links are also included.

Resources for Beginners

Essential Resources

Official Discord Server, #questions channel[discord.com]
If you've got questions that come up as you play, this is the place to go get those answered. Responses are usually pretty fast. You can also browse the other Discord channels to chat about other topics of the game.

The Official Gladiabots Wiki[wiki.gladiabots.com]
The wiki is a wealth of information about the game. It has all the bot stats and technical game mechanics that will help you built bots and answer questions. Great reference.

Articles

Article on Domination Mode basics[soullesscomputerboy.com] (link broken at the moment)
I found this article very helpful on getting started with the Domination game mode. It chronicles one players changes that they made getting started there.

Videos

Babby's First Bot

Babby's First Bot is a tutorial series of beginner videos designed to teach new players how to build their first workable bots for the game.

Resources for Intermediate and Advanced Play

There are a number of very excellent resources created by the top players of the game:

How to Build a Shot Counter

One of the challenges in Gladiabots is to ensure that your bots don't switch targets so often that they are not actually firing. One can simply continue to fire at the previous target, but we'd like to be able to decide on new targets after a shot is complete. A shot counter lets us know when a shot has fired and it is safe to switch targets.

How to Control How Long Bots Move Forward

An important part of Gladiabots, especially Elimination play, is to push forward so that you move your enemy into the wall for easy destruction. Pushing forward not enough means that you will only get shallow hits, the enemy will move out of range and possibly that you will also get pushed back. Pushing forward too much will get your bots destroyed. This video explores ideas for optimal pushing.

How to Reach the Node Limit Faster

Grand Master Herr Specht gives an overview of how he's designed a numerical retreat system.

Tips for Playing Collection Mode

This video contains tips for Collection Mode. It discusses three different common types of Collection Mode team strategies.

Retreat Heavy Domination

It is common advice in Domination to simply take out your retreat routines. While this is useful at lower level play, some amount of retreating can improve the performance of your team. This video explores how retreat might be added to Domination for optimal play.

How To Spend Your Time in Domination

Herr Specht reviews how we might think about the math behind actions in domination and how it should impact our bot's choices.

Ninjabot vs My best Elim ai and Medium-range attack bots

Gladiabots player, Revenge, demonstrates an important combat technique where he waits for an enemy to fire at Long Range, steps into Medium Range to fire, then steps back out to Long Range! This is a very subtle nuance that dramatically changes the combat math in favor of his bots.