Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
Luotuoqi is intended to be playable with an ordinary board and pieces. I don't see a big deal with entries that differentiate one rook/knight/bishop from the other. It will be up to the polling to see if others have issues. A similar situation applies with rules like proposal 3, The Cube. It introduces something other than the basic 32 pieces and a board. Only the voting will tell if this places the rule beyond the pale.
> Luotuoqi is intended to be playable with an ordinary board and pieces. Thank you for this clarification. > I don't see a big deal with entries that differentiate one rook/knight/bishop from the other. Well, it is not a big deal if and only if end users can easily distinguish the meanings of the pieces on the board. There appear to be three possibilities. 1. Reorient one of the two pieces of one type. For example, invert a rook. I find that ugly and undesirable. It might however work for a rook but would not work for a knight or a bishop. Piece inversion would not be nice however and would not work for play with, say, an Isle of Lewis style chess set. 2. Distinguish the two pieces of one type by the Luotuoqi rules having colourbound pieces and different rules for a piece depending upon the colour of the square upon which it stands, either expressed as colour of square or as to whether the piece and the square have the same colour or are of different colours. This would work and would, to my mind, be stylish and elegant, using information content to distinguish pieces without adding anything onto the board. 3. Distinguish the two pieces of one type by having something such as a draughts piece under one or both of the two pieces of one type: if under both, then the two draughts pieces are of different colours. However, that would then mean that the Luotuoqi game could not be played with just an ordinary chess set. > It will be up to the polling to see if others have issues. This does not follow. I am asking about the rules of the metagame, not the results of the voting on the rules for the Camel Chess game. > A similar situation applies with rules like proposal 3, The Cube. It introduces something other than the basic 32 pieces and a board. Well, it is a similar situation in some ways, yet is qualitatively different. For example, the cube could be a button, an empty herb jar, a piece of cardboard, a book, anything handy, as it is just a physical representation of a Boolean variable. Distinguishing pieces on the board with a marker would need suitable markers, which might cause problems in finding something suitable or in using them with a travelling chess set. It would, I feel, be quite in order to have more than one item off the board, so that there were more than one Boolean variable associated with the game. Maybe 'small valued integer' could also be an off the board type of item. That is part of the fun of the design process. However, my own view is that there should be nothing added on the board. > Only the voting will tell if this places the rule beyond the pale. Well, it won't. If proposal 3 is not accepted, then that could be for various possible reasons, one of which might be a feeling that the idea of having the cube is 'beyond the pale'. Any such non-acceptance might be only that some other rule is regarded as more important within the constraints of having two new rules. ---- I find a certain amusement in the possibility that an industrial psychologist might be quite fascinated by this discussion of the rules within a committee structure! Does if often (always?) happen with committees? :-)
Robert's idea makes sense. As each rule/piece is adopted, it supersedes any previously adopted proposal to the extent of any conflict. When it's all over I expect to edit the whole as a consistent rule set in any case (standardizing description formats, clarifying conflicts, etc.).
I am waiting for ROOK definition to play-test the game (I don't know the winner proposal for Rook, but I think it will be Crowned Rook (8) or Rookers (11).) My first impression is that the game is, as expected, a Camel. As Horse design, a Camel is not so bad, but it is a camel, undoubtely. If the Tower of Hanoi survives as a complete piece to the end, strategy would be extremely deep, because the optimal strategy should be to split it in eight parts, mantained joined and advancing as an amoeba against the enemy king -the subjective value of eight joined GUARDS in an end of game is much more than the value of a Queen-, if there is not another tower in enemy band, the possesor of the tower must win the game. If there is too a full Tower (splitted) in the enemy pieces, strategy must be very complex, and the end in a good game may last many moves. These are speculations, I'm going to wait for the Rook, and then, I'm going to evaluate the Camel extensively. Good luck for the designers by committee. That is needed, a bit of luck.
Thanks for the heads-up, Doug. As a result I'm editing the whole page to transform it from a contest announcement to a not-quite-finished set of rules. Later tonight. :)
I like the idea of Luotuoqi II (excuse the accent absence in writing) for Xiang Qi, and Luotuoqi III, for Shogi. But it is the need of clarify first some things: Board size, number of pieces of each type and initial setup for the new pieces, it is not absolutely necessary that this characteristics are going to be the same as in original game, only changing a piece by its substitute by consense. Fortress in Xiang Qi may be defined by commitee, too. why it must be the 9 squares from the initial game?. May be re-defined the River?. In Shogi, the designers by consense must decide where and when drops are allowed, the same with promotions. All details must be considered in the design, I think. The problem with a design by committee is that the game is not thought as a whole with an unified systemic idea, there are bits of locally good ideas that are assembled sequentially, and assembling sequence do not need to be the best, neither related to an armonious global conception of the game, so ever there is the need of a little of luck in the final results...
I expect to modify several features of the Luotuoqi process in Luotuoqi II, although the basic concept is still people making suggestions and voting on what gets in. :) If the Luotuoqi games wind up only being marginally playable, that's not necessarily all bad. Then they live up to their name, and the original inspiring quotation. But it's fascinating to see what ideas people have, and what ideas people like. And it lets some folks participate in a 'contest' who might not take part in a contest to design a whole variant. Here, if you have just one cool idea you want to throw in, you can do it.
