It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
> Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
It seems like there's an evaluation function but there's no state search / recursive minimax tree for the bot.
I think if we added a 10-ply lookahead minimax algo for the bot here it would be pretty good. [1]
I will probably do it myself if I end up having a bit of free time this weekend.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax#Minimax_algorithm_with...
I agree.
[spoiler alert]
I tried with 2 or 3 moves per turn. My strategy was to advace in diagonal to have a lot of space in tha back, and keep some distance from the oponent. When it advances, I wall the pieces. If it doesn't advance I fill my backshard space. With 2 or 3 it's humanly learnable in 10 minutes. I imagine that 7 moves would be much ore complex, but sadly I have no time now.
Perhaps you can progem the bot to advance more in the first few turns. (Assuming my strategy is good.)
Some of the more common ones:
- Played seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess
- Played socially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess
- Played non-seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess
The game is usually known as "virus wars", but I didn't feel like registering a domain name with the word "virus" in it, so Paper Tactics it is:)
[1] https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/viruswars is the only English source I know, there is also a Wikipedia article in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf_der_Viren
Anyway was fun to learn thx OP :).
We played this game a lot in the Urals during high school, but upon arriving in Moscow for higher education discovered that locals don’t know about it. Good memories. I implemented a version of it in MIDletPascal in my 10th grade.
Another popular modification was “rivers” which would drown any unit placed in the next turn, and also support for 3rd and 4th player, you just have to have enough pens of different colors :)
The matchmaking is also difficult to find a partner since the rules are so customizable, and there's no way to tell what rules potential partners could be searching with. Maybe a list of games that are looking for an opponent would be good.
I'm from Europe and this game is totally known. I had a university project to program one in C. The bot especially was fun to implement.
I see what you did there!
*The fact that the pencil symbol controls the number of moves per turns, which was 3 by default, confused my learning process for a good 10 minutes as I had no idea what was going on.
How and why does this happen? Are you able to surround units or get bonus turns for walling a unit?
The Learn page is a little unclear on this.
Never played before buts it's interesting.
I'm sure there's some kind of interactive demo or something, but do the rules themselves need JS?
After I learned two different rule sets from two different sources, I went on and invented my own version. It became an instant hit in our class for many years to come.
Basically:
1. the map is randomized, with some "islands" randomly drawn, separating the map into "land" and "water"; map size is the whole A5 sheet, which is around 30x40 I think
2. player has 10 moves per turn, moving on "water" cells counts as 2 moves
3. the objective is not to kill everything, but only the enemy starting unit ("the mothership")
4. we even added FFA multiplayer later, where each eliminated opponent nets you +2 moves per turn for the rest of the game, to promote aggression. The diplomacy was intense at times, with "vassal states" and coalitions formed against stronger players.
Oh the memories.
If you're looking for feature requests then the ability to view move history (especially after the game is over) and the ability to share completed games would be nice. I see a game ID but it's not clear to me I can do anything with it.
Draw a grid of dots on some blank paper. Your X, your friend is O.
Start by drawing a line between two adjacent dots, no diagonals (this is a wall). Take it in turns to draw a line between two adjacent dots.
If you draw a line that closes a square (or two!)(the smallest possible square), claim the closed square/s by writing a X inside the claimed square.
Game ends when nothing more to draw, count up your symbols for the winner.
Nikoli (the company that is credited to the rise of Sudoku!) has a lot of pen and paper games. Check it out.
Otherwise, fun game, good implementation!
