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6401

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 20, 2015, 10:26:45 pm »

So what things are yet to be implemented?  I just re-read the Temporum thread and there is talk of an Anubis Statuette I know nothing about.  Also, I don't think I've seen Information Age appear at all, and you already mentioned that you haven't implemented Police State because of what would happen with the AI.

A quick look through this list... I don't think I've seen:

- Age of Cults
- Age of Cybernetics
- Alien Contact (should be about as simple as Age of Toys?)
- Bureaucracy
- Industrial Revolution
- Information Age
- Inquisition
- Nuclear Wasteland
- Police State
- Warm Globe

- Anubis Statuette

Here's a suggestion for a simplistic AI tweak for when Police State is present:

- if on Police State
--- if want to play cards
------if an Age IV card below lets you play cards (Icy Wasteland, Communist Utopia if less than 12 coins), go there
------else visit Police State
--- else go to Age IV (random, but always avoid Mere Anarchy)
- else always change the timeline to make Police State unreal, if possible (optional, but may help if you have AI would get slowed down by it more than the human player)

I believe you correctly got the full list there. Anubis Statuette is the only player card I haven't implemented yet. It's the most complicated, and quite possibly the most powerful, player card. It gives you $2 and then lets you visit any Zone that you haven't yet visited... real or unreal.

The only issue with Police State is that any Zone that offers any choice needs special AI rules. And I still have to add those special rules for ALL Time IV cards before I can ever allow the AI to visit Time IV.

Other zones:
Inquisition - pretty easy, should have it done this week. The AI can check if one of the attack options wouldn't hurt it; in which case it will do that one. Otherwise it will lose money.

Bureaucracy - 2 things don't currently exist that need to be created for this zone... the ability to retreat a crown instead of advancing it; and the ability for players to interact with the crowns when it isn't their turn. Definitely doable, though.

Information Age - Ugh, you can probably imagine why this is difficult. Both for this and Anubis Statuette, I need to start keeping a list of all visited zones each turn.

Age of Cybernetics - Need an interface for choosing both the card from your hand and the in-play card to copy. After that it's pretty easy to copy the effect (I can just change one card into another when it gets played that way)... but the hard part is if that card is Investments or Treasure Map... then when it's discarded, I need to know that it wasn't a "real" Investments or Treasure Map so that it can revert back to its own self in the discard pile.

Alien Contact - You're right, pretty easy. Should be done this week.

Warm Globe - The only tricky part is the ability for a player to do something when it isn't their turn. I already had to implement this for Rats and Plague, but that code is bad.. I mean really bad. I need to figure a better way to have each player do something one at a time.

Industrial Revolution - sounds easy, but has a tricky issue. When I play a card, that card's own "on play" instructions say what to do with that card when it's done.. usually to move to the discard pile. Well now that it's in the discard pile, the Lose Track rule applies! Industrial Revolution can't find that card to put it back into your hand, because it's already been played, and is either sitting in the discard, or in play if it was a perpetual, or even in your hand if it was a Bag of Loot. Will require some thought.

Age of Cults - this probably is actually a little easier than it sounds. Again the biggest issue is just like Warm Globe; a way for each player to do something before the game can move on.

Nuclear Wasteland... an easier version of Information Age. I basically need to go back to the "move" step, while making only the earlier Times active.


I'm curious what people would rather see first: More Zone cards; the ability to pick your Zones to play with; slightly better AI (much better AI would come later either way); or other things?

6402

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 20, 2015, 06:31:28 pm »

Fastest game so far -- 9 turns.  I had Conspiracy and Investments in play.  Turn 8 I visited Summer of Love ($2) to play Crown Jewels ($11), discarding 2 cards ($8) for $21 total, discarding Investments for $10 more.  Turn 9 I went to Space Age and scored two more cards, advancing 17 crowns in one go.

I tried some 5 player games and lost most of them.  I think it's just harder to track what the others are doing (I don't want to go back and read 4 other players' turns).

Yes, I find it hard to win 5 player often... partly because one of the 4 players will get lucky enough to do well, and partly because of what you say; it's just much easier to play "solitaire" than it is to pay attention to the game as a whole in that case. It might be nice if I add some artificial slowdown, just so that there's a second between each computer's turn. (And it was easier when the AI's history-changing was broken too... now you can't just camp out on a good Time IV Zone).

6403

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 20, 2015, 09:50:20 am »

Start of turn, take 50/50 random chance of changing history. Then:

Are you sure it does this? I am not seeing it ever change history, except when automatic (Late Jurassic).

Yes, it looks like there's a bug:

Code: [Select]

ChangeArrow: function () {
return false;
if (GameController.ActivePlayer.location.time < 4) {
if (getRandomInt(0, 2) === 1) {
return true;
}
}

return false;
},

Thankfully the source is clear enough that I think I could learn js from it!

Ha, oops! Not so much a "bug" as just some testing I forgot to remove. I wanted to test visiting a certain zone, while not in 1-player, so I temporarily stopped the AI from changing history on me. But then I forgot to undo that. So yeah, it was 50/50 until whenever I added that line of code... it's fixed now, thanks!

6404

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 20, 2015, 12:17:48 am »

One easy way to get a leg up on the AI is to advance a single crown to Age IV quickly, then camp out in Icy Wasteland and make them lose $2 every turn. Of course, that only works when Icy Wasteland is available.

Yeah, almost all the Time IV cards are AI killers at the moment. Donald mentioned Communist Utopia, which obviously makes sense. Going there at the right time is just a free turn. It's also why I haven't added Police State yet, because the AI would actually break (if it can score, it will try to move to time I, but now it can't).

6405

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 20, 2015, 12:12:17 am »

Thanks for the suggestions!

The AI:

Start of turn, take 50/50 random chance of changing history. Then:

If enough money to score any card in hand, go to Time 1. Score the last card in hand that it can afford to score. Otherwise:

If any cards in hand, go to whatever is Active in Time III. Play the first card in hand. Otherwise:

Go to whatever is Active in Time II. Draw 2 cards.

When it needs to make decisions beyond where to move... for zones that have "choose one:" with all 3 options, choose the option that was the reason you went to that Time in the first place. When it plays any "discard any number of cards" things; it will discard its entire hand for max benefit. Other various player cards and zone cards required specific choices to be made. Like it will always discard Investments as long as it is getting at least 2 money for it (which is always the same turn it was played right now, since Investments itself gives .

When it scores crowns, just move from the lowest Time where there are still crowns.


So yeah, this version was always intended just to be something that you could play against; not anything actually intelligent. Hopefully I can make vast improvements.

6406

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Temporum puzzles

« on: January 19, 2015, 10:59:45 pm »

Due to Primitive Paradise, there's $2 on Age of Cats. I have 1 card in hand, and I need $2 more to score it. No other zone options would let me get money without taking an extra turn to draw and then play a card.

6407

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 10:54:10 pm »

Yay, I won my first game of Temporum!

This game is inducing AP in me like no other.  Does that go away as you become familiar with everything?

Edit: I've decided that I like this game, even though I have some severe AP with it.  Had a lot of fun using Communist Utopia to play multiple cards that let me draw more cards when I play cards, scoring big cards when I got too rich, and eventually ending the game with Barbarian Horde and discarding a hand of 7. 

Trying to get a handle on how long a game takes.  This one was 11 turns, and I think that is about what I am averaging.  It's probably going to take more when there are other players who are actually trying to change the timeline to their own advantage.  And I haven't lost to the crappy AI yet, which is a good sign.

The game doesn't feel thematic to me at all (maybe having the art would help) but I think it's OK.  It's still more thematic than Dominion.

I feel like I don't take enough time for AP; so while I end up playing quickly as I'm familiar with everything, I know I'm not playing very well. I lose to the AI sometimes. I feel like you should be aiming for 10-11 turns on average; but I could be wrong.

6408

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Temporum puzzles

« on: January 19, 2015, 06:04:52 pm »

As this is about Temporum, not Dominion, shouldn't it be in the Other Board Games section?

I'm ok with that.

6409

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Temporum puzzles

« on: January 19, 2015, 05:32:27 pm »

You are in police state and noone is going to help you get out of there. The alternative is either something detrimental to you (Savagery, Steampunk Empire, ...), or something you absolutely don't want to allow an opponent access to.

I hadn't considered that, probably because I haven't implemented Police State yet. (Which is because, although the zone itself is easy to implement; if I do it without improving the AI a bunch, it will be easy to pin the computer there).

So that wasn't what I was thinking of.

6410

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Pestilence

« on: January 19, 2015, 05:10:55 pm »

Why is cantrip trashing considered so good? You have to play 4 in a row before you can do what one chapel does, and then what are you gonna do with all those trashers in your ultra thin deck? They'd get too risky to cconsider playing.

Well it's not as good as Chapel. But compare it to terminal trashers that trash either 1 or 2 cards per play... usually with a trasher early on, playing that trasher is about the only thing you do that turn. With Chapel that's ok, because you're doing a lot. But with other trashers, when it's the only thing you do that turn, it is slow to be building your deck while thinning it. A cantrip trasher allows you to build your deck and thin it at the same time.

6411

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Pestilence

« on: January 19, 2015, 04:45:45 pm »

As for Hospital vs. Junk Dealer, I actually think Hospital may be stronger.  As a package, it is just so conducive to engine building.  The +1 action lets you pick up an extra terminal rather than have to get an extra (regular) village.  I think the chance to play that other terminal will often be more valuable than the +$1 on Junk Dealer.

I think this probably wrong for 2 reasons:

Junk Dealer's +$1 helps you to buy your engine components while trashing down to be able to play your engine. It's basically a compensation for the card reducing your hand-size by 1. The extra action will not be helpful early on while you are trying to buy $5s that you want to play once your engine is running.

Before too long, you won't be able to continue playing Hospitals; because you'll be out of cards to trash. This means that you will need to rely on other Villages for the actions. Plus many engines are probably going to want to play several terminals per turn, and you don't want more than a couple Hospitals. Interesting edge case; if you have plenty of extra buys, and your deck is otherwise powerful enough to draw itself, then buy a couple coppers (or even Curses if you want to run down a pile) each turn, then trash them on your next turn with Hospitals.

6412

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 03:56:27 pm »

Awesome!

It's nice to have a better idea of how long games take. Just won a game in 12 turns. I wasn't counting very carefully, but a few times I felt like it let me score more crowns than I should have. The AI doesn't seem to be very good though

Lol, if Roman Empire and Great Depression are active; the computer will take over 30 turns to win!!

6413

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 03:48:25 pm »

Found another bug, if you play papal tiara, but don't have money to score a card the game hangs waiting for you to pick one to score. Probably pretty easy to fix.

Thanks, fixed! It was actually any time you tried to score a card but couldn't afford to. Worked fine yesterday, I broke it when improving logging today.

6414

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 03:36:59 pm »

Awesome!

It's nice to have a better idea of how long games take. Just won a game in 12 turns. I wasn't counting very carefully, but a few times I felt like it let me score more crowns than I should have. The AI doesn't seem to be very good though

Thanks!

There's a couple reasons why you may score more than you would might think you should at first glance:

You have Conspiracy in play (+1 score when you score)
You are visiting a zone that has a score tacked on on top of what you do there (Plutocracy, etc)

Yeah, I believe the AI will get much better over time. At the moment it's following an extremely basic set of rules. It wins in about 12 turns on average, though I've seen anywhere from 10 to 19 turns!

Oh wow, my bad. Now I remember I played a conspiracy near the beginning and promptly forgot about it. Does the AI ever change time?

EDIT: oh, I played a couple attack cards that game too, so that slowed the game down a bit.

The AI flips a coin at the start of each turn; 50/50 chance of changing history before moving. Real intelligent, right? The basic idea for improvement will be to have it test-visit the zones it can and see what it has after each one; then pick the best move.

6415

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 03:25:14 pm »

Awesome!

It's nice to have a better idea of how long games take. Just won a game in 12 turns. I wasn't counting very carefully, but a few times I felt like it let me score more crowns than I should have. The AI doesn't seem to be very good though

Thanks!

There's a couple reasons why you may score more than you would might think you should at first glance:

You have Conspiracy in play (+1 score when you score)
You are visiting a zone that has a score tacked on on top of what you do there (Plutocracy, etc)

Yeah, I believe the AI will get much better over time. At the moment it's following an extremely basic set of rules. It wins in about 12 turns on average, though I've seen anywhere from 10 to 19 turns!

6416

Puzzles and Challenges / Temporum puzzles

« on: January 19, 2015, 03:07:05 pm »

In programming my Temporum client; I had to include some really weird edge cases. Like visiting Age of Cats when you can't afford to score a card.  So... why would you visit Age of Cats if you can't afford to score a card? (Age of Cats says "you may pay $10. If you do, score a card twice, paying twice"). Aside from the fact that the rule allow it, and thus I had to program for it; I believe I found a reason why it could be the right move. When?

6417

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 02:45:33 pm »

Thanks again for this, GendoIkari!

I found a game-crashing bug. An AI player played an Invenstments, then I think he tried to discard it on the same turn and it resulted in an unexpected "undefined" value for either player or card.

Code: [Select]

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'name' of undefined
It's on line 55:

Code: [Select]

LogDiscard: function (player, card) {
var entry = $('<p>');
if (player === GameController.HumanPlayer) {
entry.addClass('human');
entry.append('You discard ' + card.name);
}
else {
entry.append(player.name + ' discards ' + card.name);    <-------- This line right here
}
$('#Log').append(entry);
$('#Log').scrollTop($('#Log').prop('scrollHeight'));
},


Thanks! Should be fixed now. LogDiscard is a new method added in a hurry today to improve logging. Interestingly, it looked like AI discarding Investments was already broken, but in such a way that you wouldn't notice until the discarded Investment was shuffled back in and re-drawn. The updated Logging made the error happen immediately.

