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Ultima is very interesting, I play it with Zillions (not strong). However, I tried to find game annotations and I could not find any. It would be nice if you could give some games and some open sources. I wonder if there exists opening and endgame theory. Gert Greeuw [email protected]
I notice that Robert Abbott has had some correspondance where he agrees on some simple changes to the Ultima rules to correct the flaw that he saw in the original game design (that defence was more effective than offence). Would it be possible to add an Ultima variant here that incorporates the 'revised' rules? Having played Ultima (very intermittently) since my schooldays, I have to say that I think the proposed revisions make sense... regards mike
One thing I disagree with Ultima (and Rococo or Maxima) is the presence of two Long Leapers and one Withdrawer, because a Long Leaper is even stronger than an Advancer. The Immobilizer and Pincer Pawns are also too strong, (Maxima demotes them slightly.) As for the Coordinator, I am not so sure. In that respect, Chess is very balanced. (2 Knights are slightly inferior to 2 Bishops, which are slightly inferior to 8 Pawns, which are slightly inferior to 1 Queen, which is slightly inferior to 2 Rooks.) I would suggest to use a King, a Withdrawer, an orthogonal Coordinator, an orthogonal Immobilizer, two diagonal Chameleons, two Leapers capturing like the Knights in Peter Aronson's Jumping Chess, and eight Pincer Pawns moving one square forward (two if they are on their starting position). Castling, promotion (as is already the case in Rococo) and en passant are back. The Immobilizer and the Chameleon still immobilize all adjacent pieces, but the Chameleon captures a Pincer Pawn with a diagonal move. Maybe adding one or two Advancers in hand (perhaps moving like a King) would constitute a good subvariant.
During my final year in school (1972/73) I was one of a group who experimented with all sorts of chess variations, including Ultima. Our source for the rules was not very good, even the name of the game was wrong ('Ultama') and there were several flaws in the rules as we had them - we had to debug them ourselves to make a playable game since we did not know of any 'official' source. We got one 'debug' right (the Withdrawer must move directly away from the piece it is capturing) and two wrong: (a) the pawns captured by sandwiching the enemy piece between *pawns*, not between a pawn and any piece, (b) the chameleon could capture pawns even on a diagonal move. In one contrived scenario, the chameleon captured seven pieces at once by (a) starting off by withdrawing from the withdrawer, (b) en route leaping a long-leaper, (c) landing in a quadruple pawn-sandwich and (d) co-ordinating with its own king to grab the co-ordinator. Naturally we tried variations. In one we pinched two large (matching) corks from the chemistry lab, painted one black and introduced them to the game as the Protectors. A piece could move onto a Protector and, for as long as it stayed there, was immune to capture. Another variation was to rename the pawns Othellos - a piece captured by them was removed from the board and replaced by an identical friendly piece. And we didn't like the name 'co-ordinator' and tried to think of an alternatve without success. Many years later I coined the Sindarin (Elvish) word 'palangurth' based on two radicals meaning 'death from afar' with reference to its method of capture.
It looks very interesting. But since i haven't tried it i can't rate it.Just a silly question: in the Chameleon animation the example states that the Chameleon captures the enemy Withdrawer (at c1) by moving away from it. But how can that be possible? since 'The Withdrawer moves passively as an Orthodox Queen', and a long-leaper in c3 is blocking the way to an orthodox queen(since queens cannot leap). Does this mean that the chameleon can mimic two pieces at the same time?
The web page states that the Chameleon can check the King from an adjacent square and this is correct per Abbott's rules for Ultima in 'Abbott's New Card Games'. He states that a Chameleon may capture a piece if it mimics it's move in direction and distance. So a pawn can only be captured by a Rook move and a King can only be checked from an adjacent square. Leaping a Long Leaper does not invalidate the mimic of another piece. This seems illogical at first glance but really is logical. The idea is that making a capture of one piece does not prevent the capture of others. If the Chameleon had made a Rook move away from a Withdrawer that sandwiched a Pawn, both captures would be allowed. Abbott believed that leaping a Long Leaper should not preclude other captures.
