I tested different types of kings for different armies, and saw the following:
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the rook gives +1 pawn
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the bishop loses -1 pawn
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the knight loses -2 pawns
This roughly corresponds to the evaluation of the pieces in the endgame:
- rook 5 pawns
- king 4 pawns
- bishop 3 pawns
- knight 2 pawns
In the endgame, as I understand it, the power of capturing a piece comes first, and not the power of movement, for this reason the Wazir becomes stronger than the Ferz.
Movement is key in the opening, and capturing is key in the endgame. In the middlegame, it's about even.
For non-royal pieces, movement plays a big role, as they need to develop and become active.
Royal pieces hide from attacks for most of the game and start to play actively in the endgame, based on this, the capture plays a big role.
Wazir as a standalone piece is weak because it has slow movement. But Wazir as an add-on piece is much more valuable because the slow movement add-on doesn't matter much for pieces with good speed, while the orthogonal close capture fields add-on (which is the closest range, which is good) is very important.
Perhaps the difference between movement and capture as separate components of pieces will help us better understand why the queen is worth more than the sum of its parts, which are usually looked at by the number of squares they can capture, ignoring their range. Perhaps the queen would be close to the sum of the rook and bishop if it only had the rook's movement. And it is the bishop's extra moves that give it superiority over their simple sum.
I will be researching these points to prove them with test results.
I tested different types of kings for different armies, and saw the following:
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the rook gives +1 pawn
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the bishop loses -1 pawn
- replacing the capture of the king with the capture of the knight loses -2 pawns
This roughly corresponds to the evaluation of the pieces in the endgame:
- rook 5 pawns
- king 4 pawns
- bishop 3 pawns
- knight 2 pawns
In the endgame, as I understand it, the power of capturing a piece comes first, and not the power of movement, for this reason the Wazir becomes stronger than the Ferz.
I guess it looks something like this:
Rook = 5 pawns (move) / 5 pawns (capture)
Bishop = 4 pawns (move) / 3 pawns (capture)
Knight = 4 pawns (move) / 2 pawns (capture)
King = 2 pawns (move) / 4 pawns (capture)
Movement is key in the opening, and capturing is key in the endgame. In the middlegame, it's about even.
For non-royal pieces, movement plays a big role, as they need to develop and become active.
Royal pieces hide from attacks for most of the game and start to play actively in the endgame, based on this, the capture plays a big role.
Wazir as a standalone piece is weak because it has slow movement. But Wazir as an add-on piece is much more valuable because the slow movement add-on doesn't matter much for pieces with good speed, while the orthogonal close capture fields add-on (which is the closest range, which is good) is very important.
Perhaps the difference between movement and capture as separate components of pieces will help us better understand why the queen is worth more than the sum of its parts, which are usually looked at by the number of squares they can capture, ignoring their range. Perhaps the queen would be close to the sum of the rook and bishop if it only had the rook's movement. And it is the bishop's extra moves that give it superiority over their simple sum.
I will be researching these points to prove them with test results.