Found this version of Tic Tac Toe which is at least a little bit more challenging. Just playing the AI for now but eventually I will be brave enough to take on other humans…
Moving to the Game Room.
I’ve been here 21 years and I forgot about that forum. Age has finally overtaken memory.
This is a wonderful fine! Thank you.
There are actually two copies of this on Kongregate, “Ultimate Tic Tac Toe” and “Strategic Tic Tac Toe” (animations, background music).
I’ve played a bunch of games just for fun. It’s intuitive enough that it works for that purpose. I definitely would never attempt this with any level of seriousness. From what I’ve seen, you have to be super careful in where you send your opponent, and even if you go in with a sound strategy, the way the board fills out can royally shaft you at any time (the primary thing about Othello that drove me absolutely bonkers).
As far as AI goes, my expectation is that it will be completely solved without anyone ever being able to give a clear explanation as to what the solution is. It’s probably going to take longer than Connect Four.
Eh, I wouldn’t be surprised if some human were able to come up with a provably-solved strategy, and it’s simple enough that, with a bit of cleverness, it could probably be solved exhaustively by a NS computer (Natural Stupidity, as opposed to AI).
If anyone remembers what “Zillions of Games” was, I once wrote an engine to play the game. However, for whatever reason, the engine didn’t play the game very well.
This reminds me of the time Games Magazine made a game with these rules (I think it was called “Tic Tac Ten”) as one of its Fake Ads, unaware that years earlier, someone had made a real version (“Tic Tac Toe Times 10”).