The Wikipedia page on Baroque Chess currently asserts that Robert Abbott did not invent the game, as can be discovered by reading the Fairy Chessmen by Lewis Padgett. I expect this is a bunch of nonsense and have explained why in the discussion area for Wikipedia's Baroque Chess page. However, I have not read the Fairy Chessmen and cannot get ahold of a copy. If anyone has read it, would you take a moment to either confirm my suspicions or to tell me how Ultima is described in this book? If someone will confirm my suspicions that the Wikipedia author doesn't know what he is talking about, I will go ahead and change that page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_chess
Can you be a bit more specific? Where exactly would you place the Advancer and where would the Queen be placed? Would the Advancer change anyhow? You could make your suggestions to Ultima's creator himself at this page: http://www.logicmazes.com/games/ultima.html
Michael, I think the Leo is a good idea, but it is the need of diminish a little its power in this game. Unfortunatelly, Leo can conduct many stages of the openings with attack of pieces and checkmate threats, with an initial advantage for White. On possibility is that it moves like Queen, but limiting its action: it need an ADJACENT intervening piece for attack the next positions. I´ll try both of them in the next days. As it can be easely noted when you try the variant, FIDE-Queen is very powerful in Ultima, surprisingly it looks much more powerful here than in FIDE-Chess, and it is certainly more powerful than the Long-Leaper. Advancer is a little weaker, but LEO would be at least as powerful than the Queen. Peter: I have dowloaded the Rococo variants. I have not tried it yet, but I have the intuitive idea that the Archer is great for this game, but I have serious doubts about the Bird. Other thing: I have my own Gallactic Graphics and board for Rococo. I´ll send a copy to David and you, although Alfaerie are very nice too.
I dug out my copy of 'Abbott's New Card Games' (1963, Funk and Wagnalls) and the suicide rule is stated thus: 'A piece that is immobilized does have one special move that it can make, that of suicide. A player may use a turn to remove from the board one of his own pieces that is immobilized.'
i have two questions about rules i am not completely certain on. 1/ can a pincer pawn capture more than one piece (in one direction)? e.g. if there is a friendly piece on f4, and enemy pieces on f2 and f3, can a pawn move to f1 and capture both? i think this is unlikely, but i want to check. 2/ can withdrawers capture by moving away on the diagonal from an enemy piece? e.g. enemy on g5, can a withdrawer capture it by moving from f4 to e3? thanks.
1. No, a Pincer Pawn can capture up to three pieces in different orthogonal directions, but it cannot capture two pieces in a row. 2. Yes, a Withdrawer can capture by withdrawing diagonally, a Long Leaper by jumping diagonally, an Immobilizer paralyzes diagonally and though a Coordinator captures in an orthogonal way, it may be through a diagonal move (say King on d1, Coordinator moving from h1 to b6 captures enemy pieces at b1 and d6).
thanks for the swift replies. that is how i initially thought the withdrawers must operate. but when playing my game of ultima in the tournament, i got in a position to take in this (diagonal) manner, but typed in my move and the piece remained on the board. so i changed my move. until i saw ben's next move, i did not realise that i had to manually (as it were) remove the piece from the board myself with a separate command. never mind! thanks again for the clarification.
Ultima design analysis: # squares: 64 # piece types: 7 Piece-type density: 10.9% Initial piece density: 50% Power density: 84/64 = 1.31 Long diagonal: a1-h8 Est. piece values: P1, K2, W3, Co 3, Ca 4, L 5, I 8 Exchange Gradient: G = 0.505; (1-G)=0.495 Ave. Game Length: M = 3.5(Z)(T)/(P)(1-G) = (3.5*64*0.109)/(1.31*0.495) = 38 Moves Features: Unusual Pawns (pincer) may cohere with the chosen piece mix Comments: Prosaic values across the board confound evaluation.
a couple more questions. 1. can a king take by co-ordinating with the co-ordinator, or does it have to be after the co-ordinator's moves? 2. i assume that a king cannot move into check, and you have to tell your opponent if they do? i was playing against the applet linked off this page, and you have to actually capture the king rather than checkmate it. which is it? if white's co-ordinator is on f1, white's king on b1, and black's king moves onto say b7 from the c file... if the white co-ordinator has a clear run to f7, is black's move therefore illegal?
