The experiments presented in this paper show that complexification of genomes leads to continual coevolution of increasingly sophisticated strategies. Three trends were found in the experiments: (1) As evolution progresses, complexity of solutions increases, (2) evolution uses complexification to elaborate on existing strategies, and (3) complexifying coevolution is significantly more successful in finding highly sophisticated strategies than non-complexifying coevolution. These results suggest that complexification is a crucial component of a successful search for complex solutions.
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant IIS-0083776 and by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board under grant ARP-003658-476-2001. Special thanks to an anonymous reviewer for constructive suggestions for non-complexifying comparisons.