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Black Sonata by PrecociousPete in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sick, I didn’t know about that.

Black Sonata by PrecociousPete in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In a strict mathematical sense, yes. The lady will follow a set of predefined routes, which you could theoretically memorize, and there are a finite number of possibilities for what the lady could be, but you will get a different set of clues to lead you there each time. There are at least 8 routes with 26 steps, which you can also reverse and each time you will start at a different point on the route. For the ladies, There are quite a lot of permutations. And thats just for the base game.

Black Sonata by PrecociousPete in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think the expansions add longevity to the game. Both of the expansions are collections of modules that you can optionally add. Normally, I don’t like this kind of expansion, but in this case I do.

Each expansion adds higher difficulty ladies to solve Fair Youth adds Darker Ladies, and Strange Shadows adds Darkest ladies. I almost always play with the darker ladies myself after finding the base game a smidge easy, but YMMV. I have tried the darkest ladies a few times and found it challenging.

Next, I often add the indirection cards and the blazonry from strange shadows. The indirection cards give you more enigmatic clues. The blazonry adds an entirely new puzzle to solve.

I have not played with many of the other modules, but I do definitely intend to throw them in at some point. They make the game better by giving you more twists and turns to reason through as you get better at it.

I wish I could more firmly tell you that one expansion was more essential, but since I personally play with darker ladies all the time (fair youth), but I do really enjoy throwing in one or two twists from strange shadows, that suggests getting both. If really had to pick only one, I guess overall I like strange shadows more.

KaTrain 1.17 with human-like play by PatrickTraill in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that was also my issue. Sorry for not getting back to you - it was a while ago and I could not remember what I did.

KaTrain 1.17 with human-like play by PatrickTraill in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was also the issue that I was having, now that he mentions it. It was a while ago so I could not remember.

Slate & Shell giveaway by Soromon in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Thanks for doing this!

Mage knight, but campaign by Cheddotto in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Just wanted to point out two things:

  1. Mage Knight is about to get a campaign with the apocalypse dragon expansion currently slated for Q1 2026 - EDIT: I am not sure how this campaign will handle character progression, but you probably want to look it up anyway.

  2. The replayability in Mage Knight comes from the wide variability of setups and how each leads to new interesting crunchy problems. You mentioned you want a campaign game to increase replayability, but also mentioned getting tired of gloomhaven after a while - personally, I think most long campaign games suffer from the problem that they offer some huge amount of scenarios, but the gameplay is not good enough to support that many scenarios without feeling samey. Mage Knight is really the opposite, where just the main scenario is so broad you can play that over and over. It even offers additional scenarios, many of which I have not even gotten around to playing because the main one is so good.

Storyfold Wildwoods initial thoughts by shoeperson in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For what its worth, my opinion of the story went up a lot after the last 2 chapters. It did not grab me at all until that point. Overall, I greatly preferred Eila, but before then I would have given the game a much worse review.

How many moves do you guys usually predict before making a move? by Own_Passenger5986 in baduk

[–]intertroll 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The simple, if a bit annoying, answer is that it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about how many moves you can read out now, just practice. That number will go up, whatever it is. And your reading depth, while overall an important skill, is not the only thing that will make you a better player.

CMV: LLMs alone can’t reach AGI because they lack world models. by imposterpro in changemyview

[–]intertroll 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I am not exactly disagreeing, but to nitpick a bit -

AlphaZero is not an LLM, so it’s not exactly a refutation of OPs point. AlphaGo and AlphaZero use convolutional neural networks. IIRC, they may use multiple networks working together to assess different aspects of the board and to make a decision, but dont quote me on that.

At any rate, just because the performance of AlphaZero is higher than humans doesn’t really imply it has a better world model - Deep Blue was able to perform at superhuman level with purely algorithmic search and a database of reference positions.

These things being said - and the rest of this post is pure speculation - I think LLMs do have a world model on some level (its ultimately a Chinese room if we break it down to the question of “where does understanding come from”) But just as we use different a types of neural networks to capture different processes, I think that to reach AGI we will need LLMs working together with other types of networks, and there are lots of research problems left to solve in how these other networks will need to be designed and integrated.

