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Post by Steve Draper on Dec 24, 2013 8:21:14 GMT -8
I had an interesting loss, with a score of 0, on Tiltyard in a 6 player CC game last night, which I think reveals a flaw in the game rules (or at least a flaw in regard to its usefulness in being a good discriminatory game). Basically the player 'opposite' me (the one starting in the positions I needed to get to) just 'noop'd on every turn, with the result that my pieces could not occupy their target spots regardless of any decisions I (or indeed any of the other 4 players) made. Maybe there should be 'special' moves that allow you to always move into any of the 3 terminal spots (by exchanging places with anything blocking it maybe?). Obviously this is only a (major) problem with 3+ players (though it's a rather simple guaranteed draw in the 2 player version also). Also, in regard to Tiltyard specifically, it doesn't matter asymptotically, to the final player statistics, but it may take a very large number of games to 'drown out' this effect if one or more players employs it often.
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Post by talinsalway on Dec 29, 2013 17:34:07 GMT -8
That is odd. I was under the impression that the rules of chinese checkers didn't allow passing your turn.
the rule
(<= (legal ?player noop)
(role ?player))
should probably be ammended to only be true if player doesn't have control.
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qfwfq
New Member
Posts: 29 
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Post by qfwfq on Dec 29, 2013 23:37:42 GMT -8
Perhaps it's there in case all pieces of one player are blocked?
I've noticed that in the 2-player variant my player sometimes uses the no-op too, making the game uninteresting. When that happens, it moves two pieces to the opposite end of the board and never moves the third one, forcing a draw.
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Post by alandau on Jan 6, 2014 23:07:51 GMT -8
This is a problem for games with more than two players in general; a single player usually can't guarantee a non-zero score, even with optimal play. (Obviously, this depends ) I'd personally be inclined when setting up a tournament to lower the weight of match results from many-player games for just this reason.
Having just looked through the Chinese Checkers rulesheets: The four-player version only allows noops when there are no other moves available. The other versions allow noops on any turn, which I imagine was just an easier way to avoid no-legal-move situations.
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