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#Post#: 826--------------------------------------------------
Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: joejoyce Date: April 19, 2018, 12:02 am
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I'm a fan of larger variants. I don't think chess truly comes
into its own until it gets to larger boards. The 8x8 standard
Western chess board is about the minimal size you can have a
decent game on. FIDE presents a gunfight at close range. That
game is a bit of a kludge, and shows very strong edge effects -
there are only 16 squares where the knight has its full movement
range, and only 4 for bishops and queens. The rook is the only
piece unaffected in movement range by its position on a square
or rectangular board. The pawns and king are the least (which
are) affected by position, with 36 squares allowing them full
movement/capture potential. I'm also a fan of short range
pieces. This may seem an odd juxtaposition, very large boards
and short range pieces, but with a little ingenuity, and maybe a
willingness to bend some of the rules just a little, you can
work short range pieces into a large game with good results. So
what are some possible considerations for good design results in
large chess variants?
Piece density vs. clarity. Standard chess can be a game of
breakthrough or a game of attrition. Really large games with
high piece densities will of necessity be games of attrition.
Number of piece types. Often, larger variants have more
different kinds of pieces, the larger the game, the more
different kinds of pieces. Is this good, or even necessary?
Kinds of moves (including capture.) You have options for short,
medium, and long range/infinite sliders, plus various different
kinds of capture, suck as by overleaping, by custodial capture,
arrow/shooting capture...
Moves per turn. If the players can each move more than 1
piece/turn, the game will speed up considerably, an important
consideration in very large games with lots of pieces. This can
bring control issues, which can be handled in several ways.
Multi-move games tend to show significant effects in tactics and
strategy.
Board. The size and shape of the board make a difference, and
you may have terrain and dimensionality in the game also.
This is an outline of what I came up with, with a little thought
and a bit of experience. I could expound on each of the 5 areas,
but am more inrterested in hearing what others have to say, and
discussing ideas and results. And at this point, I should stop
this comment, and go check out that 50 x 50 game discussion I
saw but haven't yet read.
#Post#: 827--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: John_Lewis Date: April 19, 2018, 11:53 am
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I love this idea, the discussion.
#Post#: 829--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: Asher Hurowitz Date: April 19, 2018, 4:11 pm
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I agree that larger boards and more short range pieces make for
more fun, it's just that they don't work well together.
Multi-moves in my opinion destroy the strategy of a chess
variant if it is not specifically designed with this in mind to
combat any unfair play. Having many many different pieces makes
the game feel more proportionally like a battle than even
Orthochess does, and while technically it hurts the game having
twenty bishops just isn't any fun when you can have Drunken
Elephants and Eastern Barbarians.
#Post#: 830--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: joejoyce Date: April 19, 2018, 8:08 pm
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[quote author=Asher Hurowitz link=topic=127.msg829#msg829
date=1524172296]
I agree that larger boards and more short range pieces make for
more fun, it's just that they don't work well together.
Multi-moves in my opinion destroy the strategy of a chess
variant if it is not specifically designed with this in mind to
combat any unfair play. Having many many different pieces makes
the game feel more proportionally like a battle than even
Orthochess does, and while technically it hurts the game having
twenty bishops just isn't any fun when you can have Drunken
Elephants and Eastern Barbarians.[/quote]
Thanks for the comment, Asher. I actually essentially agree with
you here, with the major exception of thinking short range
pieces don't go with large boards. They go together beautifully,
imo. And I think I can demonstrate it. Even demonstrate it in
chesslike large multi-move games, although there seems like
there's a practical limit to the size and numbers of moves vs.
pieces, and the board size. I think 50 x 50 is a stretch for a
pure chess game. HG makes the excellent argument against very
large games with 50% starting piece densities that you need up
to 1000 turns to move each piece once at 1 move/player turn. And
that's the beginning of the opening. Might need to stay
overnight to finish that game face to face...
Personally, I think your key argument is: "Multi-moves in my
opinion destroy the strategy of a chess variant if it is not
specifically designed with this in mind to combat any unfair
play." Based on all my experience, you are absolutely right. And
it is devilishly hard to design a good multi-mover that uses
chess strategy and chess strategy only in the game. The
accidental 3 moves/player turn Granlem Shatranj is the only game
I've achieved this in, and I haven't yet demonstrated the way
I've done it generalizes well, or at all, to larger games with
more moves/turn. I guess I need to look at Granderlem Shatranj,
then look at creating several different small armies of 5 - 10
board squares across, stacking them together side by side, and
go from there. Somewhere around that size range is the 'sweet
spot', an army and zone size big enough to give an interesting
game within each movement zone, enough pieces to send some to
neighboring zones without totally stripping the sending zone's
defenses, yet small enough to make each 'zonal game'
fast-moving. 10 zones of 5 squares across lets 10 pieces/turn
move in the 50 x 50 game. And while this does change the
strategy, it doesn't make that strategy any less chesslike.
Instead, it gives you 10 simultaneous subgames which are all
chess, albeit with the constant possibility somebody will get
ganged up on each turn, because pieces only have to start in
their zones, not end in them. Whichever zone they end in is
their new zone for the following turn. If you look at the flow
of the pieces in the 2 Granlem Shatranj games completed at
chessvariants.com, you'll see how it works. The 3-mover is a far
better game with all its flaws than the original 1 move/player
turn game.
