> No written rules for this game survived antiquity. To reconstruct how the game may have been played, researchers turned to the Ludii General Game System — a comprehensive digital platform developed at Maastricht University that can model and simulate thousands of historic board games. The results were published in the journal Antiquity (Volume 100, Issue 409, 2025).
> Using Alpha-Beta search agents — the same class of algorithm that powered early chess computers — the team ran 1,000 simulated rounds for each candidate ruleset, allowing one second of processing time per move. The AI tracked which lines on the board were used most frequently during play, generating detailed edge-usage statistics....
> Nine game configurations matched the wear criteria. All of them were blocking games, and the most frequently matching format was a four-versus-two game in which pieces start on the board. This site faithfully reproduces one of these AI-validated configurations.
I would say this is more "inspired by" Ancient Rome.
This feels like the thing that makes me deeply skeptical of swaths of archaeology and palaeontology as a science rather than being a kind of fandom.
I imagine the incentives of having a crisp story for media consumption don’t help. I’d hope to read a lot more: “we’re missing the majority of the pieces to this puzzle. This represents our best guess given current evidence and methods.”
Archaeology is an unusual discipline in that it incorporates so many others as tools. Chemistry, physics, geology, CPSC, you name it. It's difficult enough to figure out what people were doing based on ruins and trash pits. It's harder still when there are so many disciplines involved that, each, introduce their own uncertainties.
That being said, "We asked an AI..." is a special kind of uncertainty that goes above and beyond anything else Archaeologists do.
--------
"No written rules for this game survived antiquity. To reconstruct how the game may have been played, researchers turned to the Ludii General Game System — a comprehensive digital platform developed at Maastricht University that can model and simulate thousands of historic board games. The results were published in the journal Antiquity (Volume 100, Issue 409, 2025).
Using Alpha-Beta search agents — the same class of algorithm that powered early chess computers — the team ran 1,000 simulated rounds for each candidate ruleset, allowing one second of processing time per move. The AI tracked which lines on the board were used most frequently during play, generating detailed edge-usage statistics.
These statistics were then compared to the physical wear patterns on Object 04433. To account for human cognitive biases — such as right-handed players preferring to play on the right side of the board — the researchers applied symmetry transformations to the simulation results, maximising consistency between AI-generated play and the actual marks left by ancient players.
Nine game configurations matched the wear criteria. All of them were blocking games, and the most frequently matching format was a four-versus-two game in which pieces start on the board. This site faithfully reproduces one of these AI-validated configurations."
--------
It's interesting that they considered use-wear on found pieces as input for their AI. Still, this study made a lot of assumptions. I wouldn't be surprised if a different team could use the same methods and come up with a completely different result.
I think the study would be more palatable if it was presented as an exploration of AI-aided methods and very strongly impressed that any one result was not the point.
I always like to hear about ancient board game reconstructions. Like music and religion, games are something every culture creates. Another recent example is the case of Liubu, a game from ancient China for which the rules were lost. Still, a reconstruction is being attempted by Carnegie Melon:
The AI could have constructed any number of rules seeing as how it's literally a "best guess" and it chose rules that aren't very fun. Congratulations, I guess.
Edit: Or, put a different way: Sometimes the rules to games are lost for a reason; they're not very good.
The videos on the game (and all his other videos) with Irving Finkel, a curator at the British museum, are spellbinding. He has the looks, manners and enthusiasm of an eccentric museum curator from central casting!
> No written rules for this game survived antiquity. To reconstruct how the game may have been played, researchers turned to the Ludii General Game System — a comprehensive digital platform developed at Maastricht University that can model and simulate thousands of historic board games. The results were published in the journal Antiquity (Volume 100, Issue 409, 2025).
> Using Alpha-Beta search agents — the same class of algorithm that powered early chess computers — the team ran 1,000 simulated rounds for each candidate ruleset, allowing one second of processing time per move. The AI tracked which lines on the board were used most frequently during play, generating detailed edge-usage statistics....
> Nine game configurations matched the wear criteria. All of them were blocking games, and the most frequently matching format was a four-versus-two game in which pieces start on the board. This site faithfully reproduces one of these AI-validated configurations.
I would say this is more "inspired by" Ancient Rome.
This feels like the thing that makes me deeply skeptical of swaths of archaeology and palaeontology as a science rather than being a kind of fandom.
I imagine the incentives of having a crisp story for media consumption don’t help. I’d hope to read a lot more: “we’re missing the majority of the pieces to this puzzle. This represents our best guess given current evidence and methods.”
I have often wondered how to make this clear wrt science communication
Eg much is not known about dinosaurs. Many things cannot be found in fossils (obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1747/)
How do you communicate what is unknown or what can't be known?
Archaeology is an unusual discipline in that it incorporates so many others as tools. Chemistry, physics, geology, CPSC, you name it. It's difficult enough to figure out what people were doing based on ruins and trash pits. It's harder still when there are so many disciplines involved that, each, introduce their own uncertainties.
That being said, "We asked an AI..." is a special kind of uncertainty that goes above and beyond anything else Archaeologists do.
--------
"No written rules for this game survived antiquity. To reconstruct how the game may have been played, researchers turned to the Ludii General Game System — a comprehensive digital platform developed at Maastricht University that can model and simulate thousands of historic board games. The results were published in the journal Antiquity (Volume 100, Issue 409, 2025).
Using Alpha-Beta search agents — the same class of algorithm that powered early chess computers — the team ran 1,000 simulated rounds for each candidate ruleset, allowing one second of processing time per move. The AI tracked which lines on the board were used most frequently during play, generating detailed edge-usage statistics.
These statistics were then compared to the physical wear patterns on Object 04433. To account for human cognitive biases — such as right-handed players preferring to play on the right side of the board — the researchers applied symmetry transformations to the simulation results, maximising consistency between AI-generated play and the actual marks left by ancient players.
Nine game configurations matched the wear criteria. All of them were blocking games, and the most frequently matching format was a four-versus-two game in which pieces start on the board. This site faithfully reproduces one of these AI-validated configurations."
--------
It's interesting that they considered use-wear on found pieces as input for their AI. Still, this study made a lot of assumptions. I wouldn't be surprised if a different team could use the same methods and come up with a completely different result.
I think the study would be more palatable if it was presented as an exploration of AI-aided methods and very strongly impressed that any one result was not the point.
Too assymetric IMO. I have no problems winning with hounds even on hard, but I have no chance of winning except against easy.
I guess you have to put it in context. There are old tic-tac-toe boards also sculpted in stone (https://legioxiiisl.blogspot.com/2013/02/roman-board-game-te...), which is a very bad game. Anything would be better.
Ancient example of an unbalanced meta. Maybe we are missing some of the patch notes for balance changes
I was curious to learn more about how they discovered and reconstructed the rules. They explain that at: https://ludus-coriovalli.web.app/about
I always like to hear about ancient board game reconstructions. Like music and religion, games are something every culture creates. Another recent example is the case of Liubu, a game from ancient China for which the rules were lost. Still, a reconstruction is being attempted by Carnegie Melon:
https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/liubo-lab/
The AI could have constructed any number of rules seeing as how it's literally a "best guess" and it chose rules that aren't very fun. Congratulations, I guess.
Edit: Or, put a different way: Sometimes the rules to games are lost for a reason; they're not very good.
Another ancient board game to be decoded is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Game_of_Ur. This is from 2600BC so is older to Christ than Christ is to us.
The videos on the game (and all his other videos) with Irving Finkel, a curator at the British museum, are spellbinding. He has the looks, manners and enthusiasm of an eccentric museum curator from central casting!
Playing a lost 2000 year old game is awesome.