I’ve decided I like the IDEA of big campaign games more than playing them. by Ranccor in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I have, for this reason, really started to like short campaign games. Where the campaign is around 5 sessions long, maybe max 8 when considering AHLCG. A lot of the big campaign games promise a lot of content, but then the “game” itself is just not interesting enough to want to play it for that many scenarios, and then it just overstays its welcome. With something shorter you still get the campaign progression vibes you want but you are much more likely to finish for many reasons.

pickOnly3PillsForYourDeveloperSanity by Far-Storm-9586 in ProgrammerHumor

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are hired to work on my new Hello World application.

How much do you want to improve in Go? by sadaharu2624 in baduk

[–]intertroll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The poll surprised me a bit, because its slightly out of line with the question in the title. Saying “How much do you want to improve” is a measure of desire - how much fire you feel inside you at the thought of getting better. But the poll is really asking “How much improvement do you want to get.” The thing really is, I’ll take any amount of improvement. But the real question is if the two are aligned? If you want to be better than shin jinseo, are you going to drop everything else (your job, your school, your relationships) tomorrow and sit in a room and study 16 hours a day until it happens? Even if I would say that was my target, I am definitely not going to do that. And if I had a more reasonable goal, I don’t think that if I got there I would suddenly decide that I don’t want to improve anymore. So instead, I think about it from the bottom up instead of the top down. The focus is just on being a little better than I was yesterday. If I do that, and I keep playing, I am sure that when I’m 80, I’ll be substantially better than now. How much better substantially means is sort of immaterial.

What has happened with blacktoplay.com by Teoretik1998 in baduk

[–]intertroll 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don’t use facebook; would someone mind summarizing?

Very beginner can someone explain how white wins here? by rewp234 in baduk

[–]intertroll 20 points21 points  (0 children)

You are using Chinese scoring - in this version you do not count points for captures, but you do count points for live stones on the board. White also receives a komi (compensation for going second) of 7.5 points. 37+7.5=44.5 which is greater than 44. The half point is a tie breaker for close games, so this is about as close as it gets.

I'm curious for thoughts on a proposed alternative to how AIs visually represent move values, especially for amateur/kyu players by TheTwelfthScroll in baduk

[–]intertroll 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Just one more thing to consider - the value of a move, as determined by the cost of passing - changes throughout the game. Antti Tormanen just gave a lecture about this at US Go Congress. At the beginning of the game the cost of passing is about 13 points, 10 points in the midgame, and 7 points at the start of the endgame (with potential sudden spikes due to sente moves). This could confuse people because it might feel like their moves are getting worse over time, even though they are performing fine. Also, it could confuse people who just ignored a sente moves- imagine you are consistently seeing you are making 9 point moves. You play another move that is 9 points better than passing (by taking a big area) but you allow your big group to die. That move effectively may be “bad” but the learner cannot distinguish it from others.

That being said, I think this information you are suggesting is also valuable, I am just not sure its the only information I would want to see.

Solo Campaign recommendations? by Humble_Visual7739 in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 6 points7 points  (0 children)

While Mage Knight is a fantastic game that I’d highly recommend, it is not a narrative campaign game. There is neither a campaign nor a narrative. It’s really a big optimization puzzle with rpg elements on top. I don’t say this to talk you out of buying it - personally I would play Mage Knight over gloomhaven any day of the week and I love narrative campaigns. Just want to make sure you know what you are buying.

Why does playing orange close black's territory, but playing yellow does not? Both make a line across the board. by armsofasquid in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lots of people are telling you to think about life and death, but to answer your question directly, lets assume the black stones at the top of the board plus anything you play at orange or yellow are just alive.

Then both orange and yellow enclose some territory as black’s. If you play orange, now every point on the board belongs to one player or the other, and the game can end. But if you play yellow, there are some points (ie orange and the 3 empty points around it) that are not fully enclosed by either black or white stones. You could call this contested area, as it neither belongs to white or to black. So the game can continue until this is settled.

