Comments by Graeme Neatham

I usually use 3 different methods of assessing piece values and then take an average. Here though I must admit to merely rounding the values calculated by Zillions of Games.

Rules file updated to improve play. Thanks to M. Winther whose method of tweaking the piece values was adapted.

Also a new piece-set has been added using images based on graphics by Fergus Duniho.

Thanks for the comments. On reflection I think your interpretation of 'forward' is closer to the spirit of XiangQi than mine. You are also right about the ability of the rook to cross the river.

As with pawn-movment I think I may have over-complicated matters and made 'crossing the river' too restrictive. I'll be making modifications to this variant shortly so as to include both the one-way only meaning of 'forward' and a less restrictive river crossing.

Rules file updated to version 3.0.
This now includes the new default Star Palace variant.

Thanks for your comment, David. I had my own younger son partly in mind when designing this game. He graduated last year with a degree in Biological Sciences and has always been crazy about Penguins.

I'd be really interested in seeing your playing board in action.

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Graeme

I've been following the development of Fortress Chess with great interest and eagerly await it being played. It seems to me that this variant is actually going someway to bridging the divide between Chess and Wargaming.
Wargaming rules usually include elements governing missiles, movement, melee, morale and command. Fortress Chess can at a stretch be said to incorporate 4 of these: command through its hierarchy of leader pieces; movement through its short-, mid-, and long-range pieces which can be seen as cognates for (ancient)wargaming's troop types of infantry/cavalry with light/medium/heavy armour; melee through the usual replacement capture; amd morale by the ladder of promotion with pieces getting stronger as they achieve success in battle.
In fact I think Fortress Chess may well mark the start of a new gaming genre - not merely another Big-board CV, but the first example of 'Warfare-Chess'.
I'm looking forward to future developments

Scrabblization is surely the fate of any game that is deterministic with the players having complete information - given that it is played and studied long enough and widely enough.

If so, and if it is a problem, the only long-term solutions are to either restrict player information or remove the determinism. But is the game we are left with still chess?

Sorry for being slightly off-topic, and I may be missing the point entirely (I often do), but I fail to see why the term donkey would be suitable for a piece stronger than a knight. The term carries overtones of stupidity, and the actual animal is surely weaker than a knight's war-horse?

From an ancient warfare standpoint a better name might be Cataphract; or from a modern military standpoint perhaps Tank?

Might I suggest the following system for classifying the size of a variant?

Where the upper limits are based on the simple formula
(10 x 2^{(size category)}) -1

I agree - it certainly looks very interesting. I must admit though that it took me some time to understand the bishop moves. I finally resorted to recasting the board using hexes (see here) before realizing that the bishops were moving through the edges of the prisms.

'The only thing I don't like about it is the Elephant. It probably would be better to have the Alibaba instead. (So that the Courier can be a combination of the Guard and the Alibaba as well.)'

Absolutely agree with you, the Elephant had been nagging at me as being slightly out of kilter - extending it to an Alibaba seems so obvious. Thanks, as always, for your comments and insight.

And 'no', the rule is that a Pawn's initial move may be 1,2 or 3 steps, thereafter it is restricted to just the 1 step.

The Camel+Bishop confluence puts me in mind of the Biblical Wise Men, which leads me to suggest Magi as a possible name for this piece.

Please, please, please try to avoid the use of judgemental terms such as better or inferior. Descriptive terms such as sedate or aggressive are objective and helpful, but to equate sedate with worse, or aggressive with better is purely subjective and unhelpful.