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Penta War

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.

This ZRF plays Penta War. There are a few problems. The game is so big that it takes a while (at least on my computer) to start it. The Zillions AI doesn't understand the least of the game. It should be played among humans. And the screen resolution has to be high enough to have the whole board on it. That problem can be fixed by downloading the skewed version of the images. When using those skewed images, you also have to replace the board.zif file with the new one. This files maps the positions on the skewed board.
Download skewed images and other board.zif
A few variants are added. One-sided wars plays Penta Wars with a different Clan Diplomacy rule. One clan has two clans it can attack and two different clans that can attack them.
Chess can attack Magic and Robot.
Magic can attack Puppet and Animal.
Puppet can attack Robot and Chess.
Robot can attack Animal and Magic.
Animal can attack Chess and Puppet.
Civil Wars is also a variant with different Clan Diplomacy rule. In that variant, a clan can only attack the enemy's same clan.
Empty board is Penta War with normal Clan Diplomacy rule, but starting with only two Pawns on the board and all Kings on the King Throne and no setup phase. Use the right mouse button to add pieces. Watch out for impossible situation (especially in the Palace). The rules are not built for that. You can create weird things.
Feel free to use parts of my code for your own creations or to ask questions about the code with a comment.

A set of easier piece images is available. Small version and Large version
If you want to substitute the image with the easier ones, copy the contents of the folder 'Easy' of the archive to the 'Images' folder, overwriting everything but the Pawns and the board. The new file Clans.zif is not required in this case.
If you want to use both piece sets (you can switch between them during the game), unpack the archive to the PentaWar directory. This replaces Clans.zif and creates a new folder 'Easy'.

Download Instructions

Instructions on downloading this Zillions file:

This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.

By Joost Aan de Brugh.
Web page created: 2006-01-20. Web page last updated: 2006-01-20