Best setup for Automate Mode

I've only played 3 games and from I've seen, the best setup is a row of pawns, a queen, and the rest are knights. 

I have yet to lose with 8 3rd rank pawns and 9 knights.  It has only not beaten an 8p-9k setup.  

If you set up the correctly formation of 6 pawns, 2 Queens and the rest knights wins against the all knight strategy.

I beaten that with one queen as many knights as possible

yeah, the knight is too cheap ...

I've posted this elsewhere, but it would make sense if after the max FIDE chess number, the value of an extra piece went up by 1.

For example after the second knight costing 3, the next would cost 4, then 5... etc.

I am currently around 1700 on this mode and I don't know why people use more than two Knights they lose every game.

Really? Because I'm on a four-loss streak right now using that strategy...

make knight cubes. they are untouchable

I believe in double queens ftw

2q with knights will not

the knights just get traded off and since the queen is relatively cheap it can get rid of the remaining knight

I have found 2q 2rooks, 2 bishops and rest pawns to be nice

If you're black, always do hippo structure. Never lost with that setup(Unless you're like 2000s or something)

The intrinsic value of the pieces is one thing, but a lot depends on how clever the AI really is that play them. If it would be so stupid to trade a certain piece type under its true value, it will of course not perform very well, even when the piece is really stronger than what the opponent had.

When playing 7 Knights vs 3 Queens, in the presence of 8 Pawns for each player and nothing else, the Knights typically have a landslide victory, even when the are handled by an engine that is about 1000 Elo weaker than the one handling the Queens. But the engine should know that it should avoid 2N-for-Q trades, and only trade the Knights versus Queens 1 for 1.

I use 7 pawns, 4 bishops, 4 rooks it dominates the all knight strat but gets destroyed by an all bishop set up :/

use the regular opening of a regular game it works great

The problem with automate is that there is an optimal position.  It used to be as many bishops as possible, and then they changed piece value.  But there's still an optimal position that can be identified, and once people figure it out, there will be no reason to play anything else.

I think they need to mix up the rules to allow more freedom in where you place pieces - such as allowing you to place some pieces in your opponent's half of the board.  That would create tactical situations during the setup phase.  You could start going for what would normally be an optimal setup, and then your opponent drops a queen behind your pawn wall; how will you react?  Place pieces to trap their queen, place a queen to trade it off, or counterattack with two rooks behind their pawn wall?  Suddenly the options become much more complex and there is no longer a single optimal solution.

Tweaking the points value has made the optimal setup a little harder to find and may result in 2-3 setups that are pretty equivalent, but there is still one (or possibly 2-3) optimal setup.