ok, i'll have to come back and read more carefully later, but one thing i
noticed is something to the effect that wider boards help increase the
value of diagonal movers more than orthogonal movers. i have had no
experience that would even remoately back up such a claim. in david
short's doublechess, a game in which the board is 16x8, the bishop is
severely weakened by the width of the board. it's well-known that
increasing the board size weakens the knight, but in doublechess the B is
hurt almost as much as the N by the board change (comparing to 8x8). the
fact that it is more likely to attack the opponent's camp in 2 directions
rather than 1 is small compensation for the fact that it often takes 10
moves or move to get the bishop from side of the board to the other. the
rook, on the other hand, is not affected at all. in fact, when studying
the relative values of pieces on different sized boards, it is my claim
that all other things being equal, the rook is the most consistent piece
from board to board, and should be the baseline against which other pieces
are measured.