I've been playtesting this and I find two flaws: The Diagonal Bypasser is too weak on a board of this size--since it must move at least three squares to capture, it has few opportunities. The Tower of Hanoi is much too powerful. Potentially you can make eight single stones which equals 8 commoners (non-royal Kings). This is on the high side of 16 Betza atoms (Queen=5, Amazonrider=8) just considering that the commoner is the strongest 2-atom piece. Then there must be an unknown addition for the value of the right to recombine. The endgame is entirely dominated by the tower. I've been experimenting with two revisions to address these issues: The Diagonal Bypasser can capture on any square orthogonally adjectent to its path, even though the square is also adjacent to the starting or ending square. DBb2-d4 can now capture b3, c2, c4, or d3 (but not a2, b1, d5, or e4). Thius makes it a more useful in the middlegame and fairly stong in the endgame. Te Tower's maximum move is reduced to one less than its height: a full tower can move 7 squares, a three-stone tower can move 2, a one-stone tower is immobile. You cannot split off a single stone, but can leave a single stone behind when splitting. The potential value of the tower is more like 8 atoms and considerable plus values, still dominating, but its dominance is much less absolute. Preliminary playtesting indicates that these two rules make for a more balanced game. Both Eaglet promotion and The Cube seem quite workable. Early promotion, (especially to Mules) is quite easy unless the enemy works to prevent it, but the opponent can adopt a symmetric strategy and stand pretty well. With players who use the cube sparingly (only for a large material/positional gain or to prevent a large material/positional loss), The Cube shifts the advantage to Black--making it about the same size as White's advantage in FIDE, I'd guess. If players use the cube liberally (to get small gains or prevent small losses), the game is nearer even. I suspect that a player using the cube sparingly will beat an equally skilled opponent using the cube more liberally unless the conservative player's standard's are too high (for example only to give or prevent immediate mate).
I've submitted a ZRF for Mike's Camel Chess--a variant with the enhanced Diagonal Bypasser and more limited Tower of Hanoi as defined in my previous comments. It seems to be considerably more playable, but preserves the essential flavor of Lùotuoqí. The biggest difference between Lùotuoqí and FIDE Chess (IMO) is not the Tower, the Bypasser, or the Cube but the Eaglet promotion rule--promotion is possible early and will normally occur on the player's own side of the board.
I added my contest comment right after George's comment here, and before I saw it. I like this idea, also. The wiki is a nice place to lay out something like this. Given the creative and competitive natures of many of us here, I should think a contest [or two] *and* this project could well cross-stimulate ideas. If there are a few people willing to try, we can put the framework together easily enough. Comments? One part of George's comment bears directly on the proposed contest part of this idea, and that's length of game. That's not been something I've paid much [hah! any] attention to before. But he makes an excellent point; if FIDE chess lasted 200 turns/game, I doubt it would be as popular as it now is...
In my opinion, if we were going to make a new chess variant in a similar way, I think we could do in this way: A) First, we choose the max amount of players in the variant. The users give suggestions like: 2, 1, 4, 10... Then players give ratings from 1 to 5 on each suggestion, and the one with the highest score wins. B)Then we choose the possible amount of players that will be able to play the game. Users will be able to give sugestions like, 2, 4, any odd number, any number higher than 2... This amount need to include the number we got before, if the max number we got was 10, 10 players will need to be one of the possible amount of players in the game. In this case users will not be able to suggest something like 'any number from 2 to 8'. C)Then after some suggestion wins we will choose the amount of squares on the board(s). Player can give suggestions like 80, 84, any odd number between 60 and 80 (in the case of a variant with variable number of squares).. Then the same voting process will happen. D)Then we choose the amount of boards Players give suggestions like 1, 2, any even number... and then we make the voting process. The sum of all boards squares need to fit in the suggestion we got before. E)After that, players give suggestions how the board(s) will be and we vote. F) Now we choose amount of pieces each player will have. The suggestions can be 10, 20, a number from 8 to 16 (in the case of variable amount of pieces based on rules). G) Then the amount of different pieces. The is the max amount of different pieces the game will have. This doenst means the game will start with all those pieces. In a variant were players have 39 points to spend on different pieces, players will not start with all pieces. H) How those pieces are (one piece type per voting turn). Giving suggestions and voting one piece per turn is a good idea because we vote on next piece based on the other ones already voted. But this voting process could be done in another way, on the first voting, players give pieces suggestion, only ONE piece suggestion per each suggestion a player make. Players vote on all pieces suggestions and then the most voted ones would be in the game. I) Where those pieces will be (or if player will be able to choose their starting position, or if it will be random or semi-random) on the previously voted board. J) Win/draw/loss condition. Players would be able to suggest rules together with their win/draw/loss conditions, if those rules help the game. Maybe, we could choose win condition before before we choose the pieces, so win condition would be at F, or even before we choose other stuff from the game. Or we could before making the game, vote if we would choose win condition first, if this would be the last thing or if we would choose the win condition before we choose the pieces.
I've noticed there is an error in thought on this 'rook camel' piece, probably confusion due to the name. It is said on the page though ...
'The Rook-Camel may move like a standard rook, sliding any number of clear spaces horizontally or vertically. Or the Rook-Camel may move like a non-leaping camel, sliding exactly two squares orthogonally followed by one diagonally without a leap.'
I don't know if I am missing something, but that description is not a rook camel lol, the 'camel' doesn't leap.
However, it's an interesting piece!!
Good catch, Christine. Also, here is something I wrote [2008-11-01] on George Duke's NextChess2 thread:
Regarding some recent comments: 'Super Chess' (two words) is part of a proprietary name used on the web page Cardinal Super Chess, which states: 'Because of the Cardinals' unique movement, a combination of a knight and a bishop, it gathers the initiative into one sweeping action.' This naturally leads to the mistaken conclusion that it is the usual B+N piece. But the second web page given for this commercial variant shows the move to be a non-leaping Camel. I once tested the piece on the applet provided and saw the program move a Bishop to block my Cardinal check.
Taking a trip on the WayBack Machine, I find the alternate name CSChess(c) - wouldn't a trademark make more sense than a copyright? Sad to say, the archived web pages have neither a movement diagram nor a playing applet.
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