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Andy, thank you very much for the comment; it was about as good as I could have hoped for. I appreciate especially that you like Fortress. Truthfully, I'd expected the objections to a much larger game would come from people who think 'fort' is too big to play. The methods of playing very very large games in a limited viewing area have pretty much been worked out over the years in computer games [wargames, RPGs, and fusions such as Civilization by Sid Meier]. The method uses 2 'maps', or views of the board, a tactical [close up or 'normal' size view] and a strategic [a very small version of the gameboard, all or a major part of which fits on the screen at once]. This is, admittedly, a departure for chessplayers, because chessboards are so small they easily fit on a computer screen at a 'normal' size. But it works quite well and is very easy to get used to, as long as the game mechanics take into account the need to switch between 2 map sizes. The real question is what sort of game mechanics can make a game with several hundred pieces 'humanly playable.' And in a reasonable number of turns. I think I have one good answer, and it'll be coming up fairly soon.
fortress chess sounds good 100x100 sounds retarded, how will you pl,ay it you will need a gigantic game courier preset or a bike (or segway) to get from one end of the board to the other
fortress chess sounds good 100x100 sounds retarded, how will you pl,ay it you will need a gigantic game courier preset or a bike (or segway) to get from one end of the board to the other
The superlarge testbed game, Fortress Chess, seems to be clunking along rather well, even though it's quite early in the game. The problems forseen are all because I overstuffed the game to test a bunch of things at once. A more streamlined piece mix and setup should solve what's expected to be more annoyance than problem. The last question to answer is the one of combat/capture. It's not unreasonable to think that a good attack would result in 6 captures in a turn, and a really good one to get 12 captures in 2 turns, while holding the opponent to 4-6 total. Is this reasonable? Well, with 16 pieces per side, a loss of one FIDE piece accounts for about 6% of the player's total pieces. With 100 pieces/side, losing 5-10 pieces is the equivalent of losing one piece of lesser or greater strength in FIDE. Conclusion: chess on 'very large boards' is very doable. What's next? Stay tuned [or run and hide, depending on your feelings about this] for the next step up. Is [humanly playable] chess possible on a 100x100 board?
LOL! And here I just thought you were playing Devil's Advocate. I decided to take the question seriously for purposes of an answer because I do think a lot of people will not look beyond the size. If I could squeeze all the basic info to play the game into a couple long comments, fort can't be all that hard. And I still think it's clunky as a game - I deliberately overstuffed it to test out a bunch of features. Finally, I disagree with this statement of yours: 'I was just asking whether the routes for these new multiples of four pieces could become instantly visualizable with enough practice. Your answer was no.' My 'No' was to the question: 'Is this game too difficult, by virtue of its non-visualizeable pieces, to play?' Again I say 'No!' to that. But I do agree with what you thought I said: No, the pieces aren't instantly visualizeable. But anyone can count by 2s really fast on a checkered gameboard... :-D So you are overly optimistic. ;-)
My remarks have been misinterpreted as skeptical criticism. I wasn't asking whether the game was playable. I assume it is. I enjoy the other game I reference, Knappen's Quinquereme, very much -- another inspirational game. Your example of trying to visualize future moves, e.g., knight moves, is another good point about how it isn't necessary for moves to be instantly visualizable to be part of a good game.
For more practice visualizing future moves, I recommend people play actualized potential chess, including my soon-to-be released doubly actualized potential chess, which uses pieces that exist two moves into the future. :-)
I was just asking whether the routes for these new multiples of four pieces could become instantly visualizable with enough practice. Your answer was no. I'm not so sure. As we start playing more with pieces that act on multiples, we might find ourselves becoming fluent with this. So it may be in fact that I am more optimistic than you about the future of your already aesthetically satisfying new game.
Hi, Graeme. Thanks for taking me up on the invite. I believe the game will move along fairly quickly - one thing I did was increase the tempo of the game a little - 100 pieces/8 leaders means that 1 in every 12.5 pieces in 'Fort' can move each turn. With FIDE, it's 1 in 16 at start. Even though I moved only 7 pieces, that's still better than 1 in 14 on the first move. I next plan to do a 20x30, with a more traditional battle line setup. But I need to see how Fort plays, first. I've thought of a central 'fort', and even a small 'city' in the middle of the board surrounded by a besieging army. I suspect that if this game works, we could recast any number of military conflicts as chess variants. The traditional games of non-traditional capture are Ultima[Baroque], Optima, Maxima, Rococo, Fugue... but you are looking at doing a more military game. I recently tried that myself in the utterly ignored SpaceWar, my 12x16 space opera entry into the field. I'd love to discuss ideas with you on that. We might get a game people would actually play! [Even if it's just us. lol] Like your ideas about the possibilities. Got some truly strange ideas about what can be done with an actual 'large variant'. Yes, David, 12x12 *is* small [and I'm doing my darnedest to prove it]. ;-)
Ah, the Voice of Doubt speaks... ;-) Truthfully, you've expressed what I imagine most people would think as soon as they see this game: 'It's too big! How can I ever understand it, much less play it?' Maybe you're right, maybe it is too complicated for anyone to even be able to play... My original answer went on a lot longer, and got nowhere, so I'll give you the short answer: No. This is not too hard to play. It is a bit more complex than FIDE, with a few more things to remember, but it's a lot more straightforward and much easier to understand how to play well than Alice, for example. On a 1-10 scale, with tic-tac-toe as 1, checkers as 2 and chess as 3, this is 4, max. There are 10 piece types, some of which can get modified by 5 movement symbols. Not all that bad, maybe; let's look a bit... The diamond symbols are speed limits for the familiar FIDE sliders. Yeah, you have to count to 4, 8, or 12, but you do that sort of thing anyway in chess, figuring turns in advance, where a knight can get, can this pawn queen before... And the use of the other 4 symbols is as obvious, and they only apply to the modern elephant and dabbabah. It comes down to interest. If you're interested, this is not difficult to learn, given any familiarity with variants, in my opinion.
Hi Joe - Warchess is already taken I think! ;O)
What about Chessgaming?
I am wondering how far Chess can be pushed towards Wargaming without losing the essential Chess features you list. The wargaming areas where Fortress seems a bit light are melee and missiles. I'm currently exploring the possibility in my own designs of replacing the chess 'replacement capture' with a Diplomacy like melee phase where captures result from non-random assessment of a pieces attack/support. Such a system would also enable the introduction of missile pieces that can attack/support from a distance (possibly needing a screen as with the Cannon?).
As for the initial set-up I think mimicking a traditional ancient wargame battle array with a line of skirmishers backed by central infantry and cavalry wings might be worth exploring. And maybe a central fortress?
Another, as yet totally undeveloped idea, is the introduction of 'terrain' via offboard multi-cell static pieces dropped prior to the first proper movement phase.
And I just couldn't resist the invite - even though I'm a pretty poor chess player and an even worse ancient wargamer.
Hi, Graeme. Sheesh, dude, I'd accuse you of reading my notes, except you got the name a little wrong. I actually call the genre Warchess [shorter names make better titles]... :-) Seriously, thank you for the compliment, and you are right; this is an attempt to push chess right to the edge of wargaming, but still keeping it chess and not a combat simulation wargame. The specific chess features that I think are key here are: perfect information; symmetrical armies; no random events [eg: combat results table]; checkmatable [high] king; directional pawns; and the essential 'chessness' of the pieces [in that they are in theory an 'army', but in practice, each piece has moves that are very non-real-world]. I hope you find it worth the anticipation. It still has to 'play well' to be any good. A game that size that plays poorly, or merely 'okay', is a catastrophe. I think fort is a bit of a kludge. I think it has too many pieces [100/side] and an awkward starting setup [too deep]. I'm also trying to test several things at once, which is rarely a good idea. But I think it's got a real shot at playing well in its simplest, easiest form, and is also very tweakable, if necessary. I'm ready to find out now, the invite is up.
