Evolving Maps and Decks for Ticket to Ride
We present a search-based approach to generating boards and decks of cards for the game Ticket to Ride. Our evolutionary algorithm searches for boards that allow for a well-shaped game arc, and for decks that promote an equal distribution of desirability for cities. We show examples of two boards generated by our algorithm and compare our results to those of the actual components of the game. Our approach creates game content that is specifically designed towards metrics that can affect gameplay in an impactful way.
Publication: Evolving Maps and Decks for Ticket to Ride. Fernando De Mesentier Silva, Scott Lee, Julian Togelius, and Andy Nealen. PCG Workshop 2018 at Foundations of Digital Games 2018.
Figure 1: A completely new board generated by our algorithm. The nodes given as the initial inputs were the capitals of the 26 states of Brazil. In the image, nodes/cities are represented by the circles and routes are the dashed lines connecting any 2 nodes. The size of the route is equal to the number of dashes that compose it. The color of the dashes matches the color of the route.
Figure 2: Comparing the game arc for an original map, in blue, our evolved map, in red, and a map with randomly generated edges, in green. 1000 simulations between the 4 agents were run for each map, and for both maps a “full” deck of destination cards was used.