The basic heuristic I use (playing as a human, win rate around 75%, and I've had 4096-2048-1024 on the same board before):
Pick a corner for the highest tile (for me: upper left). Try to keep the next highest tiles in line with it (I choose the top row). Never push the opposite direction from that (down), and only push the other "off" direction (right) if that row is full so the highest tile will stay put, or if it's the only move remaining. Try to build a "snake" with numbers in descending order, and compress it down to a single tile whenever that becomes possible.
From there, it's just little tricks -- learning when you can untrap a lower tile, or when to hold off on a move in order to set up a better one -- that bring up the win rate by a few percent here and there.
spot tested these strategies, they help. when i deviated from it in a fit of panic i lost.
similarly, i also find that keeping the small tiles accessible - outside - helps tremendously. if you never move down you get that for free, because you never make open space on top for a 2 to come in (and not combine with your 512 or whatever).
True, for any arbitrary value of "down." I.e. normally you should have three allowed directions and one forbidden one. For me the forbidden one starts out as always up.
Note that in game play if you have to you can change the forbidden direction.
Computer folks seem to be attracted to games with simple rules that can be programmed easily. Life comes to mind. This one has a lot of permutations of rules to explore.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.4 ms ] threadSomeone revealed in that thread that you should never move down. I tried moving only up, left, and right and won easily, so the strategy is solid.
Pick a corner for the highest tile (for me: upper left). Try to keep the next highest tiles in line with it (I choose the top row). Never push the opposite direction from that (down), and only push the other "off" direction (right) if that row is full so the highest tile will stay put, or if it's the only move remaining. Try to build a "snake" with numbers in descending order, and compress it down to a single tile whenever that becomes possible.
From there, it's just little tricks -- learning when you can untrap a lower tile, or when to hold off on a move in order to set up a better one -- that bring up the win rate by a few percent here and there.
similarly, i also find that keeping the small tiles accessible - outside - helps tremendously. if you never move down you get that for free, because you never make open space on top for a 2 to come in (and not combine with your 512 or whatever).
And if you have to move this way you can rotate 90 degrees the forbidden direction if you must.
Note that in game play if you have to you can change the forbidden direction.
playing, i think, is NP-hard, and that makes games really addictive. see this research:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1001.4420v3.pdf
which talks about flood filling games as being NP-hard. there's a satisfaction we get when we succeed that tickles our humanity in a unique way.
http://blog.blainelight.com/2014/03/how-to-beat-2048.html