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Topic: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games (Read 522669 times) |
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #585 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:30pm » |
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Quote:| Don't get your hopes too high, you may just have refuted the idea. I can't tell. Forcing your opponent into defeat by forcing him/her to take the lead sounds good, in any case. |
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It's a tricky issue. Testing needed.
Quote:| From clear albeit wrong ideas to Foggyville? Seems unlikely. |
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Well, Othello sort of has this. Totally naive players often at first try to flip chips to their color as much as possible. And then realize that's the wrong idea, and then comes the fallow period. It's a little more difficult to see your way past the initial wrong idea in Morro, but still, the process of doing so is not so interesting that it will compensate for foggyville, if indeed foggyville is what follows, IMO.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #586 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:35pm » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 12:21pm, NickBentley wrote:
Can you elaborate on what "carefully" means? I'm very curious, since, you know, I have a big interest in Havannah's loops. |
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Look at the base-9 game. Most of the times I can read the ringthreats sec. But it's seldom only the ring and that's where things can become difficult to calculate through. I go as far as I can, and if in doubt ... I seek the strongest defensive point (not always the most obvious one).
I'm careful by experience: if you're one too late you'll find that the bot will make no mistakes. It's weakness is in the strategic realm not in the tactics (though it missed my ring threat in the base-8 game ... but I consider that a bonus for being careful  ).
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #587 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:41pm » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 12:30pm, NickBentley wrote:| It's a little more difficult to see your way past the initial wrong idea in Morro, but still, the process of doing so is not so interesting that it will compensate for foggyville, if indeed foggyville is what follows, IMO. |
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Still it's the solidity of Morro that makes it very different from Othello. My recent experience with Sygo (as earlier with Medusa and Phalanx for instance) confirms that the human mind (well, mine at least) can handle multi moves much better than Othello moves.
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #588 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:42pm » |
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Quote: But I doubt if it is a frequent occurence. It can be constructed no doubt, but whether such a construction reflects a position that would occur in actual play? Who's to tell? I once found a Havannah position from the very early days, and it didn't exactly look like Havannah.
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On trivially small boards (3x3, 4x4) it definitely happens naturally. Consider a 3x3 game where player 1 opens in the center. On his next turn, he has no choice but to create a 2-row, but not enough power to stop player 2 from forming a 3-row on his next turn, which ends the game.
The same thing appears to happen on 4x4 boards. It appears that if player 1 plays singletons until he's forced to make a 2-row, he often is forced to give player 2 the victory. There comes a point where he doesn't want to place any more singletons, but he has to, and so he loses.
I think Player 1 can force a win on 4x4, but he appears to have to form a 2row early to get it. I'm not sure about this.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:44pm by NickBentley » |
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #589 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:44pm » |
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Mark Steere wrote: "What was wrong with the last contest? Oh that's right. You lost."
on Aug 6th, 2011, 10:49am, christianF wrote:
You forgot to rewrite history  . |
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Ok, you did win the contest.
(?)
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #590 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:46pm » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 12:42pm, NickBentley wrote:
On trivially small boards (3x3, 4x4) it definitely happens naturally. Consider a 3x3 game where player 1 opens in the center. On his next turn, he has no choice but to create a 2-row, but not enough power to stop player 2 from forming a 3-row on his next turn, which ends the game.
The same thing appears to happen on 4x4 boards. It appears that if player 1 plays singletons until he's forced to make a 2-row, he often is forced to give player 2 the victory. There comes a point where he doesn't want to place any more singletons, but he has to, and so he loses. |
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Base-3 Havannah isn't all that interesting either, nor base-4 except for bots. I seldom play below base-8 and in fact I was a bit anxious about the base-7 Castro offered. But it lost rather quickly.
So these small board proceedings do not usually reflect what's going on.
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #591 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:47pm » |
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Quote:| Still it's the solidity of Morro that makes it very different from Othello. My recent experience with Sygo (as earlier with Medusa and Phalanx for instance) confirms that the human mind (well, mine at least) can handle multi moves much better than Othello moves. |
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With this I agree. That's the consideration on which I hang my hope that Morro will turn out to be good after all.
