Is it just me, or is white a heavy favourite to win this game (stats also say so)? This game is quite similar to the Bantumi game found on Nokia phones (except that in Bantumi, if you land the last seed of a sow in an empty hole on your side of the board, you not only get all the seeds from the opposite hole, you also put that last seed in your collection hole - and this itself is a variant of Kalah), and that game is a win for the first player. Of course, this change in rules (deliberately? bug?) could make all the difference.
I wouldn't mind seeing a handful of variants. Since the variants share a lot of the rules, it should be easier to add a variant than the initial implementation. (Unless Fencer is a spagetti coder, but that I doubt).
Mancala is a nice game to play, but it's less nice if you have opponents who double the number of moves by not resigning after you got 25 points (and there's absolutely no way for them to get a win or a draw).
Fencer, could you build in some logic that finishes the game after one of the players gets more than 24 points? The winner is know, and the rest of the game is pointless.
Teema: Re: Which Mancala are we playing here on BrainKIng
Marfitalu: Well, what we play here looks like 'Bantumi', but it isn't. In Bantumi, if seed your beads, and the last one drops in an empty hole on your side of the board, you not only get the beads from the corresponding hole on your opponents side (as happens here in Mancala), but also that last bead you dropped.
A significant difference. (And I already made mistakes assuming I got an extra bead)