Trike is a two-player, combinatorial, abstract strategy game designed by Alek Erickson in April 2020.
Generated at 20/02/2021, 12:37 from 981 logged games.
Rules
Representative game (in the sense of being of mean length). Wherever you see the 'representative game' referred to in later sections, this is it!
Players take turns moving a neutral pawn around on the board (passing is not allowed). The neutral pawn can move any number of empty points, in any direction in a straight line, but cannot move onto, or jump over occupied points. When a player moves the pawn, first they place a checker of their own color, onto the destination point. Then they move the pawn on top of it. When the pawn is trapped, the game is over. At the end of the game, each player gets a point for each checker of their own color adjacent to, or underneath, the pawn. The person with the highest score wins.Pie rule: at the beginning of the game, the first player chooses a color and puts a checker on any point of the board, with the pawn on top of it. At this time only, the second player has a one-time chance to swap sides instead of making a regular move.
Biased, because I am the designer, but I will always enjoy playing this game. That being said, I wouldn't release something unless I enjoyed it.
Matt1990
8
dlgross
N/A
PnP
gidorah
8
Gilintx
9
guksung
9
Zapawa
9
It took me some time to appreciate Trike for what it is -- an extremely sharp, surprisingly deep and very essential abstract design. I think it has a very broad appeal, especially to Amazons or Veletas players. But its rules are very simple and the game is scalable: if you play on a small enough board, it can be your child's first true abstract when they grow out of tic-tac-toe.
schwarzspecht
8
cdunc123
8
Reminds me of Bill Taylor's Slime Trail, but more interesting given the presence of scoring. I've only played a few games but I can see that the tactics are interesting (setting traps, neutralizing opponent-set traps, etc.) My first game I felt that initial moves were inconsequential, but with just a little more experience I no longer think that! All in all, an elegant and enjoyable game.
Kolomogorov Complexity Analysis
Size (bytes)
23904
Reference Size
10293
Ratio
2.32
Ai Ai calculates the size of the implementation, and compares it to the Ai Ai implementation of the simplest possible game (which just fills the board). Note that this estimate may include some graphics and heuristics code as well as the game logic. See the wikipedia entry for more details.
Playout Complexity Estimate
Playouts per second
47845.75 (20.90µs/playout)
Reference Size
414061.53 (2.42µs/playout)
Ratio (low is good)
8.65
Tavener complexity: the heat generated by playing every possible instance of a game with a perfectly efficient programme. Since this is not possible to calculate, Ai Ai calculates the number of random playouts per second and compares it to the fastest non-trivial Ai Ai game (Connect 4). This ratio gives a practical indication of how complex the game is. Combine this with the computational state space, and you can get an idea of how strong the default (MCTS-based) AI will be.
Playout/Search Speed
Label
Its/s
SD
Nodes/s
SD
Game length
SD
Random playout
63,704
401
4,260,217
26,445
67
19
search.UCB
NaN
NaN
0
0
search.UCT
NaN
NaN
0
0
Random: 10 second warmup for the hotspot compiler. 100 trials of 1000ms each.
Other: 100 playouts, means calculated over the first 5 moves only to avoid distortion due to speedup at end of game.
Mirroring Strategies
Rotation (Half turn) lost each game as expected.
Reflection (X axis) lost each game as expected.
Reflection (Y axis) lost each game as expected.
Copy last move lost each game as expected.
Mirroring strategies attempt to copy the previous move. On first move, they will attempt to play in the centre. If neither of these are possible, they will pick a random move. Each entry represents a different form of copying; direct copy, reflection in either the X or Y axis, half-turn rotation.
Win % By Player (Bias)
1: White win %
52.19±3.13
Includes draws = 50%
2: Black win %
47.81±3.11
Includes draws = 50%
Draw %
0.00
Percentage of games where all players draw.
Decisive %
100.00
Percentage of games with a single winner.
Samples
981
Quantity of logged games played
Note: that win/loss statistics may vary depending on thinking time (horizon effect, etc.), bad heuristics, bugs, and other factors, so should be taken with a pinch of salt. (Given perfect play, any game of pure skill will always end in the same result.)
Note: Ai Ai differentiates between states where all players draw or win or lose; this is mostly to support cooperative games.
UCT Skill Chains
Match
AI
Strong Wins
Draws
Strong Losses
#Games
Strong Score
p1 Win%
Draw%
p2 Win%
Game Length
0
Random
1
UCT (its=2)
631
0
296
927
0.6500 <= 0.6807 <= 0.7099
49.73
0.00
50.27
66.80
4
UCT (its=5)
631
0
360
991
0.6063 <= 0.6367 <= 0.6661
52.98
0.00
47.02
66.70
10
UCT (its=11)
631
0
339
970
0.6200 <= 0.6505 <= 0.6799
49.90
0.00
50.10
63.41
19
UCT (its=20)
631
0
331
962
0.6253 <= 0.6559 <= 0.6853
49.69
0.00
50.31
61.36
33
UCT (its=34)
631
0
329
960
0.6267 <= 0.6573 <= 0.6866
49.90
0.00
50.10
59.85
52
UCT (its=53)
631
0
354
985
0.6102 <= 0.6406 <= 0.6700
50.76
0.00
49.24
61.65
83
UCT (its=84)
631
0
367
998
0.6019 <= 0.6323 <= 0.6616
50.10
0.00
49.90
65.19
126
UCT (its=127)
626
0
374
1000
0.5956 <= 0.6260 <= 0.6555
50.80
0.00
49.20
68.29
127
UCT (its=127)
492
0
508
1000
0.4611 <= 0.4920 <= 0.5230
49.00
0.00
51.00
71.51
Search for levels ended: time limit reached.
Level of Play: Strong beats Weak 60% of the time (lower bound with 95% confidence).
Draw%, p1 win% and game length may give some indication of trends as AI strength increases.
1st Player Win Ratios by Playing Strength
This chart shows the win(green)/draw(black)/loss(red) percentages, as UCT play strength increases. Note that for most games, the top playing strength show here will be distinctly below human standard.
Complexity
Samples
981
Quantity of logged games played
Computational complexity (where present) is an estimate of the game tree reachable through actual play. For each game in turn, Ai Ai marks the positions reached in a hashtable, then counts the number of new moves added to the table. Once all moves are applied, it treats this sequence as a geometric progression and calculates the sum as n-> infinity.
Move Classification
Distinct actions
null
Number of distinct moves (e.g. "e4") regardless of position in game tree
Change in Material Per Turn
This chart is based on a single representative* playout, and gives a feel for the change in material over the course of a game. (* Representative in the sense that it is close to the mean length.)
Actions/turn
Table: branching factor per turn, based on a single representative* game. (* Representative in the sense that it is close to the mean game length.)
Action Types per Turn
This chart is based on a single representative* game, and gives a feel for the types of moves available throughout that game. (* Representative in the sense that it is close to the mean game length.)
This chart shows the best move value with respect to the active player; the orange line represents the value of doing nothing (null move).
The lead changed on 8% of the game turns. Ai Ai found 14 critical turns (turns with only one good option).
Position Heatmap
This chart shows the relative temperature of all moves each turn. Colour range: black (worst), red, orange(even), yellow, white(best).
Good/Effective moves
Measure
All players
Player 1
Player 2
Mean % of effective moves
79.29
76.10
82.54
Mean no. of effective moves
12.03
12.90
11.15
Effective game space
10^83.22
10^42.39
10^40.83
Mean % of good moves
28.37
54.69
1.51
Mean no. of good moves
3.67
7.08
0.19
Good move game space
10^30.75
10^30.45
10^0.30
These figures were calculated over a single game.
An effective move is one with score 0.1 of the best move (including the best move). -1 (loss) <= score <= 1 (win)
A good move has a score > 0. Note that when there are no good moves, an multiplier of 1 is used for the game space calculation.
Quality Measures
Measure
Value
Description
Hot turns
81.44%
A hot turn is one where making a move is better than doing nothing.
Momentum
20.62%
% of turns where a player improved their score.
Correction
41.24%
% of turns where the score headed back towards equality.
Depth
3.06%
Difference in evaluation between a short and long search.
Drama
0.00%
How much the winner was behind before their final victory.
Foulup Factor
31.96%
Moves that looked better than the best move after a short search.
Surprising turns
2.06%
Turns that looked bad after a short search, but good after a long one.
Last lead change
62.89%
Distance through game when the lead changed for the last time.
Decisiveness
21.65%
Distance from the result being known to the end of the game.
These figures were calculated over a single representative* game, and based on the measures of quality described in "Automatic Generation and Evaluation of Recombination Games" (Cameron Browne, 2007). (* Representative, in the sense that it is close to the mean game length.)
Swap Heatmap (Full Scan)
Colour shows the frequency of swaps on turn 2 if this move is played on turn 1; black < red < yellow < white.
Based on 100 trials/move at 0.1s thinking time each.
Openings
Moves
Animation
l2,l2-r2,r2-f14
e12,e12-e1,e1-k1
Opening Heatmap
Colour shows the success ratio of this play over the first 10moves; black < red < yellow < white.
Size shows the frequency this move is played.
Swap Heatmap (Historic)
Colour shows the frequency of swaps on turn 2 if this move is played on turn 1; black < red < yellow < white.
Size shows the frequency this move is played.
Unique Positions Reachable at Depth
0
1
2
3
4
1
190
7220
224390
6417926
Note: most games do not take board rotation and reflection into consideration. Multi-part turns could be treated as the same or different depth depending on the implementation. Counts to depth N include all moves reachable at lower depths. Inaccuracies may also exist due to hash collisions, but Ai Ai uses 64-bit hashes so these will be a very small fraction of a percentage point.
Shortest Game(s)
6 solutions found at depth 3.
Puzzles
Puzzle
Solution
Black to win in 36 moves
Black to win in 45 moves
Black to win in 40 moves
White to win in 36 moves
Black to win in 36 moves
Black to win in 32 moves
White to win in 38 moves
Black to win in 39 moves
Black to win in 27 moves
White to win in 31 moves
Black to win in 32 moves
Black to win in 28 moves
Black to win in 27 moves
Black to win in 28 moves
White to win in 31 moves
White to win in 33 moves
Black to win in 33 moves
White to win in 29 moves
White to win in 29 moves
White to win in 26 moves
White to win in 39 moves
Black to win in 21 moves
White to win in 26 moves
Black to win in 25 moves
Black to win in 28 moves
White to win in 23 moves
Black to win in 22 moves
Black to win in 17 moves
White to win in 18 moves
Black to win in 12 moves
White to win in 14 moves
Black to win in 13 moves
White to win in 9 moves
White to win in 11 moves
Black to win in 4 moves
White to win in 9 moves
Black to win in 17 moves
Weak puzzle selection criteria are in place; the first move may not be unique.
