In this paper, we evolve heuristics to guide staged deepening search for the hard game of FreeCell, obtaining top-notch solvers for this human-challenging puzzle. We first devise several novel heuristic measures using minimal domain knowledge and then use them as building blocks in two evolutionary setups involving a standard genetic algorithm and policy-based, genetic programming. Our evolved solvers outperform the best FreeCell solver to date by three distinct measures: 1) number of search nodes is reduced by over 78%; 2) time to solution is reduced by over 94%; and 3) average solution length is reduced by over 30%. Our top solver is the best published FreeCell player to date, solving 99.65% of the standard Microsoft 32 K problem set. Moreover, it is able to convincingly beat high-ranking human players.

We describe four scenario-based implementations of controllers for a player in a simplified RoboCup-type game. All four implementations are based on the behavioural programming (BP) approach. We first describe a simple controller for the player using the state-of-the-art BPjs tool and then show how it can be extended in various ways. The first extension is based on a version of BP where the Z3 SMT solver is used to provide mechanisms for richer composition of modules within the BP model. This allows for modules with higher cohesion and lower coupling. It also allows incrementality: we could use the scenarios we developed for the challenge of MDETOOLS'18 and extend the model to handle the new system. The second extension of BP demonstrated in this paper is a set of idioms for subjecting model components to context. One of the differences between this year's challenge and the challenge we dealt with last year is that following the ball is not the only task that a player needs to handle, there is much more to care for. We demonstrate how we used the idioms for handling context to parametrize scenarios like "go to a target" in a dynamic and natural fashion such that modelers can efficiently specify reusable components similar to the way modern user manuals for advanced products are written. Lastly, in an attempt to make the instructions to the robot even more natural, we demonstrate a third extension based on deep reinforcement learning. Towards substantiating the observation that it is easier to explain things to an intelligent agent than to dumb compiler, we demonstrate how the combination of BP and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) allows for giving abstract instructions to the robot and for teaching it to follow them after a short training session.