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Topic: It's all about the E (Read 5190 times) |
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JigglyPuff
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Arimaa player #4296
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #15 on: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:43pm » |
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on Aug 25th, 2009, 8:33pm, The_Jeh wrote:
But you don't have to take my or anyone's word for it, nor do I think it is best that you do. |
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I don't intend to.
I wondered originally if others had the same concern I did, especially veteran players who had a better grasp of strategy than I did.
I'm very relieved to see that's not the case. Had there been a lot of posts here saying, "Yeah, I've played the game for three years now, and there's not much else going on but that d**n
elephant" I would probably pack my bags and head on out.
I'm really happy to see that after playing for a long while, others feel a deeper sense of unity between the pieces. I'm going to keep playing and hope I get to the same point.
Time will tell. It's a good sign when everyone rallies around the game, though. 
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Arimabuff
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Arimaa player #2764
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #16 on: Aug 26th, 2009, 8:01am » |
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on Aug 25th, 2009, 8:43pm, JigglyPuff wrote:
I don't intend to.
I wondered originally if others had the same concern I did, especially veteran players who had a better grasp of strategy than I did.
I'm very relieved to see that's not the case. Had there been a lot of posts here saying, "Yeah, I've played the game for three years now, and there's not much else going on but that d**n
elephant" I would probably pack my bags and head on out.
I'm really happy to see that after playing for a long while, others feel a deeper sense of unity between the pieces. I'm going to keep playing and hope I get to the same point.
Time will tell. It's a good sign when everyone rallies around the game, though.
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To tell you the truth I never thought of counting the number of elephant moves in a game before. To me it would be like counting the number of brush strokes in a painting by Van Gogh or the use of the letter "a" in Victor Hugo’s literature , kinda pointless and missing the big picture... by light years.
I've never heard of a piano player who would say I don't like that piece from Chopin because I have to hit that key far too many times for my taste…
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #17 on: Aug 26th, 2009, 9:42am » |
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on Aug 25th, 2009, 8:27pm, JigglyPuff wrote:| Any strategy game that has one piece on the board shuffling to and fro in 47 out of 100 moves may be a little out of balance. |
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The preponderance of elephant moves is a superficial characteristic that one could suspect is related to more fundamental characteristics such as strategic depth, scope for creativity, etc. But supposing that it isn't related to deeper problems, I don't see how the dominance of the elephant is in itself a flaw, or why a good game would need to have all pieces be moved equally often.
Sure, it could be that having the elephant involved in many moves makes it easy to find the right move. It could be that the dominance of the elephant means that the position of the other pieces hardly matters. It could be that the answer to every question is "move your elephant." But it doesn't, it doesn't, and it isn't. I'm glad that you expect such issues to be decided by practice rather than by argument, and that you are willing to give Arimaa a try. 
In short, I am not trying to talk you out of a misconception about the Arimaa elephant. I am trying to talk you out of fixating on a superficial feature of Arimaa play as a fundamental measure of Arimaa's quality as a game.
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jdb
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #18 on: Aug 26th, 2009, 10:43am » |
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on Aug 26th, 2009, 9:42am, Fritzlein wrote:
Sure, it could be that having the elephant involved in many moves makes it easy to find the right move. It could be that the dominance of the elephant means that the position of the other pieces hardly matters. It could be that the answer to every question is "move your elephant." But it doesn't, it doesn't, and it isn't. I'm glad that you expect such issues to be decided by practice rather than by argument, and that you are willing to give Arimaa a try.
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Jigglypuff does have a point. It is a reasonable rule of thumb to check elephant moves first.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #19 on: Aug 26th, 2009, 11:45am » |
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on Aug 26th, 2009, 10:43am, jdb wrote:| Jigglypuff does have a point. It is a reasonable rule of thumb to check elephant moves first. |
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I'm not sure how we are disagreeing. Going back to my earlier post, I concede that elephant dominance is an important insight, but claim that there is still an inexhaustible learning curve after having realized that. We wouldn't want to create a game where there are no rules of thumb, and no insights to be had. We merely require that no simple insight "busts" the game, and makes it uninteresting for people who have had that insight.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 26th, 2009, 6:23pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #20 on: Aug 28th, 2009, 8:01am » |
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One area that is pretty much unexplored in Arimaa to date is to take too equally rated players and have one play without his E and the other without some combination of pieces that are of general strength of the E by itself. In this way we could see how such a game would develop and in particular how the player without the E would approach the game.
