Dear Faculty and Students, You are cordially invited to attend the Master’s thesis defense of Taylor Neller. The defense will be held virtually, and all are welcome to join. Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2025 Time: 8:00 AM (ET) Title: Towards Better Turn-Based Strategy Planning Agents: Turn-Based Evolutionary Tree Search Location: Online only Zoom Link: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/jicho Committee: * Professor Jin-Hee Cho (Chair, Virginia Tech) * Professor Lifu Huang (Co-chair, University of California, Davis) * Professor Dawei Zhou (Virginia Tech) Abstract: While AI performance in many board games has surpassed human capabilities, turn-based strategy (TBS) games remain a significant challenge. Unlike classical games such as Chess, TBS games involve multiple decisions per player turn, resulting in an exponential increase in the branching factor. Human players excel by abstracting high-level strategic reasoning, but state-of-the-art algorithms such as Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Rolling Horizon Evolutionary Algorithm (RHEA) struggle in this domain. This thesis introduces Turn-Based Evolutionary Tree Search (TBETS)—a novel hybrid search method that combines principles from evolutionary algorithms and MCTS, tailored specifically for turn-based environments. We evaluate TBETS in the Turn-Based Strategy Academic Package (TUBSTAP) and benchmark it against strong baselines including RHEA, EMCTS-FH, and MCTS. Results show that TBETS achieves superior performance in both efficiency and scalability, offering a promising direction for AI in complex strategic planning. We hope to see you there! Thanks! Jin-Hee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jin-Hee Cho (she/her/hers), Ph.D., IEEE Senior Member Associate Professor | Department of Computer Science Stephen and Cherye Tyndall Moore Junior Faculty Fellow | Computer Science Faculty Fellow | College of Engineering Affiliate Faculty | National Security Institute Virginia Tech 900 N Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA 22203 Email: jicho@vt.edumailto:jicho@vt.edu Phone: (703) 538-8302 (ex: 88302) Homepage: http://people.cs.vt.edu/~jicho/ Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wToVkEUAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wToVkEUAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~