Game design : Making computer play

[Richard Heathfield]

skanemupp at yahoo.se said:

> On 14 Apr, 09:13, v4vijayakumar <vijayakumar.subbu... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> In computer based, two player, board games, how to make computer play?
>> Are there any formal ways to _teach_ computer, to choose best possible
>> move?
>>
>> I know this is kind of off-topic here. Please redirect me, if there
>> are more appropriate newsgroup.
> 
> can you post a link to the game so I can see the rules and how the
> board looks.

Here's the board (which bears only a slight resemblance to one I'd seen on 
the Web):

      +---------------+
      | HORN   $      |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
  |L W|   | $ | $ |   |R W|
  +E-I+--CHEST+---+---+I-I+
  |F N|   |   |   |   |G N|
  +T-G+---+---+---+---+H-G+
  |   |   |   |   |   |T  |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
      |   LEGS|   |   |
      +---+---+---+---+

There are three tigers and fifteen goats.
The tigers' goal is to eat all the goats and remain mobile.
It seems that the initial tiger positions are: one on the horn, and one 
each on CHEST-2 and CHEST-3 (see $ marks, above).
The goats' goal is to block the tigers from moving.
The goats are placed one by one.
Tigers appear only to be able to move orthogonally (up/down/left/right) - 
although they can use the horn to whizz across the chest (e.g. CHEST-1 to 
HORN, HORN to CHEST-4, in two moves).
The rest of the rules are beyond me, I'm afraid. It's not clear how tigers 
eat goats or how goats block tigers.

-- 
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
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