I've been following the development of Fortress Chess with great interest and eagerly await it being played. It seems to me that this variant is actually going someway to bridging the divide between Chess and Wargaming.
Wargaming rules usually include elements governing missiles, movement, melee, morale and command. Fortress Chess can at a stretch be said to incorporate 4 of these: command through its hierarchy of leader pieces; movement through its short-, mid-, and long-range pieces which can be seen as cognates for (ancient)wargaming's troop types of infantry/cavalry with light/medium/heavy armour; melee through the usual replacement capture; amd morale by the ladder of promotion with pieces getting stronger as they achieve success in battle.
In fact I think Fortress Chess may well mark the start of a new gaming genre - not merely another Big-board CV, but the first example of 'Warfare-Chess'.
I'm looking forward to future developments
Hi, Abdul-Rahman. My 3 comments on this specific topic are on 3/11 [1] and 3/14 [2]. But I'll to try to lay it out in a simple form right here. The piece set is Alfaerie: Many. All the standard FIDE pieces are used: King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, kNight, Pawn; as are the 4 basic ancient pieces: Ferz, Wazir, Alfil, and Dabbabah, although these 4 are mostly combined with each other. All these pieces have their standard moves. Combo pieces: The modern Elephant combines the piece icons for Ferz and Alfil, and may move like either one. The Warmachine combines the icons for Wazir and Dabbabah, and may move like either. In general, any combo piece that contains only basic piece icons moves as any one of the icons. To generate intermediate-range pieces, 5 easy movement rules [patterns] are defined. They are represented by simple symbols. These symbols are combined with the basic piece icons to generate families of pieces. The symbols are: Diamonds: 1, 2, or 3 small black diamonds on FIDE Qs, Rs, and Bs mean those pieces may move only 4, 8, or 12 squares maximum in a turn. Squares: An elephant or warmachine with a square around the central icon mave move as either or each of its components [in either order] in a straight line. [Currently found in Chieftain Chess II] Circles: An elephant or warmachine with a circle around the central icon may move as either or both of its compnents, and may change directions between the steps of its move. [Found in Lemurian Shatranj] 2 Parallel 'Speed' lines: All these pieces are 2-step linear riders. A modern elephant with what looks like an equals sign on its right side may move as an alfil or ferz, then as either of the 2 [not necessarily the same as the first time] again, in a straight [diagonal] line. [Grand Shatranj] Zigzag Speed line: very similar to the 2 parallel speed lines, this symbol looks like a 'Z' on the right side of the piece. A modern warmachine with this symbol may move as a wazir or jump as a dabbabah, then do either again, and may change directions between steps. [Atlantean Barroom Shatranj] The leader units are Guards, plain and fancy. A leader moves 1 square for each 8-pointed star on its icon. Leaders with a grey tint may change directions during their move. If they don't have a grey tint, they are linear movers. The Marshall, 3 stars with grey tint in the center, moves up to 3 squares, changing direction as desired, and may leap any adjacent square to land in the square directly across from the original square. This counts as moving 2 squares, so the piece may only slide 1 more square during its turn. No piece may make a null move. Before any piece can move, it must be activated by a leader. Each leader, including the king, may activate 1 piece per turn. Activation ranges: L1 = 2 squares; L2 = 4 squares; L3 = 6 squares; marshall = 12; king = 99. That's all of it. If anything at all is unclear, let me know.
