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Major overhaul of Throngs - Printable Version

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Major overhaul of Throngs - dale walton - 02-11-2022

Attached is a major revision of Throngs:

New "ragged edged boards", 3 sizes  (Original board retained, but  the other alternative boards have been removed.)

Changed rule for preventing stalling: Add or capture if you have not added in the last 3 moves (i.e.within two of your own successive turns)
Instead of forced placement after your opponent passes a full turn.

Added territory scoring to allow the game to terminate before the board is full, provided on player has a secure lead.
This also helps guide the AI to sensible play. I did not revise the AI directly - it is possible that tuning the AI to match these new rules would provide even better results. For example to encourage it to make placement moves and captures when in the lead, and to seek invasion moves, but only if they can be secured before the next player's turn.

Updated the rule text.

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I have updated the file to a new version to fine tune the scoring a bit more.


RE: Major overhaul of Throngs - Eric Piette - 02-15-2022

Hi Dale,

Ok thanks for this. It will be updated in the next release.

Regards,
Eric


RE: Major overhaul of Throngs - dale walton - 02-19-2022

I see this is now Online - Thanks.  It is playing a much better game.

However, I accidentally introduced an error in play after captures.
The above version allows an additional step after capture compared to the rules.

This is corrected in the version attached bellow.

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I have also worked out a separate version that accounts for chain captures and one that also evaluates the score differently for each position in the move cycle (first / 2nd move of the turn; Mover's territory / Opponent's territory), and am thinking of adding a some scoring to encourage placing a highly isolated piece only on the first move of a turn: (not sure how). However, as they get more complicated their own weight starts to be a trade-off.

Those are not in the attached corrected file.  If you are interested in the file with selectable options for using any of the above scoring systems (including straight piece counts)  let me know and I will work to make it readable.  These scoring systems are essentially hard-coded 4-move look-aheads that assume the pieces can reach anywhere on the board, and thus calculate faster than doing the actual look-aheads by stepping.  Therefore they give much more sensible play, even if the look-ahead is only a single turn.


RE: Major overhaul of Throngs - Eric Piette - 02-21-2022

Ok, I will update this file in the next release.

Regards,
Eric