Comments by streetmansd

This is the third of four parts on Spartan Chess:
   1. Spartan Chess – The Dream
   2. What makes Spartan Chess Different? 
      - Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop
   3. Spartan Chess – The Process
   4. Spartan Chess - The Business

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SPARTAN CHESS – THE PROCESS

I thought about a chess variant for some time and there were a number of considerations I had in mind. These included: 1) historical rationale, 2) asymmetry, 3) different pieces on both sides, 4) different pawns on both sides, 5) play balance, and 6) fun. When I arrived at the overall idea for Spartan Chess I added one additional consideration and that was 7) two Kings one side.

1) Historical Rationale
Spartans vs. Persians is really all that needs to be said about the historical rationale. 

2) Asymmetry
In orthodox chess you can make a lot of equal trades. You can trade a Knight for a Knight or a Rook for a Rook for example. By design, every time you make a trade in Spartan Chess you have to consider how you are shifting the balance of power since there are no “equal trades”. From the start the “power hierarchy” of the pieces was created to enforce asymmetry. These piece values are still being worked on but rough values for the pieces in Spartan Chess are:

Queen		9
Warlord	        8
General	        7
Rook		5
King		5-  (the extra Spartan King)
Bishop	        3+  (plus 1/2 point pair bonus)
Lieutenant	3+
Knight		3
Colonel	        3+-

Just after winning a game as the Persians one play tester commented something like, “This is irritating. I never knew where I stood, what trades to make. Things just aren’t equal. I think this is a problem.” I said “Yeah, that is a good point” while thinking to myself “He just won a hard fought game and is grumbling about the asymmetry. Mission accomplished!”

3) Different pieces on both sides
First there was the consideration of what army to use for the Persians? It’s already done, the FIDA army is the Persians. The Persians had highly mobile fast moving army with such pieces as their chariots and elephants (rooks and bishops) and is quite regular and beautiful. I suppose that you might expect this after more than 500 years of development and play test :)

For the Spartans I thought about achieving two goals; asymmetry and what I call “Spartaness”. 

In my early designs I used the Chancellor and Archbishop from Capablanca chess on the Spartan side as the Warlord and General. Thus the Persians had the most powerful piece, the Queen. The next two most powerful pieces were the Warlord and General. The next 2 most powerful pieces were the Rooks. Asymmetry was well underway. 

Next the Captain and Lieutenant were created as pieces to fight very well with their hoplites. They were slow moving, supportive and capable. So with two Spartan Kings, hoplites in place of pawns, and the minor pieces the Captain and Lieutenant I felt I had a good degree of Spartaness on the black side. 

4) Different pawns on both sides
The Spartan have hoplites in place of pawns. Hoplites are a form of berolina pawns that differ in that they can jump, not just slide, two squares on their first move. Six different configurations for pawns were tried before settling on the modified berolina pawn. The first was a hoplite that moved like a pawn and captured like a checker. That was quickly discarded. Getting the hoplite “right” took the most work.

7) Two Kings one side
The Spartans have two Kings and their second King, based on testing, is nearly as valuable as a Rook.

What makes the two Kings work is their situational check immunity, duple-check and duple-mate. These rules just naturally evolved as we realized that the rules being play tested just were not good enough. We tried total check immunity when the Spartans had 2 kings and we tried no check immunity at all. The first was somewhat OK and the second a complete disaster for the Spartans. 

The first game where we tried duple-check (if both Spartan Kings are under attack one must escape attack on the next move) there was very entertaining and dynamic game. The Spartans had 2 Kings, some hoplites and their two Captains marching across the center of the board. With no duple-check rule there was nothing to stop them on their slow path to promoting their hoplites. With duple-check the Persians were able to zip around both flanks and rear of the Spartans delivering duple-check after duple check eventually out maneuvering the Spartans and winning a still close fought the game. Further play tests proved the duple-check rules good ones. And this game seemed to underscore the historical point that if the Spartans let the Persian outmaneuver them then the Spartans should loose.

5) Play Balance
We kept tweaking the rules play test after play test until we achieved at what we felt was play balance. The rules we arrived at were exactly the same as we final version except that the General moved like a Chancellor rather than a Crowned Rook. 

Fortunately Mr. H.G. Muller entered the picture and modified his Fairy-Max to be able to play Spartan Chess. We soon discovered from running hundreds of computer vs. computer matches that Spartan Chess favored the Spartans 2:1. 

Both Mr. Muller and I altered the major Spartan pieces, the General and Warlord in attempts to achieve balance. He tried them both as crowned and I tried making one or the other a Bishop + Dababa or a Rook + Afil and so on. Coincidentally we both tried the General as a Crowned Rook and the Warlord as an Archbishop and as if by magic equality was achieved. The last 100 games I ran with this configuration yielded this result: 39 Persian wins/40 Spartan wins/ 21 Draws. Mr. Muller had similar results.

