More or Less? Two Approaches to Evolving Game-Playing Strategies

Abstract

We present two opposing approaches to the evolution ofgame strategies, one wherein a minimal amount of domainexpertise is injected into the process, the otherinfusing the evolutionary setup with expertise in theform of domain heuristics. We show that the firstapproach works well for several popular board games,while the second produces top-notch solvers for thehard game of FreeCell.