Great idea! I remember watching a youtube video about this game a few years ago, but this was the first time I ever played it. I felt the AI was a bit too passive - it had many opportunities to capture me but usually chose to develop its pieces instead.
Viewing post in The ancient game of Ur jam comments
Thanks. Not sure if we watched the same video but my recommendation list popped up this “Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I (it’s really enjoyable to watch) which definitely influenced our choice to implement this ancient game (instead of others)
Regarding the AI - they all have a specific trait they stick to (rushing a single chip forward, bringing as much chips on the field as possible, etc) so they are pretty “dumb” in that regard but developing a proper challenging AI was planned but unfortunately wasn’t ready in time.
But AI is a thing we want to tinker with in the future. We’ve participated in BattleSnake a couple of times and we’re thinking about making something similar for Ur as well (so AI vs AI on the Ur ruleset) because it actually felt like a game were developing a good AI would be fun.