After Jeremy created the pieces for Fortress Chess, Antoine Fourriere was kind enough to put them into the Alfaerie: Many piece set, so the game is on the board. If you shrink it to around 50% size [I used various methods that gave me between 52% and 45%], you can see the entire board at once. Put it in a second window with the full-size game in the first, and you've got everything, basically. Following is the URL: /play/pbm/play.php?game%3DFortress+Chess%26settings%3Dfortresschess1 Playtest is just beginning. I encourage people to kibbitz the game or leave comments here. And they don't all have to be nice. I'd expect some people would think what I'm doing is ridiculous on the face of it. Feel free to call me an idiot, but please give some reason why. And if you're sure it could be done better, or as good, in a different way, please tell me how. This seems to be a rather new field, and there is a lot of room in it... :-)
The superlarge test game design outline is just about finished. After clearing up a few loose ends, it can be taken to the board. One thing not discussed yet is castling. Because we have those big, beautiful 'forts' in the corners, there is a good place to castle into. So we'll work out some castling options in the rules. The leader rules are quite nebulous. There are a number of ways we can handle leaders; the simplest way is probably the best for now. 'Leaders have specified 'activation ranges'. Leaders can activate any one friendly piece within range.' More realistic/advanced/difficult rules can be looked at later for play balance if necessary. But the simple requiring of activation for a piece to move gives us a lot in controlling superlarge games' tendencies to get out of control. Any leader can move a queen across the board, but how does the queen get back? Leaders are a new class, 'semi-royal' pieces. Loss of one does not end the game, but it does penalize the losing player more than just losing a non-royal piece, because the player also loses movement opportunities. I fully expect using several leaders will prevent the superlarge game from becoming either tedious and boring or going chaotically out of control. [How's that for putting yourself out on a limb?] Now it's time to demonstrate just how well all these ideas will really work. Jeremy Good has generously given me enough rope to han... um, has created a number of new Alfaerie piece icons that will allow testing of all the ideas presented here. Jeremy, thank you. Without your help, I couldn't have done this. [Maybe not everyone will thank you for this.] I'd also like to thank those who poked, prodded, and contributed to this so far, including, but not limited to, Mats, David and Greg. There is one final loose end which I am leaving hanging, for now.
'If you think the piece is worth a Bishop, you will trade it for a Bishop; and in that game, it will only have been worth that much. This is why playtesting without the theory of piece values could never succeed in establishing values well enough to make chess armies that were equal in strength, yet different. (And when I realized in 1976 that playtesting alone, would not do the job, I set out to create the theory!)' - Ralph Betza, in Revisiting the Crooked Bishop
Rose Chess XII is almost complete - not sure if low piece density on a 12x12 board still qualifies as a Large Variant these days :>) My theories on piece values (and how they change as the boards get larger) are part of the background to Rose Chess XII, so it would be reasonable to include a few explanatory paragraphs on the game page. Not sure if I can come up with precise values for the Rose and Bison, however.
Those who prefer their Bisons broken down into Camels and Zebras can check out Samarcanda and its newly posted preset. The Noblemen in this game move like Crooked Bishops.
Hey, Greg, great! Cataclysm looks very nice; we'll have to play a game. I like the low density, and that you're starting to stretch out the piece ranges. We need some good midrange pieces. And 12x16 is a nice size to work with. It's a clear bump up in size, by a factor of 3, giving scope for a lot of ideas. Welcome to insanity in a big way!
I have just submitted my contribution to the large-board CV category (called Cataclysm.) I have tried to create a variant on a large board (16x12) that develops quickly, has more strategy than tactics, has a lot of interesting pieces of similar value that can be exchanged evenly, and does not last hundreds of moves as large board games tend to. The submission should be approved soon. It also features mostly short-range pieces, so it easily fits in the Short-Range Project.