Answers: 1. can a king take by co-ordinating with the co-ordinator, or does it have to be after the co-ordinator's moves? No, King only captures by replacement. Co-ordinate capture is performed by the Coordinator, or by a Chameleon to capture an enemy Coordinator. King can´t do that. 2. i assume that a king cannot move into check, and you have to tell your opponent if they do? i was playing against the applet linked off this page, and you have to actually capture the king rather than checkmate it. which is it? Oficially, you can´t move into check. The object of the game is checkmate the enemy King. Zillions implementation adopts the 'capture-the-King' rule for technical reasons, the main reason is because if you immobilize the King and you use the checkmate rule, it is interpreted by Zillions as a Check, and it is not. 3. if white's co-ordinator is on f1, white's king on b1, and black's king moves onto say b7 from the c file... if the white co-ordinator has a clear run to f7, is black's move therefore illegal? Yes, this move is illegal, you are moving into check.
In April 2004 comment this same page I estimate those Ultima values in Design analysis: P1, K2, W3, Co3, Ca4, L5, I8, keeping integers. I haven't done C++ programming this decade, so don't know whether King's offensive value would be needed, depending on structure of program. Refining these estimates, maybe L closer to 5.5, and W>Co. [Further, I would enter P1, W3.1, Co2.9, Ca4.3, L5.3, I8.2, and see how that plays]
Try this link. It was a little awkward to find: http://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=Game+Design
Since you all provided so much input into evaluation, I thought you might be interested in the various terms I used in the Ultima evaluation function for ChessV... I used George Duke's piece values of Pawn = 1000, Withdrawer = 3100, Coordinator = 2900, Chameleon = 4300, Long Leaper = 5300, and Immobilizer = 8200. All immobilized pieces are penalized -25% of their value. The Withdrawer gets a small bonus proportional to the value of the most valuable adjacent enemy piece (provided there is at least 1 square in the opposite direction for it to move into, although it need not be vacant presently.) The Coordinator gets a small bonus proportional to the number of enemy pieces on the same rank or file as the friendly King. The Chameleon gets a couple small bonuses: for standing adjacent to an enemy Withdrawer (if there is at least 1 square in the opposite direction to move into), and when the enemy coordinator is on the same rank or file as the friendly King. The Immobilizer gets no bonuses, instead immobilized pieces are penalized. The Long Leaper also has no bonuses, but only because I have no good answers here. Roberto correctly points out that the Long Leaper is more valuable if the enemy pieces are not clustered, and not on the edge, but I cannot think of a way to determine that without spending far too much CPU time. I will continue to think about it. Also, in the opening, pieces are given a bonus for the first move (development), a small penalty for moving twice, and a large penalty for moving the same piece three or more times. These adjustments are slowly scaled down as the game progresses into the middle-game.
The bugs you metion would a dramatic effect on play skill, even with a good evaluation function. I'll have to take care of those, and post an update ... Thanks for the test-report!
