[spywaregorilla]

The Goat AI appears to do the same, and seems very hard to defeat. What's the counterplay?

edit: I'm not sure the game is coded correctly. It seems like once a tiger moves from A to B, it can never move from B to A. Including cases where the tiger jumps A to C, it cannot jump back from C to A if the goat places another one in B... That feels very unintuitive and untrackable in a real world game.

[iamsuman]

There are times where the game could fall into a repetitive cycle of positions; especially goats may use this resort to defend themselves from being captured. In order to avoid this kind of situation, that rule was established.

[spywaregorilla]

Well it's not my game, but this does not sound correct to me. The game by definition cannot get into a cycle of positions until all the goats are placed. This seems like it ought to be a restriction only on moving goats, and only that the goat player should not be allowed to move the last moved goat to it's original spot.

As it stands now, a tiger player cannot move a tiger to it's previous spot from several turns prior, including capturing over the same space. Which means that even if the goat player loses a goat, they can put a goat back in the same space and it'll now be safe (vs. the tiger that just captured it at least). I'm not convinced it is possible to win against a competent goat player.

[iamsuman]

Your arguments are also valid. I believe there should be an option to choose whether this restriction is applied or not, which would provide players with greater flexibility.