Anomalies 2018

Notes on strange broker behaviors observed in the 2018 final round. Data from those games can be found through the |2018 tournament csv file.


 * An agent issues a set of simple tariffs, and then issues another set of identical tariffs every 24h through the entire game. The tariff market charges a substantial fee for each new tariff, and only two of these tariffs made back their initial cost -- total earnings were about half what it paid in publication fees. In some cases there can be a benefit to re-issuing tariffs, because a customer will only evaluate a limited number of "old" competing tariffs, in addition to its currently-subscribed tariff. As a result, once several other competing tariffs have been offered for a given customer type, older tariffs will not be considered other than by their remaining subscribers. So if a broker wishes to keep a tariff in front of customers, it may need to re-issue it after several other competing tariffs have shown up. However, if re-issuing a tariff does not yield new subscriptions, then it is likely uncompetitive and re-issuing it again is unlikely to be fruitful.
 * An agent wishes to raise its rates, and does so by issuing a new tariff and revoking the old one. It does this without specifying that the new tariff is a replacement for the old one. The result is that (1) customers develop a distaste for that broker, because they don't like having tariffs revoked, and (2) the new, higher-cost tariff must compete with all the other brokers. You can specify that a new tariff "supersedes" an older one by calling  on the new   before sending it out.