A few times I've seen a card with the name "Undefined" show up in my hand. When this happens, it means that a card didn't get discarded properly.

6418

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:58:03 pm »

So "AI only" mode just has all players be AI; the game will end almost immediately, then you can see who won and use the log to see what they did. I ran 100 5-player games this way to see if there was any turn-order advantage. The results:

Player 5: 26 wins
Player 2: 20 wins
Player 3: 20 wins
Player 1: 18 wins
Player 4: 16 wins

Of course this tells us very little about any possible turn-order advantage in a real game, because the AI definitely doesn't take advantage of any possible turn-order advantage. But still interesting to note.

Optimized or no, I'm all but certain even without running the numbers that those are indistinguishable from random for n=100.

No way, probability states that each player should have exactly 20 wins if that were the case. Right? 

Probabilities also prevent you from running a number of simulations that isn't divisible by 5.

That's if we start with the assumption that there isn't any turn-order advantage. I ran a single 3-player simulation game, and now I'm convinced that the game is poorly designed because player 1 wins every time.

6419

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:50:03 pm »

So "AI only" mode just has all players be AI; the game will end almost immediately, then you can see who won and use the log to see what they did. I ran 100 5-player games this way to see if there was any turn-order advantage. The results:

Player 5: 26 wins
Player 2: 20 wins
Player 3: 20 wins
Player 1: 18 wins
Player 4: 16 wins

Of course this tells us very little about any possible turn-order advantage in a real game, because the AI definitely doesn't take advantage of any possible turn-order advantage. But still interesting to note.

Optimized or no, I'm all but certain even without running the numbers that those are indistinguishable from random for n=100.

No way, probability states that each player should have exactly 20 wins if that were the case. Right? 

6420

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:49:09 pm »

So Andrew is there, like, 24/7 and I can play against him any time?

First I was like "so you're saying Andrew is so good at Temporum that he's a computer?" Then I was like "But wait, these AI are really bad at the game, so you're saying that Andrew is bad at Temporum?" Then finally I figured it out.

6421

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:43:04 pm »

Well, that was quick. I'll try a game.

All bug reports will be fixed in 30 minutes or less, or your game is free.

6422

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:25:34 pm »

I think there's something wrong. I can't see any pawns or crowns, and can't figure out how to change history. I attached a screenshot of what it looks like for me.
I'm using Firefox on Windows 8, tell me if you need details.

EDIT: Ok, once you are in a zone you can change history, pretty sure there's still something missing though.

Ok, works in Firefox now!

6423

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 01:20:57 pm »

I think there's something wrong. I can't see any pawns or crowns, and can't figure out how to change history. I attached a screenshot of what it looks like for me.
I'm using Firefox on Windows 8, tell me if you need details.

EDIT: Ok, once you are in a zone you can change history, pretty sure there's still something missing though.

Just tried it in Firefox for the first time, and yeah, weird. I only had done Chrome so far. Looks like images just aren't showing up in Firefox at all... will look into it.

6424

Other Games / Re: Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 12:50:22 pm »

So "AI only" mode just has all players be AI; the game will end almost immediately, then you can see who won and use the log to see what they did. I ran 100 5-player games this way to see if there was any turn-order advantage. The results:

Player 5: 26 wins
Player 2: 20 wins
Player 3: 20 wins
Player 1: 18 wins
Player 4: 16 wins

Of course this tells us very little about any possible turn-order advantage in a real game, because the AI definitely doesn't take advantage of any possible turn-order advantage. But still interesting to note.

6425

Other Games / Play Temporum online, single-player against AI!

« on: January 19, 2015, 12:47:28 pm »

http://www.pittersplace.com/temporum

Ok, so last weekend I decided on a whim to try and build a Temporum client in JavaScript. And to my surprise, I was able to do it! So the site is rough in terms of design. Then again, so was Isoropic. Now, this isn't a new Isotropic, mainly because there's no multiplayer support. No sever-side code at all; 100% JavaScript. But it works. The AI is pretty stupid, but provides a very basic benchmark as to if a strategy is at all viable.

So the game has all but 1 of the player cards implemented, and all but about 10 of the zone cards implemented. The 10 zones are picked randomly at the start of each game. To start a new game, refresh the page (I strive for usability, clearly).

Before you click a zone to move at the start of your turn, you can change history below you back and forth as much as you want, rather than making a "change history? yes or no" decision.

Suggestions and bug reports welcome; and keep in mind I've only actually been working on this for a week!

If you don't know how to play Temporum, then this site isn't going to teach you the rules... but it's as simple as Dominion, so you can just read through the rulebook online to self-teach.