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Thanks so much! All credit goes to the great guests :)

Thank you Mauri! He's a super interesting and humble person, and I was sure the chat was going to be interesting as well :)

You have sort of opened a Pandora box. The variation you described (the compound attack) is one of the reasons why is very common nowadays for black to delay the queen placement (or go for a C opening) since it's pretty annoying. The best option I see is to transpose to an antispawn setup (maybe placing an ant first, no matter where). Then even if black has their mosquito stuck they will have a pretty good defense and can use spiders and beetles to threaten a counterattack. The mosquito is still a good defensive piece so white will have to spend quite some time to plan a good attack around it. I have seen other methods working but I don't feel so confident playing it myself. Maybe I should make a video about it! (But also the new Jewdoka's book should treat this line a little bit)

I think it's typical of abstract games (that is where the luck factor is low or zero). Most people prefer something more casual, and Chess has a huge culture behind it to overcome this bias. Some other people are put off by the bugs, or they think it's childish and don't go beyond appearance. I found often though that playing a couple of games and explaining the basic strategic ideas is already enough to make them at least interested... then hopefully they reach out to the community on the internet and keep playing :)

Always with expansions! Playing without them is like playing chess without rooks and knights, much less complex and less fun :) (although some people like vanilla Hive too, matter of taste) 2000 Elo in chess is quite good for an amateur yes, I have played a lot when I was a teenager! If I had continued during university I could have reached even a bit more maybe :)

and the principle of circling the bee reminds me more game of Go than of the checkmate of the various chess games

The element of adding pieces reminds of Shogi but they cannot be 'recycled' currently. And maybe it has some elements of Go.. particularly re shapes, but the definition of check-mate games is that one of the pieces has a crucial role in the goal of the game, that's why Hive is categorised as a check-mate game (not all agree on this definition tho)

I feel the same! I would love to have an AI to understand the game better, but also the fun of it is really to studying by yourself.. and the issue of cheating would be a pain in the neck. Hopefully people will play more and more in person at least :)

I agree with Pedro!

And now there is Hive Ultimate! (Same as standard but includes all three expansions already)

I didn't know that, thanks for sharing. That is great news for people just getting into the game. I bought all the expansion pieces separately at the time and would definitely recommend using them, they add a great element to the game. 👍

@@jaredsmith8282 I didn't mention it in the video, but I give for granted that Hive should always include Pillbug, Ladybug and Mosquito, otherwise is not Hive!

The notation is definitely much harder to grasp than in chess, and even top players don't think in terms of notation as far as I know. Not having a fixed board makes it not so useful. There are attempts of creating new notations tho that are more friendly, at least to write down the game while playing (check Discord). I didn't dive too deep but yes you're right partly, tempo is a component of Hive more important than in chess probably. And thinking in terms of pins is not exactly the same as captures I agree. But the candidate moves process feels very similar to me. If it was too similar, on the other hand, it wouldn't be so fun either! So I think it's the right compromise :)

It's called BoardSpace.net (boardspace.net/cgi-bin/tournament-signup.cgi). It's where we play official tournaments nowadays and it works well, but I recommend also to try hivegame.com/ it's work in progress but it's gonna be eventually the main platform :)

the concepts in the video also apply to the base game (apart from the pillbug tip), but on my channel I only treat the complete game sorry, which is the standard in tournaments (I really recommend trying it one day, you'll never come back! :) )

it's fun to give spiders special abilities but it's also satisfying to be able to use a spider to win or gain a big advantage in a game using the standard rules :)

I'll commission the new piece to him if still there is some wood left😁

@@JulienPiat salut! :)

Pretty rare idea but sometimes it works!

Sooner or later a strong AI will come, but we enjoy (and we will still enjoy) the development of the strategy in Hive as a community!

That was the pillbug which moved the grasshopper :)

@@FrascoAdAbstra Ohhh I see. I haven't bought the DLC's yet so I didn't catch that -- my bad!

​@@joshuasimpson5146 DLC? The expansions?

@@leobidussi5039 that's why the title of the video!

You mean notation of the game because its not clear from the video, or my comments about the game? I'm sure Pedro is going to do a video about it!

