══════════════════════════════════════
FLIP WARS — HOW TO PLAY
══════════════════════════════════════
OBJECTIVE
Turn ALL tiles your color, OR hold the
highest Strategic Score at the turn limit.
FLIP LOGIC
Click a tile → flips it + all 4 orthogonal
neighbors (up, down, left, right) in a + pattern.
LOCK MECHANIC (Tabu Search)
After clicking, a tile is locked for several
turns (shows WAIT countdown). Prevents infinite
loops and adds strategic depth.
BLACK HOLES
Void tiles: permanently unflippable. They warp the
graph topology — adjacent tiles lose one neighbor.
SCORING
Corners +25 ← most valuable!
Edges +15
Standard +5
Trap -5 ← avoid near corners
══════════════════════════════════════
AI VERSIONS
══════════════════════════════════════
R1 — GREEDY (Easy)
Simple tile-value counting + 15% random blunder.
R2 — DIVIDE & CONQUER (Medium)
· Merge Sort move ranking
· Spatial D&C quadrant control
· DFS Clusters territory strength
· Tournament Select CPU move selection
· Threat Detection exposure analysis
R3 — DP + BACKTRACKING (Expert)
· SUHAS doMove/undoMove backtracking (O(1) space)
· MANEESH Alpha-Beta Pruning Minimax
· GANESH Zobrist Transposition Table
· BALAJI Bitmask DP Oracle (4x4: 65536 states)
══════════════════════════════════════
WINNING STRATEGIES
══════════════════════════════════════
* Secure corners early — worth 25 pts each!
* Build large connected clusters for territory
* Avoid trap tiles near corners (-5)
* Plan around locked tiles for surprise moves
* Watch the Brain Scanner for AI reasoning!
Design & Analysis of Algorithms
Team-13