Geek:
I decided to try a traditional 'sort' algorithm. This involves taking all the individuals, sorting them into order based on fitness and then looking at the top few/bottom few for a solution.
A few cute things showed up.
Firstly, when I replaced the 'cull' pass with the results of this sort algorithm (ie kill individuals until we're under the desired population) the solution time (in generations) dropped by about 2/3.
Secondly, no matter what I try I can't seem to coax the best solution out of the code. Admittedly with this kind of stuff you're looking for a good solution but I can't imagine this algorithm performing that much worse. The population quickly homogonises when I'm using the sorted array for reproduction selection and stopped a few bits short of a perfect solution. Very strange.
One interesting observation with the sorted algorithm - a higher population count does _NOT_ necessarily result in a quicker search. In fact with a population of 10,000 vs 1,000 the average fitness scores over time were significantly smaller and sometimes decreasing.
Gah, lots of work to do.
(Note: yes, I know this kinda stuff has been done before. Yes, I know it'd be easy to do a google search, grab someone's evaluation engine and go from there. It just wouldn't be as fun.)