#Post#: 852--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: joejoyce Date: April 23, 2018, 7:14 pm
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Okay, here is Granderlem Shatranj:
HTML http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game%3DGranderlem+Shatranj%26settings%3DGranderlem1<br
/>I might have tried to do too many things in it, as there are 2
differences from Grandlem. First, it's bigger, to see if we can
get good pawn (and piece) play on both wings as well as the
center. Second, it introduces a 4th move, specifically a pawn
move, tied to the king alone. Normally I make only 1 change at a
time to a game that's working, so if it fails, I know what to
blame. Making a bunch of changes not only confuses the issue, it
makes it very difficult to pin down where the failure occurred,
and why. If anybody's interested in playtesting this, it's
available at chessvariants.com.
The two games mentioned above are an attempt to explore large
multimove chesslike games, rather than chess wargames. What's
the difference? I believe it's the amount of coordination among
all the moves in one turn of a wargame vs the essential
'aloneness' of the chess piece making a move. The most
chesspieces can do is cooperate in, one at a time, advancing a
goal. Then they stand out there, waiting to see if they will be
slaughtered for their temerity. In a wargame, the object is to
attack an area so overwhelmingly the defense is obliterated, and
thus will not be able to counterattack and exact casualties of
its own. And in a multi-move chess game, that overwhelming
attack which cannot be evaded or countered afterwards is the
source of much (perceived?) unfairness in these sorts of games.
So you must design to control where and how pieces move each
turn, to limit coordination, but not so much as to also rule out
cooperation among neighbors. That's the idea behind GLS and
GdrLS. It's a top-down approach.
#Post#: 854--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: joejoyce Date: April 23, 2018, 10:28 pm
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The bottom-up approach to large multimovers starts with pieces
and then graduates to groups of pieces. One of the things that
usually differentiates wargames and chess is the number of
different piece-types there are in each game. In general, chess
has more different kinds of pieces than wargames. Even small 8x8
Western chess has 6 kinds of pieces, out of 16 per side. On an
8x8 board. With minimal terrain - the checkered pattern can be
considered terrain since bishops are restricted to/*excluded
from* one color square or the other. In a typical wargame of the
last century, you'd get infantry, artillery, and tanks. Of the
century before, infantry, cannon, and cavalry. On boards much
larger than 8x8, with roughly 4 kinds of terrain: clear, trees,
hills, buildings (up to cities).
That last bit about "the century before" describes my most
successful (as in 'playable and enjoyable', not 'often played')
large games, ranging from 12x24 through 32x32 (playtested) and a
48x64 which needs fine tuning requiring playtesting. These games
start with 50ish or more pieces on board, and get more
periodically. Players may each have a few hundred pieces on the
board, all of which could move each turn. These are
chess-wargame fusions, but they are very tightly controlled,
massively-multi-move chess variants. How big do you want your
game, and how many pieces do you want in it? To make it both big
and playable, I think you are forced to multi-move designs. The
idea of leaders controlling pieces within their own personal
zones all across the board can certainly both speed the game up
and allow most of the pieces in a giant game to be able to play
in each game, and without changing the essential character of
chessness in the overall game.
Here are some small armies, with 'leaders': 4N + 1 NWH; 4 DW + 1
DWN; 4 AF + 1 NAF...
What is a piece? Can it have a size rather than a shape, per se?
Consider chesimals, chess animals. They have a size, a number of
units making up the one chesimal. The only constraint in shape
is each unit of the chesimal being required to be touching the
'brain unit' of the chesimal, or touching a unit touching... in
an unbroken chain, just before they start their individual
moves.
HTML http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/chesimals-autonomous-multi-unit-pieces<br
/>Could the idea of small armies being chesimals work? You might
need poisoner units, that would kill any enemy units adjacent to
the one they capture...
How far can you push the combination of these ideas? Or other
ideas for playable in real time very large variants, of any
sort?
#Post#: 855--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: Martin0 Date: April 23, 2018, 11:50 pm
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I know a very common special multi-move. It is called castling.
Even though it is moving 2 pieces during the same turn it hasn't
destroyed chess.
I do agree though that you need to be very careful when
designing multi-move rules to not make them completely broken.
I don't think larger variants necessarily needs many piece
types. Games like checkers only have 1 piece type, but can still
be very fun and I don't think the board size really affects that
aspect. Larger boards only makes it easier to have more piece
types, but that does not necessarily mean more piece
types=better game.
Personally I think the board size should be made to fit the game
and not the rules made to fit the board. It is the strategic
elements that should attract to the game and not the
intimidation of the board size. Chess on an infinite plane is an
exception to that I guess since the board size being unlimited
is the key idea to that game.
#Post#: 856--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: John_Lewis Date: April 24, 2018, 12:15 am
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Have you seen this:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_chess
#Post#: 857--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: joejoyce Date: April 24, 2018, 1:12 am
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[quote author=John_Lewis link=topic=127.msg856#msg856
date=1524546938]
Have you seen this:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_chess[/quote]
Hi, John. Yes, I've been aware of Progressive for a while, and
considered playing it when I first heard of it, but decided it
was too chaotic a game to interest me. It does seem that game
would finish quite quickly, probably within 5ish turns - black
making 10 moves on turn 5 in such a game. It of course
represents just about everything I don't want, being essentially
reverse Russian roulette - when you get the gun, you aim at the
other player, then pull the trigger. Thanks for the example.
#Post#: 858--------------------------------------------------
Re: Design Considerations for Very Large Games?
By: Martin0 Date: April 24, 2018, 2:09 am
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Progressive Chess is excellent for training checkmate patterns.
I can highly recommend playing it, but I don't think the variant
is a good example of how to make balanced multi-move rules.
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