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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Arimaazilla has awful strategy
        
(Message started by: Ryan_Cable on Feb 4^th, 2006, 4:28am)

Title: Arimaazilla has awful strategy
Post by Ryan_Cable on Feb 4^th, 2006, 4:28am

Recently, I have been reviewing noob games and making comments. Before I ever played a game, I read the tactics and strategy pages on Wikipedia, looked through the WC games, and looked at games between top players and the bots. This allowed me to easily blow past all of the ladder bots until I got to Arimaanator. However, most noobs are not nearly this anal retentive and instead learn most of their strategy from playing the bots.

Arimaazilla teaches many of these players bad habits. Arimaazilla floods both noble pieces and rabbits, but it is tactically strong enough to defeat many noobs. This is particularly true if the noob tries to fight back with mass advances of his own pieces. Arimaazon seems to have similar though less extreme strategic problems. I think we should consider adding a version of Loc to the ladder, either as a replacement of Arimaazilla or as a new rung.

Title: Re: Arimaazilla has awful strategy
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4^th, 2006, 8:06am

It would be great to have a variety of strategies. If the ladder were changed to ShallowBlue, LocP1, GnobotP1, AamiraP1, CluelessP1, BombP1, Arimaanator, new players would learn more from the sequence than they do now.

Recently I watched closely as fritzlforpreisdent blew through the lobby bots. Only once did he win materially against any of them: all the other times he forced a "cheap" goal when he was behind on material, including twice against Arimaanator. At first this bugged me, because I thought he was learning terrible strategy, but then I realized that forcing goal is the weakest part of my game, so who am I to criticize someone else for learning that part of the game first?

I think the problem is not so much that the lobby bots are so bad, but that the first four all have the same eval. It would be a service to newbies to show different styles of play early on. Like Ryan, I read everything there was to read (not much) and replayed games between experts, so I got exposure to something different that way, but it would be good to mix it up even for people who aren't going out of there way to educate themselves.

Title: Re: Arimaazilla has awful strategy
Post by omar on Feb 12^th, 2006, 12:07pm

I think the new Bot Ladder feature will let the new players quickly try out the various different bots now.