This reminds me of Collaborative Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_diffusion A classi

This reminds me of Collaborative Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_diffusion A classic example is programming the ghosts in pacman to trap the player, which seems to require a sophisticated, collaborative strategy. Instead, a much simpler solution is to make a "pacman smell" diffuse through the maze: - The cell containing pacman has its "smell" clamped to 1 - Cells containing walls and ghosts have their "smell" clamped to 0 - The "smell" of an empty cell is the average of its neighbours This way, dumb hill-climbing will move the ghosts along the fastest route to the player. "Collaborative" behaviour emerges from the "smell" being clamped to 0 by ghosts: if a route to the player is already blocked-off by a ghost, those behind will not get any "smell" from that direction, and will take other routes instead; effectively cutting-off all of the escape routes. (I implemented this in Pygame many years ago, and it was no fun to play, since the ghosts were way too smart!)