How to create a good evaluation function for a game?

Question

I write programs to play board game variants sometimes. The basic strategy is standard alpha-beta pruning or similar searches, sometimes augmented by the usual approaches to

Answer 1

As I understand it, you want a good static evaluation function to use at the leaves of your min-max tree. If so, it is best to remember that the purpose of this static evaluation function is to provide a rating as to how good that board is for the computer player. So is

f(board1) > f(board2)

then it must be true that board1 is better for the computer (it is more likely to eventually win) than in board2. Of course, no static function is ever completely correct for all boards.

So, you say that "The goal of the game is to have enough of your pieces in certain special squares on the board", so a first stab at f(board) would simply be to count the number of pieces the computer has on those special squares. You can then finesse it more.

Without knowing the specifics of the game its impossible to give better guesses. If you gave us the game rules I am sure the stackoverflow users would be able to come with tons of original ideas for such functions.