Comments by Aurelian Florea

Thanks!

Hello again!

I have sent an email at [email protected], but for now nobody answered. Am I impatient, or have I done something wrong? The purpose of said email was to figure out if my idea was worth an full fledged variant status, or it can be classified only as a bunch of interesting experiments. Thanks!

Thank you Fergus, on the other hand any news on my enep variant?

Hello again, and excuse my noobness please, Fergus. I am not sure I included the diagrams properly. Could you please verify?

Fergus, I checked the diagrams again for my Enep variant and I think I got them wrong. How do I check the submitted version, as I don't seem to see the diagrams!

I've discovered my mistake, I have put an extra pawn P in the second example array, how can I redo the pictures?

I reintroduced the submission but now it looks rather ugly because there are two images on the same horizontal line. Any advice here?

Thank you, Fergus!

People feel free to comment on my new experimental variant!

My first instinct after hand play against myself and noticing not only the winner but also the very limited use of the knight enhancement, is that in this case the enhancement worth less than .5 pawns. That is mostly because the knight enhacement doesn't offer much. I'm already thinking about a Grand chess (Cristian Freeling's version) knight enchaced with a threeleaper or tripper (i.e. an (3,0) jumper or an (3,3) jumper). It would matter as it makes the knight faster in a similar manner to the enhanced knight in Omega chess. This could be worth comparable or more to a Grand pawn. What do you guys think about it? This discussion can be applied to Fergus Duniho's Eurasian chess or Jean Louis Cazaux's (I took part of my Ph.D. in Toulouse) Shako. What do you guys think about it?

Hello Greg,

How will you program it, I use c++ to program my other chess variants (not out yet). Will you use Zillions of Games?

I have chessV installed for a long time now. Big Congrats on it, can I program Enep with it, the old version?

One more thing, I play chess rather closed and in my working experience chessV plays rather open, could this matter, if so probably not much. Still 4 points for a knightwa seems a bit much to me, maybe 3.8. Should we try a vs 2 pawns aproach meaning depraving the knightwa side of an pawn? 3.8 could be "lying with numbers" as mister Betza says in a few articles!

@HG

I was aware of your rule of thumb, from somewhere on the internet, I don't remember where. I was out to check it and maybe improve it. But actually what I was most interested in, is there a way to derive these coeficients? I see no reason for them to be linear, although linear (the relationship between capturing strength and movement strength) is always the simplest case, and I don't know all your work, but to me it seems fine in 8x8 settings. Not sure about the enhanced knight in enhanced Omega chess, but I think it is a good aproximation there,too.

All in all I'm very interested for the desing purpose of my own large board variants of an way to derive the "rules of thumb". If you have any ideeas on that I'll be highly apreciative!

@Greg

Thank you very much for all your help, it is highly apreciated!

I added an extra pawn on purpose, mostly to do something different but also as you say it provides a smaller increment in power, if not for any other reason just because 1/9<1/8.

@Greg,

The fact that altering internal values of pieces changes the outcome of the game is very funny, have we accidently discovered computer self-confidence? :)

@Greg

I was not familiar with sjaakII and fairy max, I'll check on those, too. Thanks for this, too, Greg!

HG,

I was thinking that the 1/2 ratio of power of movement vs power of capture is equal to the 1/2 ratio of enemy pieces vs empty squares. Is that a coincidence? If not the power of movement should increase in importance and I don't think that is true.

I think captures are the important thing in the game as captures could change the material balance. So, I was thinking rather than captures and movement to think in terms of captures and future captures (i.e. captures in 2 moves, captures in 3 moves, etc.). As the board empties capturing in two moves increases via the increased power of movement and decreases via decreased number of targets so it seems to be a better model, giving the fact that for example in my Enep knightwas are fairly constant through the game. This line of thinking is reasonable I think for pieces like pao and vao in Eurasian chess. There is a catch with those specific pieces as the power of capture is related to the number of pieces, too.

  Based on 3.8 knightwa (or any other knight enhancement) value that should be a balanced game.  Is an very akward game, though.  I admit the original to be a failure at least from the point of view of balance but Enep has it's flavour from the point of view of having advantages from two different worlds- the world of pawns, and the world of short range leapers. I guess I have to work on the concept as is quite promising.

Greg,

Could you guide me through the process of adding Enep to the old ChessV, with your help I think I can recompile myself!

HG,

I see it is you who has written fairy-max, now I feel silly for not documenting myself enough! I'll try to get it, but I don't know how I can top your research. I care about larger board variants, but I think if the ratio of enemy pieces vs empty squares is the same then your research into different moves and captures holds!