There's a board game called Acquire that is easy to play and is for 3-6 players. It was invented in 1962 by Sid Sackson and is a classic; I first played it in 1987 and have owned a set since then. It's also about buying shares but in hotel chains that you build up by playing tiles on a board, the larger the chain the more the shares cost. When two or more hotels chains merge, the largest takes over the smallest, pays dividends to the two player(s) holding the most shares.
You can read about the game including the rules. This weekly challenge is to write a bot to play the game.
- Download text summary rules.
Acquire is a sequential game meaning player A moves then player B then C etc and back to A. Each turn your bot must play one of the 6 tiles that it has. These are drawn randomly to start with and one is replaced each turn. Your must decide which tile to place on the 12 x 9 board.
Your tile can be placed
- By itself i.e it's An orphan (ie not touching any other tile horizontally or vertically.
- Next to another orphan tile thus forming a new hotel chain.
- Next to an existing chain.
There's a photo gallery showing some of these situations.
When you start a chain, you get a free share. There are seven hotel chains in three tiers of value (cheap, middle and expensive). The second part of the turn is buying shares. Your bot can buy 1-3 shares in any chains that are in play. The last part of the turn is to draw a new tile.
That's all there is to it: just Place a tile then buy 0-3 shares. Hotel chains grow when players place a tile next to an existing chain tile horizontally or vertically or when two or more chains merge because a tile was played that linked them. When that happens, the largest takes over the smallest and pays a bonus to the two players holding the most shares in the chain that was taken over. All share holders in the chain can then decide to
- Sell their shares.
- Hold on to them (they are worthless until that hotel chain is started again).
- Swap the old shares 2:1 for new. For every two cards you own in the chain you can swap for one in the new chain.
Once a chain has 11 tiles in it, it is safe and cannot be taken over.
When all chains are safe or one reaches 41 in size, the game finishes. All shares are then cashed in and the two bonuses paid out to stock holders and all shares sold to determine the final cash position.
The Weekly Challenge
This will kick off in July 2011. You will be able to download the sample bots for all three languages and then create your own using the skeleton bots provided below.
- Download C, C++ and C# Source code. Not the final version.
- How to Write an Acquire Bot - Details how to write a bot.
- Strategy Tips for Acquire.
Photo above used under Creative Commons License from Flickr.com, user Heath_bar. Photos in gallery taken by David Bolton.
