| Author |
Message |
Patrick S. Duff (Pduff)
| | Posted on Sunday, August 13, 2000 - 2:11 pm: | |
I'd like to see a (value [Player] [piece|position|'board'] [|Position]) command for accessing Zillion's move evaluation results. For example, "(value White Knight a1)", "(value White a1)" or "(value Black board)".
The [Player] parameter lets you specify, for example, whether you want the value from White's point-of-view, or Black's.
The piece-value is displayable by right-clicking on a piece, then left-clicking on the 'properties' item. The board-value is displayed after the '=' in the "Search Progress" line. But you cannot get either one via commands in a rules file.
What I have in mind is things like changing the move-priorities depending upon whether you are in offensive or defensive mode (based upon the board value).
If one could also set the value of a piece or position, one could fine-tune the default evaluation in cases where Zillions doesn't do it well. An example is Ultima, where Zillions will often exchange a major piece in order to capture a pawn, and under-values Immobilizer moves (probably because the Immobilizer doesn't capture anything itself) and King moves (which indirectly change the value of Coordinator moves).
Another example is Pente, where you need to change the emphasis between playing to get five-in-a-row and playing to get five pair-captures (or defending against one or the other) depending upon what is happening in the game.
(move-priorities) sets up absolute priorities which are good for enforcing rules (like, you must make a capture move if one is available). But there isn't a way to directly inform Zillions that some moves, pieces, or positions are more or less favorable than others, i.e., tweaking the default evaluation by saying something like (change-value [Player] [piece|position] [|+|-][points]), which might be used, for example, to set a piece's value to 5000 points, add 1000 points to whatever Zillions thinks the piece is worth, or subtract 9999 points from whatever Zillions thinks the position is worth. |
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