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#Post#: 728--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: HGMuller
Date: April 1, 2018, 3:41 am
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The more I think about it, the more I get convinced that this is
a fools errand. If you hardly fill the board, you would just
have a small game on a large board, and would already be
surpassed by Chess on an Infinite Plane. So on a 50x50 board you
would need ~800 pieces to make use of the board size. That means
that a game would have to last at least 800 moves to move every
piece once. And most pieces would be buried so deep in your own
camp, that moving them once gets them nowhere; even if they are
sliders they might need 4 or 5 moves to sneak out to the front
line where they can engage the opponent. So we are talking about
many thousands of moves average game length, which seems a good
way to ensure there would never be any interest to play it.
With a reasonable number of moves (and 500 moves should already
be considered very taxing), most of the pieces would not be
moved at all; for the pieces that are moved to do anything
useful you might typically leave 90% of your pieces totally
untouched. What would be the point of designing a plethora of
piece types moving in all kinds of original ways if they only
serve as 'cannon fodder'?
The only way I can think of where such a large game would make
any sense is to provide diversity, i.e. have the game start (in
the opening phase) with a number of super-destructive pieces,
which massacre the opponent to the point where perhaps only 10%
of the pieces is left (the massacred pieces having never moved).
Then, depending on how exactly this is done, you would get
middle-games with totally different sets of pieces. Then the
presence of most of these pieces, although pointless in one
particular game, would be justified by that they get intensively
used in some of the games. It would be quite hard to make it
such that the game is not totally decided at that point,
however.
#Post#: 730--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 8:47 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: HGMuller link ---
>
> The more I think about it, the more I get convinced that this
is a fools errand. If you hardly fill the board, you would just
have a small game on a large board, and would already be
surpassed by Chess on an Infinite Plane. So on a 50x50 board you
would need ~800 pieces to make use of the board size. That means
that a game would have to last at least 800 moves to move every
piece once. And most pieces would be buried so deep in your own
camp, that moving them once gets them nowhere; even if they are
sliders they might need 4 or 5 moves to sneak out to the front
line where they can engage the opponent. So we are talking about
many thousands of moves average game length, which seems a good
way to ensure there would never be any interest to play it.
>
> With a reasonable number of moves (and 500 moves should
already be considered very taxing), most of the pieces would not
be moved at all; for the pieces that are moved to do anything
useful you might typically leave 90% of your pieces totally
untouched. What would be the point of designing a plethora of
piece types moving in all kinds of original ways if they only
serve as 'cannon fodder'?
>
> The only way I can think of where such a large game would make
any sense is to provide diversity, i.e. have the game start (in
the opening phase) with a number of super-destructive pieces,
which massacre the opponent to the point where perhaps only 10%
of the pieces is left (the massacred pieces having never moved).
Then, depending on how exactly this is done, you would get
middle-games with totally different sets of pieces. Then the
presence of most of these pieces, although pointless in one
particular game, would be justified by that they get intensively
used in some of the games. It would be quite hard to make it
such that the game is not totally decided at that point,
however.
>
--- End Quote ---
Hm good idea, maybe we should put the powerful pieces at the
front, and leave the less powerful ones to fight each other,
with the less powerful ones able to promote to more powerful
ones, based on captures.
I think I'm going to lower the size to 40x40
#Post#: 733--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 9:12 am
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I have an idea, why don't we make it so that when a piece in the
opponent's side of the board gets captured, one type of your
pieces gets promoted. This should allow for more powerful pieces
to come through.
#Post#: 737--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: Martin0
Date: April 1, 2018, 2:31 pm
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How about some of the "cannon fodder" having a special move to
move several pieces during the same turn. Let's call the piece
infantry. An infantry can move can move up to 5 squares either
horizontally or vertically (like a rook with maximum 5 squares).
All infantry pieces within a 5x5 square can perform an army
movement. In an army movement all pieces performing the movement
must move the same amount of squares in the same direction.
This would allow many pieces to move during the same turn and
with several captures at the same time. If there are some really
strong pieces which makes killing several infantry pieces in one
move relatively easy, then I'm not really worried about this
army movement to be too powerful. Maybe still just weak pieces
that rarely moves depending on how powerful other pieces are.
#Post#: 738--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 4:24 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Martin0 link ---
>
> How about some of the "cannon fodder" having a special move to
move several pieces during the same turn. Let's call the piece
infantry. An infantry can move can move up to 5 squares either
horizontally or vertically (like a rook with maximum 5 squares).
All infantry pieces within a 5x5 square can perform an army
movement. In an army movement all pieces performing the movement
must move the same amount of squares in the same direction.
>
> This would allow many pieces to move during the same turn and
with several captures at the same time. If there are some really
strong pieces which makes killing several infantry pieces in one
move relatively easy, then I'm not really worried about this
army movement to be too powerful. Maybe still just weak pieces
that rarely moves depending on how powerful other pieces are.
>
--- End Quote ---
Great idea!
And yes, the pieces I mentioned above could easily decimate an
army.
