Strata — Play

Goal

Strata is a hidden-objective structure game. Each player tries to shape the board to score well under their chosen evaluation metric — while also benefiting from the opponent’s metric at double value.

Board & Pieces

• Board size: 6×6
• Players: X (human) vs O (bot)
• No piece cap (you may place as long as empty spaces exist).

Turns

• Each player gets 10 turns.
• On your turn you choose one action:
• Place — put your piece on any empty square.
• Remove — remove any piece from the board (X or O).
• If the board is full, you can only remove.

Choosing a Metric

• X chooses a metric before the game begins (defaults to the first one if you don’t select).
• O secretly receives a random metric (revealed at the end).
• The full metric board stays visible throughout the game.

Scoring

At the end of the game, each player scores using only their own pieces:

Highest total wins. If totals match, it’s a tie.

Metrics

Joint

Count the number of orthogonal (up/down/left/right) same-piece connections. Each touching edge between two of your pieces counts as 1.

Disjoint

Count the number of your pieces that have no orthogonal same-piece neighbor. (Diagonal doesn’t matter.)

Edge

Count how many of your pieces are on the outer ring of the board (any border square).

Center

Count how many of your pieces are in the center zone. On a 6×6 board, that’s the middle 2×2 squares.

Enclosure

Your pieces act as walls. Any region of squares that is not your piece (empty or opponent) that cannot reach the edge of the board without crossing your pieces is considered enclosed.

Each enclosed region scores:

Example: a 3×3 ring enclosing 1 cell uses 8 fence pieces → 1 + 8 = 9.

Win Condition

After both players complete 10 turns, totals are computed and the game summary announces the winner.