Board Game Arena

I just played an excellent player of Hive. However, also, one who I believe has failed the turing test... Perhaps they are excellent but terminally shy and not English-speaking, and perhaps they really do have time enough to rack up nearly 800 games in under 45 days, however I don't think so. If someone wishes to examine the footage of TheSwarm playing Hive (*only* Hive!) - perhaps beginning with my game which includes a rather one-sided conversation - I would be delighted to hear a second opinion!

Incidentally, I think that people should be encouraged to build bots. It is a brilliant endeavour. But perhaps it should also be a transparent and opt-in. And, while there will always be people who wish to go the whole hog and attempt, covertly, to simulate human players, I think that the majority who are keen to test their programming prowess would welcome a separate proving ground.

A few comments:
1) There is no AI that I am currently aware of that plays Hive at a high enough level to win consistently.
2) I replayed your game and did not see anything out of the ordinary, just very good play on his part.
3) I did not see the comments. Are they normally displayed in game review?
4) Twenty games a day is not totally out of the bounds of reality, for a real Hive fanatic.
5) If TheSwarm reads this, please let us know who you are... we would love for you to play in the 2021 Hive Online World Championship!

ringersoll wrote: ↑23 March 2021, 16:52 3) I did not see the comments. Are they normally displayed in game review?

Table chat between players is indeed not visible in the replay (by design).

As I understand it, OP refers to their opponent not answering their attempt at amiable chat. This can be a matter of personnality, or in that case, a much more probable explanation is the following: the Android Hive application is connected to BGA to allow players on this app to enjoy online play. This app is not connected only to the game though, not to the chat system. Thus, the app players do not see messages and have no way to answer them. I would say it's probably the case here.

Info about this app is available here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13384

Thanks for the thoughtful replies and for taking the time to look at the replay.

Een wrote: ↑23 March 2021, 17:08Table chat between players is indeed not visible in the replay (by design).

Ah, yes, you cannot see the chat. I suppose that's a sensible feature. Also, I realise you can also not easily see the timing of moves, although they are recorded in the text below. Part of my concern was that there was never any pause for thought, although this is not necessarily unexpected when a veteran player plays a relative novice.

Een wrote: ↑23 March 2021, 17:08As I understand it, OP refers to their opponent not answering their attempt at amiable chat. This can be a matter of personnality, or in that case, a much more probable explanation is the following: the Android Hive application is connected to BGA to allow players on this app to enjoy online play. This app is not connected only to the game though, not to the chat system. Thus, the app players do not see messages and have no way to answer them. I would say it's probably the case here.

Oh! I see. I did notice that the "online" indicator was a round green dot rather than a green mobile phone icon which I sometimes see. Does the dot imply web interface? Of course, they could still be using the web interface over the phone, which would make chat inconvenient.

Amusingly, I watched another game of TheSwarm, from today, which strongly suggests that it is a human... At the end of this game he appears to perform a "victory dance" just before making the final move .

At BoardSpace... that victory dance would end in a draw.
There, just like in chess, there is a three repetitions = draw rule.

Een wrote: ↑23 March 2021, 17:08 As I understand it, OP refers to their opponent not answering their attempt at amiable chat. This can be a matter of personnality, or in that case, a much more probable explanation is the following: the Android Hive application is connected to BGA to allow players on this app to enjoy online play. This app is not connected only to the game though, not to the chat system. Thus, the app players do not see messages and have no way to answer them. I would say it's probably the case here.

Info about this app is available here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13384

I use this app to play and chat works just fine with it.

Peter_ wrote: ↑26 March 2021, 12:15 I use this app to play and chat works just fine with it.

Oh I didn't know chat had been integrated now. Good to know!

Hopkins wrote: ↑23 March 2021, 00:58 I just played an excellent player of Hive. However, also, one who I believe has failed the turing test... Perhaps they are excellent but terminally shy and not English-speaking, and perhaps they really do have time enough to rack up nearly 800 games in under 45 days, however I don't think so. If someone wishes to examine the footage of TheSwarm playing Hive (*only* Hive!) - perhaps beginning with my game which includes a rather one-sided conversation - I would be delighted to hear a second opinion!

Incidentally, I think that people should be encouraged to build bots. It is a brilliant endeavour. But perhaps it should also be a transparent and opt-in. And, while there will always be people who wish to go the whole hog and attempt, covertly, to simulate human players, I think that the majority who are keen to test their programming prowess would welcome a separate proving ground.

Whilst there was no definite reason to believe an AI opponent here, I actually agree regarding bots.

I think that it would be great if BGA could allow some interested coders to make simple AI opponents/partners. This is available on Boardspace and being able to play with bots means that people stay interested in less-popular games and might eventually find human opponents.

Maybe there could even be an annual AI contest for high-profile games, maybe even sponsored by the publisher. It would be interesting to see how the AI develops, and try to challenge the bots as a human, just to gauge our ability against them.

Stuff by Bez wrote: ↑01 January 2023, 18:00Maybe there could even be an annual AI contest for high-profile games, maybe even sponsored by the publisher. It would be interesting to see how the AI develops, and try to challenge the bots as a human, just to gauge our ability against them.

I think that sounds fantastic. It might even be enough to get me back into recreational coding! I suppose all you'd need would be API access for playing the game - then you could host an AI opponent somewhere and it could interact with BGA. Depending on how BGA coding tends to work, retrofitting this might be time consuming for old games, but if new games are developed with this in mind then it shouldn't add much overhead.

Join the hive discord server and there is active discussion about creating new bots. Recently there is a new bot called Nokamute, which people have estimated is probably around 400-500 BGA elo.

https://discord.gg/8RS7j2gD