A New Type of Evolutionary Strategy Based on a Multi-player Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Abstract According to the philosophy of self-cultivation that “one should refine his personal virtue when in poverty, and help save the world when in success”, a new type of evolutionary strategy, Poor-Competition-Rich-Cooperation (PCRC), is proposed. To discuss its superiority and inferiority, based on a multi-player iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game, PCRC and other six kinds of strategies are played by using the roulette method in three different populations (a uniformly distributed population, a cooperation-preference population, a defection-preference population). The payoff characteristics for each strategy under different temptation coefficients and noise values are also analyzed. Simulation results indicate that PCRC has a sufficient robustness and its payoff presents a basically monotonic increasing tendency with the increment of noise. The superiority of PCRC becomes more obvious when the temptation coefficient becomes larger. Furthermore, a higher population preference for defection yields a more obvious advantage for PCRC.