Kalaha (2 players, human or AI)

System Requirements:

• Java 13
• A desire to play!

Installation:

1. Compile the project source code (we used Java version 13).
2. Run Main in Application.java
3. Follow printed-out game instructions to decide on which players are human, which are AI, and how many seeds are in each starting house (4+). Four seeds in each house is the traditional method of play.
4. If AI players are selected, write a single search time for the AI in milliseconds (0+). A higher value increases the performance of the AI. A value of 50 is a good default.

Rules:

• The goal of this two-player game is to collect more seeds in our store than our opponent.
• Player sides are divided such that Index 0 (left end) is the store of player 2, Index 7 (right end) is the store of player 1,
• Index 1-6 (bottom) are the houses of player 1, Index 8-13 (top) are the houses of player 2.
• At the start of a player's turn, the player chooses a non-empty house on their own side, takes all the seeds from the house, moves in the direction of play (counterclockwise), and drops them one by one into the subsequent houses and into their own store. Only when a player completes a turn by placing the last seed of the initially selected house in their own store may they take an extra turn.

Strategy: Clever players can take advantage of the extra turns mechanic granted by finishing their turns in their stores and —depending on the configuration of the board— can clear the board in a single turn. For example, the longest possible chain on a standard Kalaha board of six pits lasts for seventeen moves where the configuration is [5,4,2,3,1,1]. It can be shown that, for all size boards, there exists one and only one pattern.

Project Members:

• Kasper Jørgensen
• Peter Revsbech
• Tobias van Deurs Lundsgaard
• Connor Wall