Alright, let's take a look at another piece series that will be on the board, and also what may be a side issue: battlefield promotions. The movement rules we're using allow us to easily create promotion ladders, which are an arranged piece series. So we will lay out a piece series to be used on the board in ascending order of piece power, and that order will be our promotion ladder. Let's consider the modern elephant, generic 'written' description of AF, or a combination of alfil and ferz. It's lowest 'rank' is modern elephant, written here as A/F, to indicate it moves once only, as either an alfil or a ferz. It's board icon is an elephant with an 'X' on its side. When it achieves promotion, by capturing a piece or crossing a line, say, it becomes a 2-step piece, the [linear] shaman, which moves as either A or F or moves twice, in a straight line, once each as A and F, in either order the player chooses. The basic elephant with X icon gets a square box drawn around the X, and it's written A+F. The next promo is to the bent shaman, which moves like the shaman, except that it can change direction between the first and second step of its move. The icon is the elephant plus X with a circle around the X, and it's written A +/- F. The next is to oliphant, a linear, 2-step, modern elephant-rider, symbolized as the elephant plus X with 2 parallel speed lines on its side, written as A/F + A/F. The final one is to twisted knight, the bent 2-step modern elephant rider. The board icon is the elephant and X, with a 'Z' [2 parallel speed lines connected by an angled crossbar] on its side, written as A/F +/- A/F.
[cont'd from prev:] Alright, what have we got? We have: a king and leaders [guards]; queen; rook; bishop; knight; pawn; alfil, dabbabah, wazir; ferz for our basic piece types. That's 11 basic icons, but all or most should be familiar to players. We also have 5 Movement Patterns, 4 of which have specific identifying mini-icons to be used on the piece icons. So we've got 10 or 12 things to remember, and we don't have any medium-range pieces yet. Oof! After a few brief moments of panic, I came up with this: Christine Bagley-Jones made some fide icons with black diamond-shaped spots on them to indicate they were shortrange pieces, moving as many squares as they had dots. If I use those pieces and make each dot represent 4 squares of movement, we have 2 sets of medium-range pieces, moving 8 and 12 squares, at a cost of only 1 new movement pattern and icon. But there's still 13 things we gotta remember now, and we haven't taken this stuff to the board yet. On the plus side, we have a very versatile system with those 13 things, and many if not all are familiar. Each individual component is simple, easily explained, and visually obvious. This could work.
The first part of our 'shortrange pieces for longrange boards' discussion has given us 5 basic piece types with 5 simple symbols for easy combination. Combine the wazir and dabbabah into the warmachine. The dabbabah icon is a wheeled tower and the wazir icon is a plus sign, so the warmachine is a wheeled tower with a plus sign on its side. The generic piece can be identified like this: 'DW'. This identifies the components without specifying any particular movement pattern. Now let's define some movement patterns with the help of this example piece. Then we associate symbols with these patterns. Again, to keep things simple, we'll use the basic movement patterns discussed in TSRP. 1] Or. The warmachine may move as either one of its components, that is, like a wazir or a dabbabah. It steps 1 orthogonally or leaps 2 orthogonally. As this is the simplest movement pattern, it doesn't need anything extra on the piece icon. So a combo icon with no info other than the various piece symbols may move as any one of the pictured pieces. This can be distinguished in writing by the slash '/' symbol. Our piece appears on the board as a wheeled tower with a plus sign on its side, and in writing, it looks like this: 'D/W'. 2] And [linear]. The warmachine may move as either or both of its components, in either order. It may not change direction during this move. To the basic 'DW' icon, we will add a square around the central symbol. In writing, we will indicate this by D+W. 3] And [nonlinear]. The warmachine may move as either or both of its components, in either order. It *may* change direction during this move. To the basic 'DW' icon, we will add a circle around the central symbol. In writing, we will indicate this by a 'plus/minus' symbol: D +/- W. 4] And-Or [two-step linear rider]. Our basic DW piece may move as either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its components again. It may not change direction during this move. The basic icon gets 2 'speed lines' on its side. Written, it uses the plus sign between 2 of the [written] piece symbols: D/W + D/W 5] And-Or [two-step nonlinear rider]. Our basic DW piece may move as either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its components again. It *may* change direction during this move. The basic icon gets 2 speed lines connected by a crossbar, making a 'Z' on the piece side. Written, it uses the plus/minus sign between 2 of the [written] piece symbols: D/W +/- D/W.
You can also add extra pieces on superfluous squares, provided they add up to less than one line.
(See my preset for Dual Chess.)
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