George Duke wrote on Mon, Nov 25, 2013 05:44 PM UTC:
'Piece Values' topic has over 170 comments, the most of any article or
thread, but they are all 2002 to 2008, in abeyance five years, the last comment being http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=22208. Paulowich's Grand Rook of Unicorn Great Chess is Rook plus Elephant, this Elephant being Alfil + Ferz -- making Grand Rook tri-compound (Rook + Alfil + Ferz). Paulowich's 9-point Grand Rook sets off with 10-point Queen in his system. Not that piece values haven't come up in several other forums since then, but this was one end-point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece_relative_value -- here Wikipedia,
which is steadily adding Chess information, has Queen value fluctuating
from 7.9 to 10.4 and Knight from 2.4 to 3.5 in realistic systems.
Peter Hatch started the topic 12 years ago with http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=197, covering very standard piece-types.
Where Paulowich has interest in Unicorn and Grand Rook, of course I study Falcon, as well as other personal favourites Scorpion, Half-Duck, Sissa, the two Cannons and two Canons "Chinese" and "Korean." The original year 2000 Falcon article had too high Falcon value estimate of 7.0, that was soon recalibrated at 6.0 in comment. Then thanks to H.G. Muller's work Falcon is pegged at 5.5 to Rook 5.0 now. However, Falcon falls towards 4.5 to the same Rook 5.0 in later stages and endgame. Certain pieces including also the Cannons and Canons, whether divergent or convergent, have fluctuating value that has to take account how far into the game.
More recently, Sovereign Piece-types,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=SOVEREIGN_P_Ts [tables disrupted in Explorer], show way to guage value not pointwise, but by how many of each unit are needed to Mate. Thus Rook mate number is 1, and Bishop 2, and Falcon 1, and Knight 3, and Xiangqi Cannon 3.
One interest is to extend Mating Number to some hexagonal pieces. For example, Gilman's ForeRook and HindRook of AltOrthHex do have 1 Mating Number, but Settler(0,7) and Heptagram(4,1) both 3. A piece-type having a Mate number is Sovereign.