Chess V, playing White, beated Zillions, 30sec. per player, in this ULTIMA test game: Zillions Save Game File Version 0.02 HC RulesFile=C:\Archivos de programa\Zillions Development\Zillions Demo\Rules\Ultima.zrf VariantName=Ultima 1. Pawn g2 - g5 1. Pawn a7 - a6 2. Pawn b2 - b5 2. Pawn f7 - f3 3. Pawn h2 - h4 3. Pawn c7 - c4 4. Pawn h4 - f4 x f3 4. Long-Leaper b8 - h2 x f4 5. Pawn c2 - c3 5. Long-Leaper h2 - e5 6. Pawn f2 - f5 6. Long-Leaper e5 - a5 x b5 7. Long-Leaper b1 - b3 7. Coordinator a8 - a7 8. Coordinator h1 - h2 8. Withdrawer d8 - c7 9. Withdrawer e1 - g3 9. Coordinator a7 - f2 x e2 10. Withdrawer g3 - h4 x f2 10. Pawn c4 - e4 11. King d1 - e1 11. Pawn e4 - a4 12. Long-Leaper g1 - g3 12. Pawn d7 - d6 13. Coordinator h2 - f2 13. Withdrawer c7 - c5 14. Withdrawer h4 - b4 14. Pawn a4 - a3 15. Long-Leaper g3 - e3 15. Pawn d6 - d4 16. Withdrawer b4 - a4 16. Long-Leaper a5 - b6 17. Withdrawer a4 - b4 17. Long-Leaper b6 - c7 18. Long-Leaper e3 - e6 18. Chameleon f8 - f7 19. Long-Leaper e6 - e4 19. Withdrawer c5 - d6 x b4 20. Pawn c3 - c4 x d4 20. Pawn b7 - a7 21. Pawn c4 - a4 x a3 21. Long-Leaper c7 - a5 22. Coordinator f2 - c5 22. Long-Leaper a5 - a3 x a4 23. Coordinator c5 - c3 23. Pawn a7 - c7 24. Pawn f5 - a5 24. Long-Leaper a3 - c5 25. Chameleon f1 - f5 25. Long-Leaper c5 - a7 26. Chameleon f5 - e5 26. Chameleon f7 - f2 27. King e1 - d1 27. Withdrawer d6 - c5 28. Pawn d2 - d5 28. Long-Leaper a7 - b8 29. Pawn a5 - b5 x c5 29. Long-Leaper b8 - b2 x b3 x b5 30. King d1 - c2 30. Pawn h7 - h5 31. Coordinator c3 - f3 x f2 31. Chameleon c8 - f5 32. Long-Leaper e4 - g6 x f5 32. Immobilizer h8 - h6 33. Chameleon e5 - f6 33. Pawn e7 - e5 34. Coordinator f3 - f5 34. Pawn c7 - c5 x d5 35. King c2 x b2 35. Long-Leaper g8 - c4 36. Pawn a2 - a3 36. Pawn h5 - h3 37. Chameleon c1 - b1 37. Pawn h3 - d3 38. Chameleon b1 - d1 38. King e8 - d7 39. King b2 - b1 39. Long-Leaper c4 - a4 40. King b1 - a2 40. Long-Leaper a4 - f4 41. Chameleon d1 - a4 41. Long-Leaper f4 - f3 42. Immobilizer a1 - d1 42. Long-Leaper f3 - h5 43. Immobilizer d1 - g4 43. Pawn a6 - a7 44. Chameleon a4 - f4 44. Pawn a7 - a8 45. Chameleon f4 - e3 45. Pawn d3 - d1 46. Chameleon e3 - d4 46. Pawn e5 - e3 47. King a2 - b3 47. Pawn c5 - e5 48. Coordinator f5 - e4 x e3 48. Pawn e5 - f5 x g5 49. Chameleon f6 - f7 49. Pawn a8 - a6 50. Coordinator e4 - e6 50. Pawn g7 - g8 51. King b3 - b4 51. Immobilizer h6 - g5 52. King b4 - c5 52. Pawn g8 - g7 x g6 53. Coordinator e6 - g6 x g5 53. Pawn d1 - d2 54. Coordinator g6 - h6 x h5 54. Pawn d2 - a2 55. Chameleon d4 - d6 55. King d7 - d8 56. Chameleon d6 - e7 56. Pawn a6 - a4 x a3 57. Chameleon e7 x d8
Comment on the game: ChessV vs. Zillions, 30 sec. per player per move. Opening was weakly played by both programs, and you can observe the that the Pawn movements are not the best in both. The game play was more tactical than positional, the pair King-Coordinator is not used in the best way, and Immobilizer potential-and-risks is not well appreciated. But Chess V 'understood' better the game philosophy, and the end was played relatively good by Chess V, although with clear deficiences by Zillions. Very interesting test game!.
