By Andreas Brytting and Johan Nygren
Abstract
Hive is a board game for two players in which the players uses several kinds of pieces represented by different bug species to encircle the opposing players Queen Bee. There are many strategies focusing on different points of the game. To win, a good strategy is needed and in order to develop a good strategy, a wide understanding of the game is required. This project explores the components involved in Hive strategy and resulted in a comparison of an offensive and a defensive strategy by creating an AI and letting it play the game against itself using the two strategies with small modifications. Due to the nature of the game and limitations in the AI, the majority of the games played resulted in a draw. Out of 48 games played, the defensive strategy won four and the offensive only one. The results show that the defensive strategy developed for this project is superior to the offensive one. This also shows that to break a defensive strategy such as circling, it is required to plan many moves ahead.