Constructive planning

The technique

Build something on the board that pays nothing now and a lot a few moves later, and use the rise as the trigger.

Approaches using this technique

6 approaches, featured pages first. Each card is one theory of how to choose a column and what happened when it was tried.

Constructive planningfeatured

Constructive spectrum

Plans a five-drop cycle toward a target board with spread-out heights, reachable covered discs, and shared triggers. It clearly beat the one-move-ahead reference.

completedrecorded

Constructive planningfeatured

Viability controller

Classifies each move as charge, dig, release, repair, or emergency, then picks the best move of that kind. It scored well below the one-move-ahead reference.

rejectedrecorded

Constructive planning

Cycle abstraction

Choose one of five plans for the whole five-drop cycle, then let a model decide which plan fits the board.

rejected

Constructive planning

Rise-boundary option QD

A bounded prototype commits to a plan for a five-drop cycle and keeps the best plan of each behavioural type. It has never played a game.

Constructive planning

Stacking a column for a later chain

Reward the search for building columns that are one quiet drop away from collapsing in several waves, and see whether deliberately stored energy makes games longer.

rejectedrecorded

Constructive planning

Vertical reservoir

Defines a promising vertical stack, tunes those preferences on complete games, and finishes behind the one-move reference.

rejectedrecorded

Agent contextApproach directories in this group, by family

constructive-reservoir

fair-expectimax

approaches/fair-expectimax/vertical-ladder

heuristic-search

approaches/heuristic-search/cycle-abstraction