Robert Abbott now has a set of Ultima puzzles on his website! http://www.logicmazes.com/games/puz1to4.html
I'm giving serious thought to slapping together a program that plays Renaissance in 68000 assembly language. Maybe Ultima (Baroque), too. Regardless of the game, I don't expect it to perform very well against machines with far faster processor speeds, but it just might produce some useful benchmarks to test your programs against. (And thanks for the link to Sourceforge; I'm sorry to say that all that C++ stuff at Sourceforge is a trifle over my head as I was raised on assembler instead of C.) Still, whatever I slap together, it only takes a handful of adjustments to change one game into the other. The only things I'm a little bit uncomfortable about are: 1 the multi-leaping rule for the Leaper, and 2 the suicide rule for immobilized pieces. Are those the main differences? As for piece name nomenclature back in 1968, we learned 'Imitator' for what Ultima calls a Chameleon. Does anybody use Mime, Mimic, or Mirror for that piece as well? The one that looks like a Bishop. You mentioned how one of the programs currently in vogue recognizes checkmate as the proper way of ending the game. But isn't the main difference between capturing the King and checkmating the King a matter of one extra ply of searching? When we used to play Baroque, we used chess clocks, and capturing the King outright just made for easier play. Finally, as for notational differences, it was my understanding that captured pieces were set off by commas between each other, all enclosed equally within a single pair of parentheses, e.g., 32. Pc2-c6 (Wc7, Lb6, Id6) <--- White's turn, taking 3 pieces Pf5-f3 (Pf3, Cg3) <--- Black's turn, taking 2 pieces The advantage to this kind of notation is that it makes for playing the game backwards just as easy as playing it forward, assuming you have a diagram to refer to. However, with the Chessish 'x' symbol, do you repeat the 'x' symbol between every piece you have captured? I don't mind much one way or the other, as the differences are purely cosmetic, but if you could describe the notational standard that is currently in place, that would be great. So, if I slap together an Ultima game using run-of-the-mill 68000 assembly language, does anybody using Windows out there have a good 68000 emulator for trying it out? For tournaments that are not face-to-face, but involve some kind of real-time processing, do you have a link that describes how those kinds of tournaments are managed? Feel free to send me email as my webbrowser tends to crash very frequently. Matthew Montchalin [email protected]
I;m currently working on an Atari ST implementation of the game of 'Baroque' - at least the way it was when I learned it back in 1968 (although we adopted the name 'Baroque' we declined to adopt Professor Abbot's 1968 Amendments). If you have a PC compatible running Windows (?) you might be able to boot up an ST emulator so you can play it against itself. From what rumors I have heard, you can use Windows to boot up a lot of ST emulators, and run a different emulation in each window. I guess wonders will never cease! To keep things interesting, I've got flags for the multi-leaping 'Long' Leaper (default is single-leaping), and the Suicide Rule (suicide is prohibited by default), which not everybody necessarily agrees on. Also, flags for center-counter symmetry (whether the Kings are both on the E file) and corner-counter symmetry (whether or not the Immobilizer is on A1 or H1). And then there are some people who prefer to use their first move to decide which Rook to turn upside down, so another flag for that option too. As for tournament play, I don't know exactly how to implement an Email/Webmail option, so I guess I'll have to leave that for the future. Direct dialing sounds like it is easier to implement, but who wants to eat the phone bills? In any case, 5 minutes per move appears to be fair, but how many minutes should we allow the 'operator attendant' to consume in typing out each move? One or two minutes? I think that the early radio chess matches of the 1940s and 1950s were mostly a matter of gentlemanly agreement, so that ought to serve as a guide for any similar Baroque/Ultima tournaments.
