I'm having trouble beating an AI in Isolation game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_(board_game) with 3 queens on a 7x7 board. I tried applying alpha beta iteration with a scoring function on the state. I tried 3 scoring functions:
- (0.75/# moves taken) * number of legal moves - (# moves taken/0.75) * number of opponent legal moves
- number of legal moves - 3 * number of opponent legal moves
- 3 * number of legal moves - number of opponent legal moves
The first is an annealed aggressive strategy so the agent gets more aggressive as the game goes longer. The 2nd is a pure aggression strat and the last is a pure defensive strat. None of them consistently beat standard alpha beta iteration with the state scoring function: number of legal moves - number of opponent legal moves. They all broke roughly even.
Any suggestions of scoring state functions or search algorithms are appreciated. The search has a limit of 6000 seconds per turn though.