⬤ Villager Connect Four
That Master-level librarian drives a hard bargain. They have also solved Connect Four, and they are going first.
Open any villager's trade screen and hit Connect Four. A full board opens right there - no items, no commands, no setup.
The villager goes first, and that is the point
Connect Four is a solved game. On the standard 7×6 board, the player who drops first can force a win - proved by exhaustive computation, not just observed. Whoever moves first is playing a won game.
So the villager gets it. That means a Master villager isn't "very strong": it is unbeatable, and no amount of skill changes that. If you'd rather have the winning side, one line of config hands it to you - see below. Your colour follows the turn order, so whoever drops first plays yellow.
How strong are they?
A villager's trading level sets its strength - and each level thinks in a genuinely different way, not just deeper:
| Villager level | Connect Four strength |
|---|---|
| Novice | Drops almost at random - won't take a win, won't block yours |
| Apprentice | Takes the win in front of it, blocks yours, sees nothing further |
| Journeyman | Never plays into a loss; makes and spots double threats |
| Expert | Understands odd/even threat parity |
| Master | Has solved the game |
The jump from Journeyman to Expert is the interesting one. Every column holds an even number of cells, so in a pure filling race the first player takes the 1st, 3rd and 5th cell of a column and the second player takes the 2nd, 4th and 6th. A threat is therefore only worth something if its row falls to its owner - the same three-in-a-row one row higher can be worthless. A Journeyman counts threats. An Expert counts the ones that will actually be reached.
How to play
- Click a column - or anywhere above it. A ghost disc hangs over the column you're pointing at.
- A full column flashes red with a dull note rather than quietly ignoring you.
- The winning four are outlined and the rest of the board dims, so a win is visible rather than inferred.
- Resign with the button, or just close the board. Walking more than 16 blocks away, the villager dying, or disconnecting abandons the game.
- No stakes, no rewards - just for fun (and bragging rights).
Configuration
config/villagerconnectfour.properties, written on first run and documented inline:
first-player=player- you drop first, and get the theoretically winning side. The sanctioned way past an unbeatable Master.board-size=7x6- anything from4x4to8x7. This changes the value of the game, not just its scale: several smaller boards are draws with perfect play, so a Master can be held on those.
Under the hood
- A from-scratch pure-Java engine. The board is two bitboards packed into a single 64-bit word, one column per seven bits - the spare bit per column is a sentinel that is always empty, and it's what lets four-in-a-row be found by and-ing the board with shifted copies of itself with no edge checks at all.
- Scores are counted in discs on the board rather than plies from the search root, which makes them absolute facts about a position. One transposition table is shared by every game on the server, so a Master's knowledge compounds through a game instead of starting cold on every move.
- Fully server-authoritative - the server owns the game; the client sends a column and nothing else.
- The engine thinks on a background thread, so the server never stalls.
- Zero art: board, discs, holes and highlights are all drawn procedurally and stay crisp at any size.
Compatibility
Plays nicely with the other Villager Games mods - the trade-screen buttons stack instead of overlapping.
Requires Fabric API. Client and server both need the mod.