Back in high school (1980s) we had a variant for when we were running short of lunch break. We called it Chultima, and at each move we could play as chess, or as ultima. This made for some very short games, and most of us were howling with laughter at the (in hindsight) really stupid moves we had just made. [For some reason we had slightly different terminology: Chameleon -> Amoeba ('changed shape', or similar spurious reason) Pawn -> Roller (because they rolled up and down ranks) Long Leaper -> Leaper (could only jump a single adjacent piece like a weakened draughts/checkers king) Also, the coordinator could only take one piece at a time: in the useful direction.]
When I was playing this game I simply could not do it with a regular chess set. Being a fanatic speed-chess player of 5 min. games where you have to move mostly as a reflex, the chess personalities of the piece images were simply hard-wired in my brain. So I made a separate set of pieces, looking nothing like chess men, based on a set of checkers chips and other pieces of wood. The pawns were just plain chips (since I don't play checkers, they meant nothing to me, so no harm there). The King could of course still be represented as an ordinary chess King, since it moves like one. But for the Long Leaper I used a cylinder (remaniscent of a draughts King), for the Immobilizer a Cube (looked pretty immobile...), for the Coordinator a checkers chip mounted perpendicular on another (representing a dish antenna, symbolizing its action at a distance), for the Chameleon a spere (supported on a chip) to represent a spherical mirror in which every piece would see itself. The whole set looked quite nice, with a pretty homogeneous style.
Done! Look at http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/ultima.html
I learned this game as 'Hyperchess', with some rule differences: 1. The upside-down rook is the coordinator and the right-side-up one is the immobilizer. 2. Pawns ('straddlers') can only capture by trapping a unit between two _pawns_, not a pawn and another friendly piece (though a chameleon and a pawn or two chameleons) can capture an enemy pawn). They also capture passively: any enemy piece moving between two pawns dies instantly. 3. Knights ('Striders') cannot make multiple captures. 4. The withdrawer can only move back a single square when capturing. 5. Coordinators can capture passively: the two squares in the rectangle formed by the king and the coordinator are instant death for enemy pieces. Coordinators can also capture pieces when the king moves. Overall, I think the main effect of these differences (especially 2 and 4) is that capturing is much more difficult. The most noticeable difference between 'hyperchess' and chess is that capturing is a very rare occurrence in hyperchess.
Every game should be played by people that master the rules in order to reach a theoretical depth. It's not serious to have discussion on rules - this doesn't serve any purpose. It's impossible to find some real game theory on Ultima in the Internet. How about having it here, at the chessvariants pages? If there are any experienced players around, perphaps they would like to gather observations just in one place?
There is a better solution to 'Ultima Problem 9! The variant that I play does not allow for suicide, so barring this, the soluction is simply: White: LL at F8 -> G7, blocking all moves but a suicide, or leaping (LL H8 go have fun!)
White now threatens checkmate with LL G7->G6!
This brings up an important question of mine:
Do pieces in Baroque/Ultima have 'Kill zones' (areas of instantaneous vaporization) - That is, Do they create instant death in their 'kill zone' at all times, or must a piece move into a position to make the kill?
(ie: can my LL G7 move into G6 in above solution?)
Thanks
- Kris
Hi all, fans of ultima! Here is the only site, as I know, which gives you the possibility to play ultima on-line in real time: http://adage-studio.com:8080/universal. Rules as the official rules, as published first by Abbott. You have to register in order to play. There are also two other ultima-like games: Rococo and Supremo. I wish know whether you like the site. Suggestions are welcome.
A puzzle: Immobilizer=0, King=1, Withdrawer=1, Coordinator=2, Pincer-Pawn=3, Long-Leaper=3, Question:Chameleon=?
I'm sorry, maybe, this question was already answered in one of previous comments, but i want to ask: how chameleon exactly captures? Wich of these statements is true: 1. It can capture several pieces of different kinds with method of one of these pieces (for example, captures by custodianship 1 pawn, 1 withdrawer and 1 long leaper). 2. It can capture several pieces of different kinds, each with capturing method of that piece (for example, it can withdrawl from withdrawer, moving itself, surrounding pawn, capturing both withdrawer and pawn). 3. Can capture pieces of only 1 kind with 1 move. Probably, statement 2 is true, as here player never have to choose capturing method to use ater moving chameleon.
