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Hi
I have some questions about engine aggressiveness:
When you put a lot of positional information in an engines, then shouldn't it play more aggressively and sacrifice more because it knows that it can get compensation?
If above is true, then why is there some engines with lots of positional knowledge (Thinking of komodo), but they dont play aggressively?
And, last question, is there anything else than king safety that can make an engine aggressive?

Regards
Ethan

ethanara wrote: And, last question, is there anything else than king safety that can make an engine aggressive?

mobility

In Glass both mobility and king safety score can be assymmetric (different for the program and for the opponent). Indeed, Aggressive personality increases both king attack and mobility bonuses (150% IIRC). Default is even funnier: it overestimates own attacking prospects and opponent mobility at the same time

Besides the issues already mentioned (mobility & king safety) you can think of tricky things like:

1. Calculate a bonus for root moves that complex the position such as leaving your pieces en-prise. I always used it when playing against humans.

2. Another way to look for complications is to measure the aggressiveness (checks, captures, threats etc.) in the tree and reward it with a bonus. Kind of (1) but then to a limited depth.