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Topic: Endgame and bot_NoMHH (Read 511 times) |
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Nombril
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Arimaa player #4509
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Posts: 292
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Endgame and bot_NoMHH
« on: Sep 18th, 2010, 7:55am » |
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It appears that Clueless was improved (significantly?) during its training sessions as bot_NoMHH. I'm wondering if the humans have learned anything? Any interest in some general or specific disussion about endgames? (I'm pretty terrible at the end game, so was very interested to see if this was a chance to improve and learn. jdb - thanks for running this experiment, I found it interesting. everyone - Please disagree with any of the following if I'm missing something!)
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/playerpage.cgi?id=13848
A couple of sample games people had made comments on. I'm sure there are lots more that are interesting as well.
Hanzak winning in 15 moves, with a cat handicap, able to offer rabbit sacrifices on his side to keep Clueless's elephant away from the goal attack:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=153510&s=w
Sconibulus winning a capture/goal race after both sides took control of an enemy trap:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=153496&s=w
arimaa_master was able to get a dog frame, and make it useful. (Something I thought impossible with so many pieces missing)
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=153489&s=w
Some questions I have:
Is it useful to define when the endgame starts? (Is both sides missing MHH a reasonable approximation of having reached the endgame, or is there some other condition? Does some goal pressure need to exist?)
Balanced vs. unbalanced:
I found myself setting up to have dogs at b3/g3, and cats behind the trap, as a safe/familiar setup. But it seemed after some improvements, Clueless would often have both dogs and a cat on one side. In the endgame does a fast attack (using unbalanced pieces) provide a big advantage?
Home vs. Away:
With depleted forces, is an away game more important? Is the endgame tilted towards racing instead of control?
Rabbit Pulling:
Conventional wisdom (I think?) is that rabbit pulls in the endgame are most often a bad idea. To start with, bot_NoMHH, did allow you to pull and trap rabbits, but it seemed the improvements made it very risky to do this. I found having many of your pieces tied up with hostaging or framing a rabbit was a big liability, and breaking a frame held by rabbits was pretty easy.
Anything else?
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rbarreira
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Arimaa player #1621
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Re: Endgame and bot_NoMHH
« Reply #1 on: Sep 20th, 2010, 5:08am » |
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For the definition of endgame, maybe something like "at least 60% of the remaining pieces are rabbits". Or 66%.
Of course there are kinds of endgames that this rule doesn't cover, for example playing for elimination or immobilization.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 20th, 2010, 5:12am by rbarreira » |
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Endgame and bot_NoMHH
« Reply #2 on: Sep 22nd, 2010, 9:13pm » |
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I didn't get a chance to play this bot much. The one game I did try it timed out due to Jeff's computer having a problem.
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Very impressive.
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