Apart from the Ultima piece symbols assigned to characters KMLXCWPkmlxcwp, it also contains symbols of a square (Ii) and a circle (Oo), which could be useful for other games (eg. Go).
Fascinating concept, the idea of pieces of homogenous movement differentiated only by their capture method. Perhaps not strictly a chess variant, but a unique subgenre in its own right, & one that I feel deserves more popularity. As for the game itself, there are some strange imbalances which I find surprising; why allocate 2 slots for the powerful long leaper but give pride of place next to the king to the feeble withdrawer as an standalone piece? This is the kind of imbalance one sees in older prechess variants but would not expect in a newer variant... Another issue is the overly defensive nature of the game, with current setup. Having 2 chameleons with no mutual attack method tends to stagnate and cluster gameplay in my experience. Also an issue is the increasing irrelevance of the pawns in endgames. They of course have no promotion ability, which is not feasible for such mobile pieces, and offer minimal threat to the FIDE king, due to its residual ability to capture adjacent pieces. I propose the following alterations; 1. Replace king movement with that of a knight. This adds variation to the dynamic of the game and allows the pawns to present a threat to the king, as they can now be positioned adjacent to it without fear of capture. This also increases their relevance in endgames. 2. Replace the spare long leaper and chameleon with 2 pieces of offensive type; advancer/displacer(orthodox FIDE queen)/queen moving cannon etc. 3. Allow the chameleon to capture king and pawns in the manner of their own capture, but without being restricted to their movement types. This, along with the inclusion of new powerful offensive pieces, which the chameleon the acts as a counterbalance to, makes it a much more important standalone piece, and serves as an important leveller against the power inequity of different piece types. 4. (optional) Allow the withdrawer to capture from 2 spaces of distance (this might make it a little difficult to counterract in opening play, but a far more respectable piece overall) OR merge the withdrawer and advancer, freeing up another piece slot. These alterations would, in my opinion, add a much more open, fluid, balanced, dynamic, and varied mechanic to an already excellent concept...
A question occured to me. Methods of capturing are taken from non-chess board games. Everybody know the family of games, overtaking from is. Custodianship is from Tafl games, probably also well-known. Withdrawing, if i did not confuse anything, is also from some checker-like board game (i don't remember it's name, region and time of playing). But what about coordinating? Is it also from certain board game or invented by Abbott himself? And, maybe, immobilizing is also refrence to certain game?
Withdrawing is from Fanorona, played on Madagascar. According to "Abbot's New Card Games", the Coordinator and the Immobilizer are original pieces, as is the Chameleon.
Ultima is a puzzling game in more than one sense. It seems to violate all rules for game invention. Even its inventor called it a flaw and his reasons are all pretty true. yet it is one of the most successful chesslike games, and its also one of my favorites. First point, he says, it lacks clarity. Of course it does. Playing it does not feel like playing chess at all, its more like solving a puzzle in every turn, so for every move you need much much time. Does that make it a bad game? No, it doesnt. Its exactly what we like on it. The other big point is, that it favors the defender. And so it does. This should lead to draws, at least at a high level of competition. But thats okay. Draughts and Morris are even more drawish, yet they are not bad games. If following an interesting fight it does not matter that much if it finally leads to a draw. Maybe it is even the lack of clarity that makes the game playable despite the strong defending power of its pieces. I cant see that it is bad to advance your pieces rather than stay at home. The more space youve got the more mobility you have. And what is the biggest advantage of that? To be able to bring your immobilizer in a strong position. That may be the only ugly thing of this game: that the immobilizer is too important. As far as my experience goes, he is the central piece in every successful attack. Immobilize the king and capture it with the chameleon. I rarely succeeded in winning in any other way. But yet not ugly enough yo reduce my rating.
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