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        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> Elephant death pruning
        
(Message started by: Ciribot on Mar 21^st, 2009, 11:15am)

Title: Elephant death pruning
Post by Ciribot on Mar 21^st, 2009, 11:15am

Just a small thought, if when an elephant died the score was immediately put to a loss, would that affect much tactics? I know there are some rare cases where an elephant sacrifice forces win, but the point is 99 percent of the case, elephant losses can and should be avoided.

Title: Re: Elephant death pruning
Post by 99of9 on Mar 21^st, 2009, 7:46pm

I agree with you that this approximation is probably worthwhile. I expect that null move pruning will prune after this type of move anyway, but since yours will do the pruning earlier and without any further search, it may be useful. We could always do a goal search anyway to check for sacrifices which force goal.

Title: Re: Elephant death pruning
Post by jdb on Mar 21^st, 2009, 8:02pm

I am 97% sure bomb prunes away elephant suicide moves.

Title: Re: Elephant death pruning
Post by fotland on Mar 31^st, 2009, 10:54pm

on 03/21/09 at 20:02:41, jdb wrote:

I am 97% sure bomb prunes away elephant suicide moves.

Nope. I generate all legal steps and search all of them. Null move pruning likely removes most of the elephant suicides. During the main search null move is the only pruning I do. During goal search I prune all steps too far away to affect the result. During quiescence search most steps are pruned.