Abstract
Breakthrough is an abstract strategy board game that requires considerable strategy in the early stages of the game but can suddenly and unexpectedly turn tactical. Further, the strategic elements can be extremely subtle and the tactics can be quite deep, involving sequences of 20 or more moves. We are developing an MCTS-based program to play Breakthrough and demonstrate that this approach, with proper adjustments, produces a program that can beat most human players.
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Notes
- 1.
For brevity, we use ‘he’ and ‘his’ whenever ‘he or she’ and ‘his or her’ are meant.
- 2.
All Breakthrough figures are taken from the Little Golem website [13].
- 3.
A turn-based server allows players days to make moves rather than minutes as is the case in over-the-board play.
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Lorentz, R., Horey, T. (2014). Programming Breakthrough. In: van den Herik, H., Iida, H., Plaat, A. (eds) Computers and Games. CG 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8427. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09165-5_5
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