Also, as far as how often the Elephant moves, I guess I never gave it much thought and did not see it as an issue. A good player needs to figure out HOW and WHERE to move the Elephant. A beginning player may read the rules, see that the E is the strongest piece and move his E all over the place only to realize that he is wasting moves as his E will either be out of position, blocked, or arrive too late to protect a trap. Arimaa is about positioning of pieces just as much if not more than it is about strength of pieces. That is what makes it so fascinating.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 28th, 2009, 8:07am by mistre » |
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Arimabuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #21 on: Aug 28th, 2009, 3:18pm » |
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on Aug 28th, 2009, 8:01am, mistre wrote:One area that is pretty much unexplored in Arimaa to date is to take too equally rated players and have one play without his E and the other without some combination of pieces that are of general strength of the E by itself...
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Well, given that in the bait and tackle approach, you sacrifice one piece and then commit at least 7 pieces to the sole action of blockading the elephant and still win the game then my guess would be that at least 8 and maybe even 9 pieces of various strength would be necessary to even the chances, between two players of equal strength that is. You can also notice that in the case of the blockade you are constantly threatened by a breaking of the blockade by the opponent, which you would be spared in a case of an initial sacrifice. So I am afraid that the privileged of having the strongest piece on the board is worth a lot and would reinforce the "It's all about the E" theory.
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Simon
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #22 on: Aug 28th, 2009, 7:07pm » |
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Quote:Well, given that in the bait and tackle approach, you sacrifice one piece and then commit at least 7 pieces to the sole action of blockading the elephant and still win the game then my guess would be that at least 8 and maybe even 9 pieces of various strength would be necessary to even the chances
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It's a mistake to think of the pieces in a blockade as doing nothing beyond holding in the elephant. In the early game, only a few pieces tend to be activated, the others sit around blocking the opponent from taking over the player's traps (and from sending a rabbit to goal, which would be a big danger with 8 or 9 pieces gone). Those stay-at-home small pieces can do their jobs almost as well as part of a blockade.
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lightvector
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #23 on: Aug 28th, 2009, 7:37pm » |
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I think it would be cool to see an experimental game with an initial sacrifice of E for MHH. All the material evaluators prefer the side with the MHH, and it would seem intuitively hard for the E to make any substantial threats when the MHH dominate every other piece besides the E. I expect that between evenly matched players, the E would get overloaded very fast.
If this is a bit too unbalanced, E versus MHD seems interesting too. The various evaluators at http://arimaa.janzert.com/eval.html are somewhat less in agreement on which side has the advantage. The extra horse would probably make a huge difference for the E side, since it can't be pushed by the opposing horses.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 28th, 2009, 7:42pm by lightvector » |
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ocmiente
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #24 on: Jan 13th, 2010, 2:02pm » |
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Adanac,
I was in the process of moving my response to another topic, but you beat me to it!
The topic of playing with a rat or a mouse seems different enough from the original post, that I figured it would be better to start a different thread. That thread is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1263419748
Your reply makes a lot of sense. Generally, I think that adding a rat would change the game so significantly that the strategies would have to be reworked completely - but I'm not sure - since I haven't tried it. So, the new thread is there in case someone is around who can shed some light on the topic.
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Adanac
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #25 on: Jan 13th, 2010, 2:19pm » |
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on Jan 13th, 2010, 2:02pm, ocmiente wrote:Adanac,
I was in the process of moving my response to another topic, but you beat me to it!
The topic of playing with a rat or a mouse seems different enough from the original post, that I figured it would be better to start a different thread. That thread is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1263419748
Your reply makes a lot of sense. Generally, I think that adding a rat would change the game so significantly that the strategies would have to be reworked completely - but I'm not sure - since I haven't tried it. So, the new thread is there in case someone is around who can shed some light on the topic.
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OK, I've moved my post over to the new thread.
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JoeHead
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Arimaa player #4979
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #26 on: Feb 16th, 2010, 7:18am » |
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Interesting analogy with Chopin.
I am extreme fan of Chopin and have all his work on my computer.
