WIP (Est. Completion Feb 2023)

Jackaroo is a board game in popular in the Arabian regions. It its essentially a spinoff of Aggravation and Ludo.

Rules:

Game:

The game starts with an empty board, a shuffled deck (52 cards) and 4 players. Each player places 4 marbles in jail. Deal cards (4 per player, 5 on last round) and play turns counterclockwise.

Specials

• (1 / Ace) Three options: Free one marble from jail or move 1 or 11 steps
• (4) Move backwards 4 steps
• (5) Move any marble on the board 5 steps (Excludes marbles other than your own in their home bases)
• (7) Split 7 steps over two of your own marbles. (Includes 7-0 and 0-7)
• (10) Next player discards a card of your choice (Without you looking at the cards) or move ten spaces
• (11) Swap with any other marble on the board. (Excludes own marbles and marbles in their home base)
• (13) Free one marble from jail or move your marble 13 steps and eat all the marbles in path.

Regulars

• (2) Move 2 steps
• (3) Move 3 steps
• (6) Move 6 steps
• (8) Move 8 steps
• (9) Move 9 steps
• (12) Move 12 steps

Problem Definition

There are many algorithms and approaches to design intelligent agents to play games. In an attempt to narrow the options, Jackaroo is defined as a Partially Observable Stochastic Game (PSOG) with properties:

• Partially observable (Can’t see other agent’s cards)
• Multi-Agent (Co-op AND Competitive) (2v2)
• Stochastic (Card draw)
• Static Environment (Nothing changes while agent is deciding)
• Discrete states (Board has fixed configurations)
• Horizon - Unsure..

Given that this is multi-agent problem, %%%