Kevin Pacey wrote on Wed, Apr 12, 2017 06:16 PM UTC:
I believe you're right Fergus, that pieces values are useful fictions (in chess-like games). Yet it's also true that equivalency formulae for tradeoffs of various piece [+ pawns(s), optionally] combinations don't seem to always hold in such games, as a general observation (it also seems to me such formulae are often implicitly based on presumed average piece values). This can depend on whether the position is an endgame, open or closed, and all sorts of other quirky characteristics. In the case of chess such characteristics have been extensively thought about, or have arisen time after time, but for a less explored game like Eurasian Chess I'd suppose there is still a lot to be learned.
Still, people (beginners at least) crave having a simple, single set of average case piece values to go by, for any such game. I based my values for Eurasian Chess heavily on the endgame, which admittedly may not be entirely correct, but it's a jumping off point if nothing else. For average middlegame (if not opening) piece values, if it turns out that there's an important distinction that should be made (as by a Chinese Chess book I've seen, regarding some of that game's piece values for the endgame vs. earlier phase), at the moment I have less of a clear idea about what the average values of some of the pieces should be in the earlier part(s) of a Eurasian Chess game, if the values are indeed significantly different than in the endgame.
I believe you're right Fergus, that pieces values are useful fictions (in chess-like games). Yet it's also true that equivalency formulae for tradeoffs of various piece [+ pawns(s), optionally] combinations don't seem to always hold in such games, as a general observation (it also seems to me such formulae are often implicitly based on presumed average piece values). This can depend on whether the position is an endgame, open or closed, and all sorts of other quirky characteristics. In the case of chess such characteristics have been extensively thought about, or have arisen time after time, but for a less explored game like Eurasian Chess I'd suppose there is still a lot to be learned.
Still, people (beginners at least) crave having a simple, single set of average case piece values to go by, for any such game. I based my values for Eurasian Chess heavily on the endgame, which admittedly may not be entirely correct, but it's a jumping off point if nothing else. For average middlegame (if not opening) piece values, if it turns out that there's an important distinction that should be made (as by a Chinese Chess book I've seen, regarding some of that game's piece values for the endgame vs. earlier phase), at the moment I have less of a clear idea about what the average values of some of the pieces should be in the earlier part(s) of a Eurasian Chess game, if the values are indeed significantly different than in the endgame.