I shed a few tears over electing to make the General a crowned Rook rather than a Chancellor but play balance is THE BOSS. I bowed to him.

6) Fun
I have had fun creating and the play testers have had fun playing Spartan Chess. I hope you have some fun too.

**Interesting factoid from my research**
Did you know that the commander of the Kings 300 man bodyguard was given a rank that indicated he commanded a cavalry unit?

This is the second of four parts on Spartan Chess:
   1. Spartan Chess – The Dream
   2. What makes Spartan Chess Different? 
      - Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop
   3. Spartan Chess – The Process
   4. Spartan Chess - The Business

   --------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT MAKES SPARTAN CHESS DIFFERENT?
    - Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop

There are several unusual features of Spartan Chess and a couple that are (maybe) unique.

1. Unusual – Different Armies
Spartan chess pits two completely different chess armies against each other. With the exception of their Kings, every Spartan piece differently than that of the Persians (FIDA). While this is by no means unique, only a percentage point or two of chess variants vary the chess pieces between sides.

2. Unusual – Historical Rationale
There is a historical rationale for the opposing sides; Spartans vs. Persians. While the origin of Chess is debated (did it originate in India or Persia?) I naturally accepted the FIDA army as the Persians. While designing the Spartans I tried to capture the flavor of a more slowly moving, solid, mainly foot-soldier army. Of the chess variants with different armies only a fraction of those try to represent historical armies. A historical rationale is an unusual feature, not a unique one.

3. Unique – Spartan Hoplites or Spartan pawns
Spartan Chess features pawns on the two sides with different capabilities. The Persian uses traditional pawns of course. The Spartan uses hoplites in place of pawns and move differently than pawns. The use of different types of pawns on opposing sides is, it seems, unique.

4. Unique – Two Kings
In Spartan Chess the Spartans field a chess army with two Kings. This is a part of the historical rationale owing to the fact that the Spartans did, in fact, have two Kings. Placing two fully royal Kings on one side along with rules to make that work, including situational check immunity and duple-check, is a unique feature of Spartan Chess.

Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop
Everything around chess has already been done before, hasn’t it? Over the years, as I thought about chess pieces and game variants, I would come up with an idea. I would then visit the various wikis and the CV website and find that it had already been done (*sigh*). Not so with different pawns on different sides. “Why?” I thought, “Was it just too hard?” I stuck with this idea until I came up with the additional idea of the Spartan army and two Kings and then developed this chess variant. There is still, a part of me that is waiting for someone to step forward and say something like “Well, this has all been done before. See my web link to Mr. T. H. Chesserman’s game Lacemedonian (i.e. Spartan) Chess invented in 1884”. So I sit, “Waiting for the other shoe to drop”.

Haaa! :)

The first end game study, made to clarify rules concerning check and duple-check, contained a flaw! Well, it did serve it purpose and it did clarify the point. 

This reminds me of the play testing we did. Because we placed “testing the game” as more important than “ruthlessly beating our opponent” we allowed liberal amounts of take-back-zies. It was not infrequent that we would make a move and then moments later say “Whoops, your piece can move like that, my move was dumb” and we would take the move back. Sometimes we would backtrack 3 or 4 moves because the error someone made was so glaring. We could easily do this recording the game in reversible long algebraic notation.

Wow! Duple-check and mate and 5 moves. We have yet to have a duple-check and mate in an actual game.

Yes, I see your point regarding the hoplite. 
I am making the change now.

Unnecessary and certainly not used in sample game.

I ran 100 games overnight with:
G = R + K
W = B + N

Result was (W/B/d):
39/40/21

Relative Strength
I meant to pose this question in my last post but it slipped my mind. What
do you have to say about the relative strength of these two sets of
pieces?
1. Crowned Rook: R + K vs. R + Afil (jumps 2 squares diagonally)
2. Crowned Bishop: B + K vs. B + Dababa (just 2 squares orthogonally)

At first blush I though the jumping piece in each pair would be stronger
but now I am not so sure.

Setup
With the set up of the back rank not mattering so much I am standardizing
on using the setup in the rules: l g k c c k w l

Download Fiery-Max
I just downloaded Fiery-Max and it has the Warlord as uncrowned B+N and the
General the same way, that is R+N. I will change the General to a crowned
general by changing fmax.ini and start running games.

Weakening General and Warlord
My weakening both the the General to a (R + Afil) and the Warlord to a (B +
Dababa) is certainly too much a shift in favor of the Persian.

Knife Edge
It does not take much to change the balance a lot, just has to be the
change.

54% winning advantage for white sounds great. 

If I understand correctly
General = R+N
Warlord = B+K

I will download your new version and find out.

Also, it seems you have a faster computer than I do :)

Here is what I think I have deduced so far…

For second part of vector:
3 = Any distance slide to move or capture
5 = capture only
6 = move only
7 = Jump to move or capture
64 = first move only, movement no capture
E4 = first move only, jump, no capture

Now I just have to figure the first part, the destination square.