Enter Your Reply The Comment You're Replying To Jeremy Lennert wrote on Tue, May 24, 2011 03:37 AM UTC:The WDN vs. FAN doesn't seem so surprising to me; I believe it is commonly accepted that Ferz is stronger than Wazir, despite its colorboundness, probably because of its greater forwardness. However, as the length of a move increases, the probability that it is still on the board drops off more quickly for diagonal moves than orthogonal ones. The average chance that a one-space move is on the board doesn't differ much between orthogonal and diagonal (.875 vs. .766, a factor of 1.14), while the difference for a seven-space move is much larger (1/8 vs. 1/64, a factor of 8). Thus, the relative mobility advantage of Rook over Bishop (1.6 on empty board, 1.37 with 30% crowding) is much higher than Wazir over Ferz. I suspect the Rook-move may also gain a bonus for King-restriction (controlling a continuous region the enemy royal piece can't cross), though that's purely speculative. It would be interesting to see how the values of pieces change when substituting a royal piece with a different move pattern. Edit Form You may not post a new comment, because ItemID ARCHBISHOP Value does not match any item.