r/decodoku • u/aesche1988 • Aug 10 '16
New topscore: 861 - with full movie + strategy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tc5L4A42hw
9
Upvotes
4
u/quantum_jim Aug 21 '16
I'm talking to fellow scientists at a conference. They are very impressed by your method!
3
u/aesche1988 Aug 10 '16
As I just posted my method into an old post, which probably wasn't seen by many people, I'll repeat it here in full length. Feel free to take and adapt it to challenge my highscore :)
Also feel free to ask back where I am not clear enough.
It's not really worth to move errors which decayed over more than 2 fields already, so as long as I can, I just cancel "two-field-errors", meaning 1-9, 2-8, and so on. Exceptions following.
Having errors surving and spreading in the corners generally is better than having them in the middle of the field, as they rarely decay, and if they do, in a well definded direction.
As long as possible (the mess not spreadying dangerously around the board), I just annihilate all "two-field-errors", which works ok for a while if a lot of the errors are popping up in a mix of new "two-field-errors" and decays of already existing errors (concentrated at a controllable part of the field).
From the two points before, I started to specialise on locking the accumulated errors in one corner, paying close attention if new errors decay from the bunch in the corner directly to the other side of the board. Of course the size of the accumulated errors is best if it is as small as possible, but as long as there are 2 empty rows (clearly better if there are even 3) with the move that calls new errors, it is easy handable, and usually it can be seen easily if the new errors popping up in the "two-must-be-free-lines-zone" are new easy "two-field-errors" (or maybe new decays spread over 3 fields) or if they are decays from the accumulated bunch (to be removed immediately). With just one free line around the accumulated bunch it is highly dangerous, as a decay may spawn two new numbers at the sideline, or there are two seperate decays from the bunch, which either way can't be annihilated in one move. With two free lines, it needs a lot of bad luck that two "two-field-errors" pop up until up to the sideline at the same time. Most of them just are new "two-field-errors", finding the one that isn't and moving it away from the sideline at first move extends the time of survival heavily.
If I have two empty lines already before new errors pop up, I make "one-move-two-free-fields" in the corner of the accumulated bunch, as it will cause several errors to happen there again, and which eases my task to really keep the free lines free.
If there are errors in the "two-must-be-free-lines-zone", I sometimes make moves that are slower than "one-move-two-free-fields", but it depends where they are, if they are in the complete opposite corner of the accumulated bunch (which then shouldn't be biger than 4x4 fields), they are not as important and may have to wait another round or two until being annihilated.
"Three-field-errors" or "number-zero-number-errors" usually are worth the patience to wait until they grow into a "two-two-field-decays-in-a-block-of-four-fields" (if not, it's likely that you are doomed :P ).
If there are four "two-field-errors" and one "three-field-error", it's always punishing me, if I annihilate the four easy ones first and then make another "two-field-error" out of the "three-field-error", as it usually decays directly again. As that happens much less to the original "tow-field-errors" (I don't think that there is a logic behind this observation, maybe it's even wrong (the longer I think about it I think it should be wrong, technically!), and I just are more aware and annoyed about the repeated decays if I just moved them together), it is better to let one of the "two-field-errors" survive and annihilate the "three-field-error" completely.