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #592 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 12:50pm » |
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Quote:| Base-3 Havannah isn't all that interesting either, nor base-4 except for bots. I seldom play below base-8 and in fact I was a bit anxious about the base-7 Castro offered. But it lost rather quickly. So these small board proceedings do not usually reflect what's going on. |
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Right. I point out the effect on small boards just to make it clear how the mechanism might work. I've no clue about the frequency of it's appearance on large boards.
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #593 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 1:03pm » |
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Quote:| I'm careful by experience: if you're one too late you'll find that the bot will make no mistakes. It's weakness is in the strategic realm not in the tactics (though it missed my ring threat in the base-8 game ... but I consider that a bonus for being careful ). |
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That base-8 game is strange. What was the bot thinking? Is this a monte carlo bot or something else?
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #594 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 2:03pm » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 1:03pm, NickBentley wrote:| That base-8 game is strange. What was the bot thinking? Is this a monte carlo bot or something else? |
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It's MCTS and something else. Timo is currently writing his masters thesis titled "Playing and Solving Havannah", but a better idea of what Castro is about may result from reading another masters thesis, by J.A. Stankiewicz at Maastricht University, called KNOWLEDGE-BASED MONTE-CARLO TREE SEARCH IN HAVANNAH.
Regarding the base-8 game, 28.E5 was wrong of course. It should have been at I6, allowing me to run E5-H6-G6 followed by E5. If he dives into the triangle at E4 I play D4 and allow the cut at E3. There's a ring threat at D2 he can use to push to C2 and then I must block at B2 and I'm in a predicament of sorts.
So I was lucky .
P.S. MCTS, as far as the 2012 Havannah match is concerned, came to the rescue of the AI world. There has never been 'something else' because havannah provides little to nothing to go on in terms of traditional alpha-beta evaluation.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 6th, 2011, 3:23pm by christianF » |
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #595 on: Aug 6th, 2011, 5:03pm » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 12:44pm, MarkSteere wrote:Mark Steere wrote: "What was wrong with the last contest? Oh that's right. You lost."
Ok, you did win the contest.
(?) |
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Now you forget the innuendo.
It's "What was wrong with the last contest? Oh that's right. You lost. If you can't win it, rig it".
Try to stay focused.
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #596 on: Aug 7th, 2011, 4:07am » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 1:03pm, NickBentley wrote:| That base-8 game is strange. What was the bot thinking? Is this a monte carlo bot or something else? |
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Castro is currently participating in a tournament at LG, and till now far from impressive I must say.
I usually do not try to exploit specific weaknesses by counting on them. I rather play as I would against a human because counting on a specific blind spot usually leads to a weak move.
But if it doesn't spot simple ringthreats by the opponent, I can imagine the word spreads quickly among the contestants.
With the 2012 match just around the corner, there's still some serious work to do for the AI community it seems.
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NickBentley
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #597 on: Aug 7th, 2011, 9:29am » |
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It would seem so. Although there wouldn't be much satisfaction in beating bots who make mistakes like that.
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MarkSteere
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #598 on: Aug 7th, 2011, 9:38am » |
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on Aug 6th, 2011, 5:03pm, christianF wrote:
Now you forget the innuendo. |
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Christian Freeling: "Can someone coordinate a contest that I refuse to participate in unless it meets all my demands?"
During the last contest you couldn't heap enough praise on coordinator, Daniel Schultz, even reprimanding others for not praising him enough. Then you lost the contest. Your reaction? Something like "I don't feel like I'm a part of this contest."
Not part of the contest?? The time to withdraw your game is when the contest is still ongoing. Not after you've already lost.
Now, four months in advance of the next Annual Winter RGA Game Contest, you've begun your campaign to dump Daniel.
Is that enough "innuendo" for you?
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christianF
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Re: Essay by Christian Freeling on inventing games
« Reply #599 on: Aug 7th, 2011, 10:00am » |
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on Aug 7th, 2011, 9:38am, MarkSteere wrote:| Is that enough "innuendo" for you? |
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Yes, thank you. It almost meets your usual standard  .
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