Stratego

Anyone play this before? Not all that popular over here in America as far as I know,  not sure if that is the case elsewhere. I played a bit in my youth but started again recently after I found out a friend of mine was trying to design an AI for the game.

There are two apps of this game I have from the Google Play store. The first called "Strategy" has only one difficulty setting that is less than impressive. Playing almost at random yields about an 80% win rate and even the most modest amount of effort causes the AI to immediately implode. I keep it installed anyway though because of its great UI making it the superior option for planning initial setups and pass-and-play.

The second is called "Heroic Battle" and has several difficulty settings and aggressiveness settings. Playing the hardest difficulty I lose about 50% of the time even if I put in a moderate amount of effort. Not that great either considering I am a beginner myself, but I have never adjusted the aggressiveness. Might be more challenging if I make it more or less likely to take risks (probably will make it less, poor bastard hit my bomb with his general last time I played. Oof).

When I really want a challenge though I play against the "Master of the Flag" browser-based Stratego AI. That one makes me really think through every move and agonize over my strategy in detail and still beats me probably about 95% of the time (even those few wins I do get on MotF often feel like they were lucky). Not sure how it would compare to a more skillful human player but it would certainly crush any other AI I have played against.

If anyone here has played please post some tips. I have a few favorite opening setups, some newly made by me and some partly borrowed from other people. If it turns out there are actually some Stratego fans here on DART I may post them.

I don't know any sites to play against other people but if anyone here does let me know.

I think I 'still have the 'physical board game version.

Haven't played in years.

I 'think one strategy my family would use, would be to put all out mines in one location in the back, to make it 'seem like they were protecting the flag, but the flag would 'really be somewhere else.

Had a physical board as a kid. I remember we lost or broke a few pieces at some point, which is a lot harder to compensate for in Stratego than say chess or checkers.

I used to play this with my dad, it's a good game. Thanks for bringing it up, I'll try to play it again soon 

My brothers and I played this a lot as kids.  One red scout had a broken foot wrapped in Scotch tape- so red was considered the harder position.

Guessing that always became one of the early sacrificial scouts lol. Certainly not ideal even then I admit, I prefer to sac Sergeants and Lieutenants at the start and save my scouts for the mid and end game.

Interesting idea for a handicap though. reveal one or more pieces of the stronger player. In chess they will often remove a pawn or a piece as a handicap, which always struck me as rather crude (not that I have much in the way of better ideas).

After getting back into it I have also discovered the concept of the inverted ranking system. In short, some versions have the Marshal as 10, General as 9, etc. but others had the Marshal as 1, General as 2, and so on. How do you guys remember playing it? I always played the version where higher ranks were represented as higher numbers myself.

I remember the higher ranks being higher numbers

Higher numbers represented those with more power, in the board game we had.

At first I thought you meant invert the 'power and numbers of the ranks.

Which could be fun, if you gave the unit's special abilities.

For chess, do a handicap, of you can't move your king.

wow.  Opposite.  When we played scouts were 9, bombs 8, sergeants 7, etc  2 was general, 1 was Field Marshall- lower numbers killed higher numbers except for bombs.  I think engineers were 6.

Yes, I had only heard of that way of playing recently. Not totally opposite though, usually miners/engineers in the lower-rank-lower-number system are 3, which would be the equivalent to your 8. Bombs are just labeled as B.

B
Bomb
6
Immovable; is captured by Miner
10/1
Marshal
1
Can be captured by the Spy if the Spy attacks first.
9/2
General
1

8/3
Colonel
2

7/4
Major
3

6/5
Captain
4

5/6
Lieutenant
4

4/7
Sergeant
4

3/8
Miner
5
Can defuse (i. e. capture) bombs
2/9
Scout
8
moves any distance in a horizontal or vertical straight line, without leaping over pieces/lakes
1/S
Spy
1
Defeats the Marshal, but only if the Spy makes the attack
F
Flag
1
Immovable; capturing the opponent's Flag wins the game

Looks like bombs were always B.  Change was made in 2000

Idk why but for some reason the fact that you linked to the Wikipedia page for each rank cracks me up.

actually, I just cut&paste from wikipedia and didn't bother cleaning up the links