
  Morris
 --------
  A computer implementation of Nine Men's Morris and its variants.

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OVERVIEW

  Morris is an implementation of the board game "Nine Men's Morris".
  Sometimes simply called Mills, Morris, Merrills, or Mühle in German.
  The implementation supports not only the standard game, but also
  several rule-variants and different boards.

  Furthermore, the game supports:
  -- a strong computer AI player
  -- advanced AI controls to tweak AI playing style
  -- giving hints for good moves
  -- showing the principal variation
  -- move takeback (undo and redo)
  -- internationalization
  -- many board and rule variations 
  -- configurable display


AI ALGORITHM

  The AI algorithm is a standard alpha-beta search in a NegaMax
  implementation using iterative deepening. It employs a
  transposition table to quickly find previously computed positions.

  A special feature is the automatic learning capability: whenever
  the computer wins or loses a game, it will prefer to obtain or
  avoid similar situations in the future. This results in a better
  long-term motivation, since the computer will not make the same
  mistake twice and the gameplay will be more randomized.

  The evaluation function consists of four parts:
  - material: the number of pieces each player has left
  - freedom: the number of possible moves a player can conduct
  - mills: the number of closed mills
  - experience: the learning-bias from previous games

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AUTHOR & CREDITS

  Dirk Farin   - main author
  Ryan Dibble  - provided many features to GNMM, which was the
                 predecessor program of Morris

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COPYRIGHT

  Morris
  Copyright (C) 2009 Dirk Farin <dirk.farin@gmail.com>

  Morris is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


  Send inquiries, comments, bug reports, suggestions, patches, etc. to:

      Dirk Farin <dirk.farin@gmail.com>

  See also the Morris home page on the web:

      https://nine-mens-morris.net/