@@FrascoAdAbstra It got complicated to follow towards the end. It's definitely a game I want to study. I saw multiple pillibug warps in the game.

​@@michaelmacaraig2841the pillbugs helped both of us to reposition grasshoppers and spiders into better spots, an important technique to keep in mind

It's rare but very fun when it happens 😁

Controlling the opponent pieces is key :)

It's actually not that uncommon at high level to place all your pieces in play! The more pieces the messier and the more fun 😁

Flexible and compact is often a good choice as it gives you more option to react to your opponent. When you pin the opponent pieces instead you want to create long rigid strings for them. But this game was also pretty chaotic due to the mosquito-pillbug combos!

@@goldengriffon you often learn more from losing than from winning right? :) and there are so many strong players around I need to learn from!

@@Olios576 I'm not sure what you mean for moving again the black pillbug.. the black pillbug is pinned, it can't be moved otherwise the hive would break, isn't it?

I mean "after", I have dyslexia

I like it! Kill box😁

Basically.. i should rename the video like that🤣

When I'm lucky and in the right mood the games become fun 😁

It's hard to say when a game is 'better' than another one, a lot of it is subjective. There are some criteria of course, but even considering those (you mention in the comment below), why not to write a more propositional sentence like 'have you ever tried mosaic?' Because it seems to me your comment is out of context in the comment section of this video. This being said, can i find the rules of Mosaic somewhere?

@@FrascoAdAbstra Only in the game.

this happens simply because you and your friends have played each other too many times and have not been exposed to other strategies out there by playing with other people. I recommend to try to play Hive on BGA or Hivegame.com and you'll discover soon that it's much more fun than you think! The draw rate nowadays is much lower than the one of chess for the top players for instance, and similar to the one in chess for amateurs level, so there is no draw problem :) (there was back then when the Queen Bee was allowed as first move more than 10 years ago, but that opening is forbidden in tournaments nowadays).

I would have preferred to be immortal winning but it's fine ahah :)

You're perfectly right. I might call it that way sometimes too. But it was formalised by Jewdoka in his first book and he doesn't have much of a chess background I think or he just didn’t want to recycle the term. So since then most people call it ambiguous although spider fork sounds good and clear to me! (Fun fact: often we call zugzwang 'bugzwang' ahah)

It's a common issue with abstract games having a slightpy more complex set of rules I think. People are not attracted by the theme and at the same time they find the rules hard to memorise. I have to add that, in Homeworlds, also how to reach the goal is quite vague! But I agree that it's a fantastic game so I hope we can find some way to spread it more easily. For Hive we started to distribute a small sheet that summarise all the rules, maybe that would help (and on BGA there is a tutorial already I guess?). Btw Thanks for watching :)

Risk? I wouldn't think any differently about it than how computers play chess or go etc...

@@jonathanandrews3381 You might be right, but that would depend on the complexity of the hypothetical solution. That is, if the AI finds an assured path to victory (or even a draw) that is simple enough for people to memorize, that would severely damage the game for me. I am no mathematician though, and it is possible that this scenario is highly unlikely.

@@jonathanandrews3381 ​It's not easy to estimate how easily a game can be (weakly) solved. Branching factor is the main parameter but all depends on the solution to be simple enough to be memorised. I don't think there is such risk for homeworlds but opening theory could be more 'narrow' for instance

@@FrascoAdAbstra Yes, the homeworlds tutorial on BGA by Any Looney is very well done.

I might be wrong but I discarded an offensive move straight away. You simply don't have enough time to try to win in such positions where: - your killspots are quickly being filled - your empty killspots are fewer than the opponent one. - your pillbug is not next to your queen (or it's neutralized alread) - the opponent pillbug hasn't been neutralised yet - your opponent has enough material (here they had at least 6 pieces in reserve+play) Until some of these factors change, it's premature to attack. There are exceptions of course but you have to calculate properly all the possible variations to find them. (ops sorry that was my personal account)

Thanks so much! Welcome to the Hive community (or abstract games world if you are into other games too). You should check out the discord for Hive if you want to have more interaction with other players :) discord.com/invite/U5zCSNHANQ Have fun!