title: Efficient board representation for strategy board game AI
body: <p>Would a bitboard representation still be as effective in a dumbed-down chess-like strategy game which has less than 64 positions or would a simpler array based mailbox implementation be more practical?  </p>
  
  <p>Our school's AI class has an annual competition where the professor makes up a board game and we have four weeks to create an AI which plays the game.  Typically, the pieces are a subset of chess pieces with similar rules and is played on a smaller board. i.e. 8x5, 7x7, etc. I'm not at all sure how using only 40 bits compare to the typical 64 for chess.</p>
  
  <p>My only issue is that I'm not very familiar with C or C++ and would be more comfortable implementing the program in Java.  Is their enough support in Java for bit manipulation where I could implement a bitboard representation and if this would add efficiency, would it be worth the added complexity? Would the learning curve be too steep?</p>
  
  <p>My plan is to use Negamax search with AB pruning, quiessence search, transposition tables, killer moves, etc. depending on time. Any other tips for creating a competitive AI in such a short amount of time? </p>