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Boolean Rithmomachia

This is a rules file for Zillions of Games, a Windows program that will let you play any puzzle or strategy board game you can feed it the rules to. With Zillions-of-Games installed, this rules file will let you play this game against your computer.

The following game is in homage to the Medieval game of numbers. It was thought that the ideas of this game should be updated and could even be utilized in the teaching of computer math.
 
In order to bring this game into the 21st Century, it was thought that it should be played upon a 3D field. To make this play as simple as possible, a 4x4x4 field was selected.
 
The playing pieces consist of two of every possible '4-bit coded' piece. Such pieces, except for the Pyramids, are two sided and have different colors of either side, black or white, but the same value (1 - 14) represented by the binary code. The Pyramids are whole pieces of solid color, two black and two white, one of each particular value (0 and 15) represented by the binary code.
 
(an extensive explanation of movement, captures and equations is included in the download)
 
When an opponent's last Pyramid is captured, or there are no legal moves or potential captures, victory is determined thus: 

Pyramid Victory: The player who has the most number of Pyramids remaining on the playing field. 
Piece Victory: The player who has the largest number of pieces, including Pyramids, on the playing field. 
Value Victory: The player whose value of pieces, including the Pyramids, on the playing field is the highest total.
The Simple Victory consists of one of the above victories.
The Compound Victory consists of two of the above victories.
The Perfect Victory consists of all three victories.

Download Instructions

Instructions on downloading this Zillions file:


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By Larry L. Smith.
Web page created: 2008-10-05. Web page last updated: 2008-10-05