Computer players - Where to start

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One of the big advantages of learning an abstract strategy game today as opposed to 20 years ago is that there are plenty of ways to play the game against a computer opponents. Just as in chess, checkers and backgmmon, there are no shortage of apps and computer challengers. 

Having said that, one must be very careful. Quantity is definitely not quality in this case, and there are relatively few that are worthwhile playing any length of time. A good app or desktop program can gain you plenty of time in learning the game but the opposite is also true.

Here, just like the post on online play I will cover just the basics. Where to start. The professional software and programs will come later.

If you have a mobile device the place to start would be Mills by Lite Games. I will say right away, it is not the strongest of the bunch but, for beginners it is enough to get your teeth into. If you can regularly beat the very hard difficulty, then move on and get something else. The reason I choose this first is that it is very user friendly, decent to look at and has all the things needed to start playing the game. It also has online play, which is nicely done here because there is no chat setting. Often on these apps there is little or no moderation, so you can get all types online.

Once you have spent enough time on Mills, Dalmax Men's Morris is the next step. It is not the best to look at, but it does play a better game than the Lite Games app. It also has a feature in which you can export your game for later analysis. This is a nice feature and not regularly found on apps. You can also put the skill level at anywhere between 0 and 100 which is also a nice touch. 

On PC, Mac and Linux the place to start is Dirk Farin's Nine Men's Morris program. This is an excellent free software, that both looks good and plays at a better level than the other two. Not only that, it learns from it's mistakes, so that future games that it has lost it will (hopefully) not make the same move again. The program also offers many of the variants of Nine Men's Morris, such as the 10 and 12 piece versions.

In a later post I will look at the more specialist programs, both on mobile and PC. For the beginners, these are more than enough to get going. Since Dalmax has an export function, I often would send my game to a stronger playing friend and have them look at it and give me feedback. Dirk Farin's program, I have sparred quite a bit over the years. The quality of game does vary, but it can give you quite a challenge, especially in the beginning.




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