Implementation of a traditional Ethiopian/African game in Python. The game playing agent determines the next move in Mancala/Gebeta through random generation, minimax, and alpha beta pruning.
Gebeta is one of the oldest and a subset of the family board games also known as mancala games. It is a traditional mancala game played by the people living along the border of Ethiopia and Sudan.
Generally, the mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces. Versions of the game date back to the 7th century and evidence suggests the game existed in Ancient Egypt. It is among the oldest known games to still be widely played today.
In the board, player 1 owns the bottom row of stones and player 2 owns the top row. There are also two special pits on the board, called Mancalas or Banks, in which each player accumulates his or her captured stones (player 1's Mancala is on the right and player 2's Mancala is on the left).
Most mancala games share a common general gameplay. Players begin by placing a certain number of seeds, prescribed for the particular game, in each of the pits on the game board. A player may count their stones to plot the game. A turn consists of removing all seeds from a pit, "sowing" the seeds (placing one in each of the following pits in sequence) and capturing based on the state of the board. The object of the game is to plant the most seeds in the bank. This leads to the English phrase "count and capture" sometimes used to describe the gameplay. Although the details differ greatly, this general sequence applies to all games.
- Tigist Wondimneh - UGR/2532/12
- Abdulkarim Getachew - UGR/7992/12
- Rediet Ferew - UGR/1415/12
For more information about the game: