Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Thanks, Kevin. Man added to the piece descriptions. I've used a specific, systematic iconology to represent how the shatranj-style pieces I use move, which can be found in the chess variants wiki under Joe's strange notation. Once you know the symbols, you can tell exactly how the piece moves from the icon. Grin, it covers everything except the man.

The test game I'm currently playing is moving a little slow. The center is developing differently on both sides, but nothing is really happening on the 2 wings. I think this game really wants 3 moves per player-turn. The combination of short-range pieces and limited command areas plus not allowing any piece to move twice in a turn keeps the game from getting crazy, but does allow a much faster game and a different one, as ther is no great incentive to develop the wings in the beginning of the game that I can see. The restricted 3-move option should provide a decent and non-chaotic game.

This game plays especially well with its 3-mover variant rules.

Thank you for adding the diagram that plays the 1 move version. I sincerely appreciate that! I think it's clear that adding an active diagram to the variants onsite does increase the number of plays the games get. You are giving the site more ways to be used and enjoyed. Excellent!

I'm trying to figure out how to ask if there is any way the diagrams can be adapted to multi-move variants without seeming ungrateful. I'm fairly confident it can be done, because Fergus did an excellent job automating Chieftain Chess! The point may well be moot. How many people actually make and/or play multi-move variants? Let's see, there's me ... is there anyone else who does multi-movers?

One original purpose of this series of variants was to make blatantly obvious the differences between single move/player-turn and true (ie: playable and non-gimmicky) multi-move/player-turn chesses. One quickly sees the flow of play is totally different because the flow of pieces changes. Yes, the rules set it up that way, but it is expected that players will funnel pieces from the edges to the center anyway, because the king is there, and it may get 2 moves/turn. So the king would generally be the only or primary target anyway.

If that's too over the top for some, ignore the 2 wings and just do 2 moves in the center, either any 2 pieces, or 1 piece and 1 pawn move. The 2 guard/mann units per side may count as either or both. Even that will show divergence from 1 piece/turn moves. This is a stable 3 moves/player-turn variant, and I believe it should be a stable 4-move variant.

Finally, thanks to Kevin Pacey for playtesting.

Multi-move games are really far harder for the AI than single-move games. Because of its generality and the fact it is written in JavaScript, the Diagram's AI is quite slow (it searches only 10k positions per sec on a PC, while programs like Fairy-Max or ChessV typically do 500k/sec). So it cannot look very far ahead; adjusting the depth to 4 ply already makes it unbearably slow for large variants. But in a 3-move game thinking 4 ply ahead does not even bring the complete opponent's turn within the horizon. One could save a factor by not searching move sequences that are merely permutations of an already searched line (which for a 3-move game would save a factor 3! = 6 per turn), which would be automatic if the AI used a transposition table. (But the current one doesn't.) And moves cannot always be made in a prescribed order, as they could block each other even when they must be made by different pieces.

Large games often 'factorize' in a number of independent battles, but it is difficult for an AI to exploit that (but easy for a human): even in a single-move game the AI will try to interleave the moves of the varios battles in combinatorially many ways.

I could do a two-move game like Duck Chess (with dedicated code) only because it is not really a 2-move game, but a Refusal variant.

So I guess for now an AI for multi-move games are not really feasible. Even piece drops are too difficult at the current stage, and solving this has a much higher priority.