Plus Strategies are Exponentially Slower for Planted Optima of Random Height

Abstract We compare the $$(1, \lambda )$$ -EA and the $$(1 + \lambda )$$ -EA on the recently introduced benchmark $$\textsc {DisOM}$$ , which is the OneMax function with randomly planted local optima. Previous work showed that if all local optima have the same relative height, then the plus strategy never loses more than a factor $$O(n\log n)$$ compared to the comma strategy. Here we show that even small random fluctuations in the heights of the local optima have a devastating effect for the plus strategy and lead to superpolynomial time to achieve a prescribed fitness target. On the other hand, due to their ability to escape local optima, comma strategies are unaffected by the height of the local optima and remain efficient. Our results hold for a broad class of possible distortions and show that the plus strategy, but not the comma strategy, is generally deceived by sparse unstructured fluctuations of a smooth landscape.