Let's Catch the Lion - Animal Shogi

[NJames]

Here is a game that was designed primarily to introduce Japanese children to the concepts of Shogi, which is a Chess-like game.

In this JB version, you must play both sides. The game board will be reversed after you decide to confirm your move. As far I know, it enforces the rules correctly.

The pieces can move to adjacent squares that are marked with a dot on the moving piece. When a piece is captured, the capturing player can later drop it onto any empty square. If the chick moves to the final row of the board, it is promoted to a chicken/hen. If the lion moves to the final row of the board that player wins. The other way to win is by checkmating the opposing lion.

[NJames]

Now with an AI eval function!

Eval v.03
Eliminated a bug in the moves function that generated bad drops.

Added a bonus to capturing moves.

Added a penalty when evaluating unprotected moves, i.e. ones that can be captured by the human with no re-capture possible.

[NJames]

Improved eval() has more bug smashing and also "learns" as it plays. The learning consists of keeping a book of positions it has proven as losing. If a position appears in the lostpositions.dat file, eval() evaluates it the same as an immediate loss.

[yevrowl]

Nice variant of Dōbutsu shōgi, thanks a lot!
Unfortunately all the pieces are upside down and identical — how to distinguish our pieces from opponent's pieces?