[memnips]

Unfortunately the link appears to be temporarily dead. Luckily before you read about his bot you should watch it play anyways!

Here are two replays of the same map. The first is played by average players and the second is played by xathis (and other top bots).

Avg: http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?game=335973&user=8... Top: http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?game=329760&user=4...

[WildUtah]

Note that every one of those "average" players finished in the top 10%.

It's a hard problem to write any kind of generally adequate player for. All the good bots depend heavily on subtle properties of emergent behavior. Don't let the simple explanations fool you.