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Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

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Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#51

Post by spacemanspiff01 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #48
orlp wrote: post #27

Harder for humans, but easy to make a really strong AI for this. Even overcounting because of illegal board states (multiple winners) and not even bothering to eliminate symmetries, there are at most 2 * 3^9 = 39366 board states. There are cycles in the board state graph, although they are of a very specific form (the only kind of cycle that exists is for board B with O and X alternating turns). So it is probably pos…

I think you will find it extremely difficult to do better than simply checking the probability that each square gives you a spot times the number of victory paths it opens up minus the probability that it gives your opponent a spot times the number of victory paths it opens up for them. Add another clause for paths closed if you want. Since chance is involved, you will basically never want to do anything but the gree…

Wouldn't you also have to take into account the probability of the following moves also being successful and giving you a win?

Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#55

Post by aidenn0 »

Number of times I selected a square with 5% "meh" chance: 10. Number of times I got "meh" and the computer then selected that square: 8. I know probability is weird but this happens to me when rolling dice as well (I had a D&D 5E character who nearly always rolled attacks with advantage. I had a streak of 20 attacks in a row (i.e. 40 rolls of a 20 sided die) without getting a double-digit number, and even got a critical failure (which required two 1s).

Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#56

Post by pncnmnp »

Fascinating. I am curious, what other games do you all think this could be extended to and still remains fun? Connect Four seems like a natural extension to me. I'd love to see some of these dynamics in Battleship.

Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#58

Post by orlp »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #48
orlp wrote: post #27

Harder for humans, but easy to make a really strong AI for this. Even overcounting because of illegal board states (multiple winners) and not even bothering to eliminate symmetries, there are at most 2 * 3^9 = 39366 board states. There are cycles in the board state graph, although they are of a very specific form (the only kind of cycle that exists is for board B with O and X alternating turns). So it is probably pos…

I think you will find it extremely difficult to do better than simply checking the probability that each square gives you a spot times the number of victory paths it opens up minus the probability that it gives your opponent a spot times the number of victory paths it opens up for them. Add another clause for paths closed if you want. Since chance is involved, you will basically never want to do anything but the gree…

> Since chance is involved, you will basically never want to do anything but the greediest highest value next action. Sometimes more than half the board has net value of 0 or less which makes them very easy to ignore.

Since passing is not an option, you can't ignore a net value of 0 or less, because all options might have a net value of 0 or less.

Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#59

Post by livrem »

As someone who often prints boardgames, this strikes me as a game that would be very easy to build a physical version of, just printing some tiles with random distributions printed on, and finding some tokens and a die to use. It would make a compact travel game. I do not think there would have to be a huge number of tiles. A few more than nine ought to be enough?

Re: Show HN: Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe

#60

Post by kevindamm »

livrem wrote: post #59

As someone who often prints boardgames, this strikes me as a game that would be very easy to build a physical version of, just printing some tiles with random distributions printed on, and finding some tokens and a die to use. It would make a compact travel game. I do not think there would have to be a huge number of tiles. A few more than nine ought to be enough?

you would need different dice for each distribution but you could use a normal d20 and a lookup table for less needed equipment.. I think it could work!
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