So hitting one key a lot of times may be bad? Like moving an E many times means boring?
Chopin wrote a piece, one of the best piano pieces ever written. It is called Prelude no. 15 d flat major, sostenuto.
In this piece you play one key almost from begining to the end and yet that it what gives the beauty to music. The underlying "rain drops" (although chopin himself didnt like the name) gives fluid. Other notes add to the melody and dynamics, but you still now where are you. Playing forte parts , piano parts you know that all music is linked. It is not torn, no, it is one compact beautiful piece of music - ARIMAA!!!!
))
PS: if you want to actually listen the piece, you have to find the best available interpretation, because musician make often the song sad, BUT it is not at all. It must be played with fluid. From many, many versions I know, only one is absolutely the best, the most correct, the most correctly expressing the true nature of the song.
http://www.extropygroup.com/vanity%20audio/piano_recordings.htm
and then find prelude no 15 d flat major "raindrop"
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #27 on: Feb 16th, 2010, 8:17am » |
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I am blessed to have a pianist for a wife. She is familiar with that Chopin prelude you mention, JoeHead, and she is playing it for me now thanks to your post. Yes, that A-flat does get played about a jillion times, and it's a gorgeous piece. Thanks for the fine analogy, Arimabuff!
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Victorwss
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #28 on: Feb 21st, 2010, 8:59pm » |
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The thread is somewhat old, but I think that JigglyPuff's observation is valid.
Chess has its deficiencies, but this does not imply that arimaa does not have some deficiencies too.
The fact that half of the times you are moving the elephant and that most tatics envolves around the elephant is a deficiency in arimaa.
Maybe if the elephant (or even the camel) had some sort of handicap and could be pulled and pushed some way, the game could me more interessing. Lets suppose some variants:
1. Lets suppose an arimaa variant where one move of the elephant is equivalent to two steps, I think that arimaa would be much more interesting.
2. Lets suppose another variant where the elephant could be pulled or pushed when adjacent to two opposite horses or horse+camel, this would be very interesting too.
3. Lets suppose still yet another variant where a piece may push or pull an enemy piece of equal strenght, but only if this is the only action did in the turn. This could be interessing because even rabbits could push/pull opposite rabbits.
In all that variants, the camel and the horses would became more important, equilibrating better the power of the elephant.
So, though "move the elephant" is not the answer to everything in arimaa, it is always one of the first things to think about and is the most frequent answer. So, in my opinion, surely this is a deficiency in arimaa.
Finally, I observe that arimaa has another deficiency too (in my opinion): cats and dogs has little to do in the game.
However, besides its deficiencies, arimaa is still a great game.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 21st, 2010, 9:21pm by Victorwss » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #29 on: Feb 22nd, 2010, 7:31am » |
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on Feb 21st, 2010, 8:59pm, Victorwss wrote:| So, though "move the elephant" is not the answer to everything in arimaa, it is always one of the first things to think about and is the most frequent answer. So, in my opinion, surely this is a deficiency in arimaa. |
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Victorwss, we all agree that the elephant is very important in Arimaa and that it gets moved often. We don't all agree that that is a problem. Can you explain a little bit more why you think it is a problem? Is it just too easy for you to find the right move? Do you win every time that you move your elephant a lot? Or is the "deficiency" simply a matter of taste, about which there is nothing to say?
Consider this argument: Although Chopin's Raindrop Prelude has many notes besides A-flat, it is the most frequently played note and it is being played most of the time. Some notes don't even get played at all! So, in my opinion, this is a deficiency in Chopin's Raindrop Prelude. Maybe we can experiment with a variation where we only play half of the A-flats that Chopin put in.
To me my argument seems to jump from true facts straight to an unrelated conclusion without anything in the middle to connect the logic.
Quote:| However, besides its deficiencies, arimaa is still a great game. |
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I'm glad you like it! My guess is that learning more and more about Arimaa makes the game seem less and less boring. This is not true for every game; some games seem interesting at first and only become boring once you know how to play them well. But Arimaa seems fairly boring on the surface and then gets more and more interesting as you understand its depth. That is my opinion, of course, but I think it is the experience of other players as well. We have seldom had a player quit Arimaa because they thought there was "nothing left" to it.
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