Post by rubyton in Tic-Tac-What? comments

Viewing post in Tic-Tac-What? comments

Interesting concept. I think the game is best played in 3x3, but with alternate rule that player 1 must start with circle and player 2 should be able to use any shape from the start.

For 4x4, when played defensively, neither player can win.

EDIT:

By defensive I mean attempting to remove opponent's pieces.

I just played several more rounds. When played correctly, Player 1 is guaranteed to win on 3x3 even when all pieces are allowed from the start for player 2. Player 2 simply cannot "defend" against a center circle or a corner circle.

BlueEagle421107 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks! I played a lot with my friends on a 4x4 board and I never encountered a situation when no one could win. I know it's possible, but it seems like it's quite rare

Edit: I was thinking of adding something similar to 50 move rule in chess to counter it

rubyton106 days ago

By defensive, I mean always trying to block the opponent from winning - by attacking opponent pieces every turn. Each placement we can remove up to 4 "hp", but only add 1-2 "hp". So if both sides focus on removing opponent pieces, we will easily end up with stalemate due to having only 1 piece on board.

Another balancing idea is that we can give +1 hp to all pieces, and have all the attacks evaluated at once after player 2's move. This way player 2 gets more freedom to move "right next" to player 1, and do kamikaze attacks when needed.

itch.io

Viewing post in Tic-Tac-What? comments