Monday, November 14, 2011

[yaczfxch] Go with moving armies

Consider a variation of go 囲碁 where, instead of placing a stone, you also have the option of moving some of your stones.  This is similar to the game of Morris.  However, you still want to end up with the most area, so it will generally be rare to forgo placing a stone.

One can move any connected group (an "army") in a single move.  All pieces in a connected group may move up to 1 space orthogonally (possibly breaking the army into several).  Groups may be connected in the conventional sense, or through liberties entirely controlled (surrounded on all sides) by friendly stones.

One can also destroy friendly pieces within an army, though this will probably be extremely rare.  Perhaps you want to move an army into a space too small for it, or to undo a bad previous stone-placement move.

A computer interface might be helpful to prevent illegal moves.

The motivation was to further increase the branching factor, making it even more difficult for computers to play the game. But moves still remain local.

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