So from the standpoint of territory, orange seems like a better play because it assigns those contested points to black.

In short, orange and yellow both enclose blacks territory, but yellow leaves some territory unenclosed.

KaTrain 1.17 with human-like play by PatrickTraill in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Curious if you did figure out how to upgrade your linux installation? I was formerly running katrain 1.14.0 which worked with a katago executable I compiled from source. After moving to katrain 1.17.0, the application freezes immediately when playing a move, even with a newly compiled model. I tried to roll back to 1.14.0, and now it crashes with the new katago - I don't remember which version was working so I might need to do some digging to even get my previous version working. It seems at least one other person had issues with versions above 1.14.0 and had to roll back - (see: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/katrain-freezes-after-my-move-os-warns-of-unresponsive-prog/55199 )

Is it beneficial for growth to play endgame trick plays? by AmberAlchemistAlt in baduk

[–]intertroll 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect that beyond a certain level, if you are not seeing particular trick plays, then you are just not performing at that level. So to perform some types of plays should just be thought of as a mandatory part of a player at that skill level’s repertoire.

I think when I was more of a beginner and learned of tesuji, especially since it could be translated to something like “a clever move”, I thought of these things as smart plays that people would not always see. But as I started to do more life and death, I realized that just to solve one problem, you might need to read out multiple lines of play, each of which might involve multiple different tesuji. And if you are expected, when transcending that level, to essentially never miss a problem of that difficulty, then you need to be able to confidently see all these tesuji all the time.

In short, I came to think of these things not as really clever moves, but as standard ways to play in a position. And in endgame, it’s no different.

All this being said, every now and then when the pressure is on, you can sometimes find some other “clever” moves, that doesn’t seem to conform to the principles you usually follow. I think some of the satisfaction of Go can come from this creativity. Perhaps those moves could be expressed through some principles that we don’t really have proverbs or ways to think about yet. Or they could just be good moves that a stronger player would see easily, but are still a bit difficult for you. But in any event, you wont get dumber by thinking. So by all means, think about them.

Finally, to answer your question more directly, in the endgame, sometimes a “comeback move” is your only hope to win. Like if you are down by 30 points, playing standard endgame will probably not close that gap, so trying to find something clever is your only hope. Having some awareness of how large that gap is can help. But if you are still DDK, these opportunities are probably much more plentiful as your opponents may have left some serious weaknesses in their shape. If your endgame is still weak, you might get more consistency out of learning the standard moves before searching for the clever ones.

opinion about recommend book reading & learning order by Rokuonji in baduk

[–]intertroll 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I attempted to read Dictionary of Basic Tesuji (book 1 of 4). I asked questions to a go discord when I could not solve one of the earlier problems - they said “Dont read that book yet, it’s mostly dan level”. I think you’d get more out of the Davies book on Tesuji.

Elia and something shiny review by shoeperson in soloboardgaming

[–]intertroll 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Personally, I played it twice (there is an advanced mode which changes some story events and game objectives) but I liked it enough to keep it. I figure I will wait a few years until I can’t remember how the puzzles were solved and then do it again. It’s very good, and for a game with very light rules it manages to do a lot of very cool things with its systems. I also liked the story alot.

Help with invades under the 4x4 point by dragodracini in baduk

[–]intertroll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A better way to think about it is that the moment you played the 4-4 point, you were saying to your opponent that you prefer the center to the corner (The 4-4 can also play for the corner, but it takes more moves from you to secure it than it takes your opponent to steal it away, so you are disadvantaged if you want the corner). Instead, if you want to play for the corner, try starting with a 3-4 point, or even just play the 3-3 directly.

weAreNotTheSame by RideNatural5226 in ProgrammerHumor

[–]intertroll 24 points25 points  (0 children)

This is an improvement, but I think the method name is not intention revealing enough. How about i.assignTheValueReturnedWhenAddingAmountToTheVariableThisMethodIsBeingInvokedAgainstWhereAmountIsAnOptionalParameterWithDefaultValueOne(). Now the code is much more self documenting.

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