#Post#: 739--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: HGMuller
Date: April 1, 2018, 4:48 pm
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To speed up development you could have an 'Air Lift' piece,
which moves as a Queen jumping an arbitrary number of pieces,
cannot capture, but can optionally take any or all of the
adjacent pieces with it, if the correspondingly adjacent square
of its target square is empty. This allows moving 9 pieces at
once, so that more pieces can be used in the same number of
turns. And it allows weak pieces (staeppers and other
short-range leapers) to move to a place that would take them
10-20 moves to reach otherwise, without making these pieces
individually strong.
#Post#: 740--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 5:14 pm
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--- Quote from: HGMuller link ---
>
> To speed up development you could have an 'Air Lift' piece,
which moves as a Queen jumping an arbitrary number of pieces,
cannot capture, but can optionally take any or all of the
adjacent pieces with it, if the correspondingly adjacent square
of its target square is empty. This allows moving 9 pieces at
once, so that more pieces can be used in the same number of
turns. And it allows weak pieces (staeppers and other
short-range leapers) to move to a place that would take them
10-20 moves to reach otherwise, without making these pieces
individually strong.
>
--- End Quote ---
Interesting. I have a feeling that this piece could be able to
carry a lot of Infantrymen.
#Post#: 741--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 6:01 pm
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Alright, I have a feeling we'll be basing this on variants like
HTML [url=http://"
HTML http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/contest/scirocco.html"]Scirocco[/url]<br
/>and
HTML [url=http://"
HTML http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/contest/typhoon.html"]Typhoon[/url].
I've renamed the Infantry piece to Infantryman and armies to
squads.
I made some rules about squad:
When an infantry moves, all of the friendly pieces (and
Infiltrators/Guerilla-affected pieces) inside the squad move,
but not any piece beyond the squad unless an Officer is present.
If a piece cannot normally make a move, it cannot make that move
during an squad move, it may only move the maximum distance in
that direction (if it even can move in that direction).
If an infantryman is immobilized, so will its associated squad
unless it untied by an Officer with another one.
When an infantry member (or Guerilla-affected pieces) in an
infantry move collides with a friendly piece, it may not move
further.
I've also come up with pieces that can make squads less
powerful.
Interceptor - All enemy pieces within a 5x5 radius of it cannot
partake in an squad move. Moves like an Infantryman.
Infiltrator - When entering an enemy squad, it will move with
that squad but it will still be able to capture enemy pieces.
Moves like an Infantryman.
Assassin - When it captures an Infantryman, all of the members
of its corresponding squad gets captured as well. Moves like an
Infantryman.
Here are some other pieces:
Officer - When in a squad, all overlapping friendly squad will
move with that squad. Moves like an Infantryman. A group of
squads united by an Officer or Airlifter is called a platoon.
Driver - When in a platoon/squad, all pieces inside it will be
able to move like an Infantryman during an squad move. Moves
like an Infantryman.
Scout - Unable to move unless it is a squad move.
Guerrilla - When in an platoon/squad, all enemy pieces inside
that platoon move as well but cannot capture (unless they are
Infiltrators). Moves like an Infantryman.
I've decided we should have 4 Infantrymen, 4 Scouts, 2 Drivers,
2 Officers, and 1 Guerrilla.
Also, we will be upgrading the board size to 50x50 due to the
new concepts being added in.
#Post#: 742--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: ubersketch
Date: April 1, 2018, 6:20 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm pretty surprised this turned into a hot topic. I guess I
didn't realize how many people would be interested in some
project I started with barely any planning.
#Post#: 746--------------------------------------------------
Re: A Chess variant to surpass Taikyoku
DIR By: Martin0
Date: April 2, 2018, 3:52 am
---------------------------------------------------------
How many pieces do you intend to use? When I talked about the
infantry piece I was thinking of maybe having about 250 infantry
pieces in a 50 x 5 area (if we're using a 50 x 50 board). Maybe
a bit less or more depending on the other pieces and if you want
to have a few holes in the infantry piece area (empty squares)
or if you want the infantry to cover a larger area (such as 500
infantry pieces in 50 x 10 area).
Regardless, I would like to know how many pieces you want to use
and how many types of different pieces. If it is around 800
pieces for each side, then I don't really think it is a good
idea to have a lot of different types of pieces that you have
only 1, 2 or 4 of each. We don't want over 100 types of pieces
with different rulesets, that's for sure (who would even
remember those rules?).
Also, I'm not really sure if I really understand the last post.
What is your definition of how big a squad is? I had it as a 5x5
area you can choose wherever you want, but is your squad related
to where the infantryman is located instead? I am not at all
worried about squads being too powerful, but rather the
opposite. Too weak compared to moving the most powerful pieces.
I would also prefer if squads was only related to how pieces
move, not how other pieces captures pieces that are a member of
a squad and no piece that interacts with enemy squads. Captures
that cover an area is already some sort of counter since army
movement encourages your pieces to be close to each other.
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