💡📝Daniil Frolov wrote on Fri, Apr 1, 2011 03:13 AM EDT:
Well, of course, it's most probably not the first chess, but i think that it can be roughly balanced opponent for FIDE chess in Chess with Different Armies:
Powers of pawns, bishops, knights and rooks are similar. General and advisor with special moves are better than one king (i think). And two elephants with pawns, already advanced on 3rd rank may compensate the rest value queen (correct me if i'm wrong, i know that i'm bad at counting piece values). Only promotion rules must be changed. Two variants: FIDE also promotes pawns only to captured pieces, or Shambhala chess can promote pawns to non-captured pieces (including general and advisor with special moves), while FIDE can't make new queens (elephants, maybe, but not generals and advisors).