c3 showed use_rollout_value=false alone is not the fix: without the
heuristic rollout safety net the random-init network value gives bad
MCTS Q early on, the agent plays more (PA 0.10 -> 0.22+) but eats more
-20 expedition penalties (score worsened from -57 to -97 avg).
Mathematical intuition: in Lost Cities, opening an expedition is a
20-point commitment. Break-even requires rank-sum × (handshakes+1) >= 20.
The model has to learn:
- which colors to open (based on hand handshake/high-rank holdings)
- when to commit vs discard
- card-ordering constraints (ascending only)
This is a moderately rich value function. 512x3 (~800k params, ~290
input dim) might be undersized. Test capacity hypothesis with 768x4
(~2M params) while keeping the rollout safety net so MCTS Q stays
competent.
Other params from c1 kept: c_puct=5, virtual_loss=5, dirichlet
α=0.3/ε=0.4, parallel_simulations=64, n_simulations=50.