H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Oct 10, 2016 01:13 PM UTC:
So the Wizard is stronger than a Bishop. This is what I would expect of a 12-targets leaper; these are normally (i.e. on 8x8) of Rook class. It puzzled me that the article on Gross Chess rates it even below an orthodox Knight. It is true that this claim is for 12x12, while you are doing 10x10, but surely the Knight should suffer from that even more. In fact the Wizard might benefit from large boards, because the Camel move reaches its full set of targets on a much larger area there. On 8x8 a Camel has all its moves on the four center squares only! On 10x10 this is on 16 squares (still only 16%), and on 12x12 it rises to 36 squares (25%).
Sliders also get more moves on larger boards,and many naive 'calculations' of piece values award this a lot. But in practice it is worth only a little, because:
The board is rather crowded for most of the game, so the board edge is invisible to a well-developed slider anyway.
Captures are worth much more than non-captures, and the number of captures a slider can have is determined by the number of directions it moves in. Moving over a larger distance is only helpful because it enhances the probability that you will indeed hit something in that direction, so you can hope it is an enemy. But with a 25% filled board the chances to move unobstructedly further than 4 squares dwindles pretty quickly. So it doesn'treally matter much if you have moves that can do that.
So the Wizard is stronger than a Bishop. This is what I would expect of a 12-targets leaper; these are normally (i.e. on 8x8) of Rook class. It puzzled me that the article on Gross Chess rates it even below an orthodox Knight. It is true that this claim is for 12x12, while you are doing 10x10, but surely the Knight should suffer from that even more. In fact the Wizard might benefit from large boards, because the Camel move reaches its full set of targets on a much larger area there. On 8x8 a Camel has all its moves on the four center squares only! On 10x10 this is on 16 squares (still only 16%), and on 12x12 it rises to 36 squares (25%).
Sliders also get more moves on larger boards,and many naive 'calculations' of piece values award this a lot. But in practice it is worth only a little, because: