Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I've put in a diagram for the Lancer that I think is a bit clearer, and also added an optional power for the Wizard (under Options).

Does anything else seem confusing, unclear, or unbalanced? (Besides the creator, that is.)

You can send me your diagram with free Lancers' cells and I fill it with sending to you.

Lev: With fully black/white versions of the Orda Chess Lancer?

If so, hold that thought for a bit; I've shot off an email to Musketeer about missing pieces.

I'm next!..

...also please say to editors that I wait them VERY long...

I did hear back from someone at Musketeer, and was told that (1) at least some of what I suggested would be in the next release of Board Painter, and (2) a Version 2 was released some time ago.

I used the latter to find a reasonably satisfactory way to represent the Lancer. I've done the new graphics for the setup and Lancer move, and as soon as I'm done with this I'll upload and post them.

Is there anything else here I've missed, forgotten about, made worse, etc.?

@Bob, as far as i m concerned, you are referencing a page for Terachess in Jocly. Please don t. This version is old, obsolete. Please refer to Terachess II instead which is the definitive version,in chess variants page, on my own site history.chess.free.fr and in my recent book More Chess and More Than Chess and its on site appendix made by HGM.

The Terachess link is now corrected.

Is there anything else, or can the game be Indexed now?

Your description looks fine to me. But I'm not an editor. Thanks for our discussion.

Thanks right back at you, Jean-Louis, for your feedback and input.

I've added the point values for all 20 pieces (though admittedly an error or two may have crept in). I'll try to add the Betza notation (on the same table) at a later time.

I do think, though, that other than some minor tweaks, this game is ready to go.

(Unless, as I said previously, I missed or forgot an editorial note.)

(Actually, I'm still considering giving the Wizard the ability to trade places with friendly pieces within its move.)

Re: the position-swapping Wizard:

Nah. Not this time.

By referring to the Generic Piece Creation System you seem to have imported nonsense into your article. No way the Lioneer would be 160 when a Queen is 110. Even on 8x8 a KNAD is only about 15% more valuable than Q. And the Lioneer is inferior to the KNAD because its moves to the 2nd ring can be blocked. While the large board size strongly favors sliders over leapers. Very Likely the Queen is the stronger piece here.

If you want to say something about piece values, better presnt values that make sense. It is better to say nothing at all than to mislead people with nonsensical values.

And why did you replace the rather original 'Rook that could jump the first square' move of the Helopolis by the unimaginative WDH? This really seems a pity.

Regarding putting piece values on the notes to a rules page (or anywhere on the internet, in fact), I'd think most readers would know to take any such values with a grain of salt, regardless of the source, at least at this stage in the history of CVs. If a player or commentator does have VERY extreme doubts about certain values then they can always just note such with a comment to the rules page, without too much fuss (such as a lecture) otherwise.

We obviously disagree on that. IMO a reader should be properly informed by reading the article, and not have to rely on the comments to get the correct information. If the statements made in the Notes section are in general to be disbelieved, it should have been titled Nonsense rather than Notes to make this clear.

Also, "having very serios doubts" is still very far from "well known to be completly wrong".

Well H.G., in this case you didn't say 'well known to be completely wrong' when addressing the chance of one piece being weaker than the other on a much larger board than 8x8. However, who is to decide for sure that something is clearly wrong, unless that is going to be blindingly obvious to most readers anyway? In chess literature, far more newbies suffer from wrong or confusing advice on strategy than on quibbling piece values disputes or tactical instruction, I would note (neglecting to practice tactics is another matter).

I would think the Comments section would be equated as valueless too, if you're thinking people shouldn't bother to read it. The Comments section, however loses some of its value IMHO when there are a great many comments, and a vital one gets buried if it was made at a much earlier date.

P.S.: Is KNAD [almost] the same as a very powerful Lion in Chu Shogi (which can make 2 captures in one move, as does the non-jumping Lioneer)? I assume Joe Joyce's Jumping General was meant [by H.G., in place of a Lioneer] - not a KNAD or Chu Shogi Lion, either; I'd value Joe's piece type a little more than a Q on 8x8 anyway, and probably not as much as a Q on a significantly larger board, based on earlier 'tentative estimates' (which is how I've referred to my fairy piece values in Notes sections to date, as a caveat for the uninitiated).

Well, I can take the point-value chart off, if that's an issue, or put in a note about it being controversial or not strictly reliable, or some such. I frankly would've gone with some other point-assignment system (either instead or in addition) if I could find one, especially one that takes board size into account. (If you know of any, please provide a link! Or, maybe I'll try to figure one out for myself some time.)

As for Lioneer vs Queen, I happen to believe that, even on this 16x16 board, the value is pretty close, given that the Lioneer can double-capture. And its move past the first circle is only blocked by friendly pieces; enemy pieces are subject to capture, and the lack of a leap is the only real difference from the Chu Shogi Lion. The Lioneer may cover a relatively small part of the board at any given time, but it's very powerful within its scope. The Queen may be a good piece for offense, but I can see how, in a midgame, a well-positioned Lioneer can be a good defensive piece, keeping mid-range opponents at bay.

Regarding the Helepolis, I went with WDH because the Rook jumping the first square was too similar to the basic Rook, giving the latter piece no advantage over the former. Given the size of the board, though, I could WDH followed by a four-square slide, sort of splitting the difference. (It's in the same way that I'd give the Archer only two spaces diagonally on an 8x8 board, but am leaving it 3 for one of this size. If there were only two of them, it'd be 4.)

As for the value of the Comments section, I think the value here is much greater to the author than to the general reader. The latter person might or might not even think to read the Comments (I often don't, unless there's a point to be made and I want to see if someone already made it). An author who's on the ball will address any points within the text, and never assume that a reader will read them.

Rather than writing for "most readers," I tend to write these things with the assumption that the reader is fairly familiar with chess in general, but new to the idea of chess variants (which happens to be fairly close to where I am right now). That is to say, I don't "dumb down" the text, but I don't assume a lot of experience either.

Bob, don't listen too much on the different comments, except if many converge between them. This is your variant and you put your tastes in it. I like your Helepolis even if I understand why it is not so exciting for others. But for me, it is simple, logical, meaningful. A WDH is interesting, as well a FAG would be too. Personally you see, I don't like at all pieces with complex moves and captures. It depends what you are looking for. Some people are programmers and they find pleasure to get nice arrays and to be challenged how to code their moves. Others like to get special configurations on the board, aesthetic mating situations, etc. Others like a game with small learning curve with moves that you can teach to a friend with no CV-culture. I am like that.

More important is to test your own game. A CV is not just "painting" a board, do a nice looking casting among the fairy pieces and "et voilà". I have some CVs I am not ready to publish because their play on Zillions is deceiving although publishing their board on Facebook got many likes.

Keep going.

OK, I overlooked that the Lioneer had the ability to double capture. (Has this been the case from the first draft?) The move diagram is misleading, and suggests it just has a 2-step 'area move', like the Falconer. You really should use other symbols in the K squares than those for ordinary moves (e.g. a star) if they are hit-and-run targets.

Even then 110 vs 160 describes the relative values in Chu Shogi, with a Lion that can jump, on a 12x12 board; my experience with Tenjiku Shogi (16x16) is that the Lion is a rather unimportant piece there, and even the Lion Hawk, (which in addition moves like B), is valued less than Q by most players.

Anyway, I think it is 'blindingly obvious' that (1) the relative values of sliders and leapers depends on board size, (2) values are not simple additions of individual move comtributions, but involve synergy (i.e. Q > R + B), and (3) moves that can be blocked contribute progressively less as it gets more easy to block those. Any system that does not account for those effects will be badly flawed, and its results should not be presented like there is any truth in them. (So at least accompanied by a strong disclaimer that it is for another board size, or which aspects of the piece are ignored.)

Comments, in the stage of unpublished articles, serve the purpose of pointing out flaws in the submitted material, so the author can improve the quality by addressing the criticism. So it doesn't matter if the general readership completely ignores those, as long as the editor responsible for publishing the article takes them into account. When the criticism is justified it will be incorporated / addressed through revision of the article, and there is no need to read them in the comments anymore.

BTW, the Interactive Diagram has a heuristic for determining piece values that does take board size and synergy into account, as well as that pieces in a game will be placed on beter-than-average squares. The values can be viewed by clicking the header of the 'move' column of the piece table. You could use the Play-Test Applet by setting the board to 16x16, assigning the desired moves to some pieces in the table (in so far they were not already there) and then ask for the values. (Which might take some calculation time for the large board and table, so be patient...)

Helepolis: The WDH might be an "interesting" piece, but how effective is it on a 16x16 board? For the Helepolis, it has a trade-off of range vs. the ability to leap, and 3 spaces is good for an 8x8 or even 12x12 board, but how does it play on a 16x16? That said, there's the saying, "It's not the size that matters; it's what you do with it." A well-placed slow-mover, such as the Knight in standard chess, can make a huge difference if it's well placed and can do something the other pieces can't (in this case, leap orthogonally). Based on that, I'll leave it as simply WDH for now, but I'm open to add a slide (or a fourth space for the leap) if it's recommended.

Lioneer: Yes, the Lioneer was always able to double-capture, from the beginning. Unfortunately, the Musketeer Board Painter (which I use because everything else is awkward for me) has a very limited palette of symbols for moves. And after playing a couple of Jocly games with a similar piece, I've started to think of the Lion as strong defensive piece, rather like a 6'8" offensive linebacker; working with other team members, I'd double-dog-dare any other piece to come close.

Piece value: I didn't know that about the ID. I'll give that a close look further into the week (as in, not today, but before Saturday and maybe as early as tomorrow). In the meantime, I'll put in a disclaimer about the GPCS.

I don't think limitations of a given tool are a valid excuse for an unsuitable product if tools are available that can do the required job. I don't know what OS you are using, but on Windows MS Paint would not have any problems drawing a multitude of geometrical shapes (including stars) on anything.

A well-placed Knight certainly is as good as anything else. But the issue is: how much effort does it take to place it well? Slow pieces are good defenders, but it takes an enormous investment to use them as attackers on a large board. And you would have to do that at some point, to launch an attack that can overcome the opponent's defenses. It is a similar problem as what makes Xingqi so drawish, in a less absolutr form: if a subset of the pieces is confined (in this case by inertia) to their own camp, an attacker is very much at a disadvantage.