Trying it Out - PracticesRecursion is a way to solve a problem by...reducing it to the same problem. What? It may be counterintuitive, but many turn-based games (including chess) use exactly this technique to make a computer player "think." Mohamed Saad explains the concept, along with when (and when not) to use recursion in your programming. Check out the Connect4 example!
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Whew, and that's it. Now we have a nice Connect 4 AI engine that can actually look several moves ahead, thanks to recursion. For example, if we try the engine on this position:
Fig 4. The AI (red player), will know how to win in this situation If the program is called to play for the red player with a depth of only 3, it will correctly find that the best move is to put a piece in column 2 to force the human to block at column 5 and then the computer wins by putting a piece at column 5. In another situation:
Fig 5. If the computer (yellow player) could only see one step ahead, he would be unable to see the threat of playing at column 3 or 6 and winning. Now, it can detect and prevent it. The computer correctly decides to play at column 3 to block the human from winning by putting at column 3 or 6. Pretty impressive, huh? And it is all less than 30 lines of code.
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Fundamentals of Recursion in PHP
