darth_ender said:
[snip]
You are correct about its move: it can go to any square that is not covered. But so many squares are covered by other pieces, and every square is covered by the other emperor. The only way to stay defended is to always make sure a friendly piece is attacking the square your emperor is on, otherwise the other emperor could capture it. So as long as you have a friendly piece, your emperor is safe from the other emperor, because you can move your emperor to a square guarded by that piece (unless I suppose the "safe" square is attacked by a different opposing piece). It would take a lot to whittle down the opposing army, it seems to me. You might think, "Oh, then I'll create a special rule where emperors cannot capture each other ever," but then you have a problem of every single piece being vulnerable to the opposing emperor at every moment if not constantly defended by another piece. You move a single piece to an unprotected square, and then the opposing emperor gets it without retaliation from your own emperor. You see what I mean? The emperor and drops and pretty mutually exclusive.
What if the emperor wasn't able to capture at all? I think that would help.
[snip]
Well, who is to say that the game we designed together is best? Perhaps this variant of yours is better. If not, it still certainly looks like a good game and nothing less than an interesting alternative. I don't mean to beat up on it. It looks like it could be really fun. I wouldn't mind trying it in the future.
I think it's certainly the best so far. It may be possible to tweak one of mine enough to make it better, after play-testing it like we did with Ito Shogi. In their current forms, I would say they are all weaker than Ito Shogi.
I don't think they're all bad, I just think they're inferior to Ito Shogi. Ito Shogi went through a big transformation from what we started with to the end, and I think my variants could work with equal or greater transformation. The mini variant I made might need the least tweaking because it is more heavily based off of the type game of Ito Shogi, and probably has fewer problems as a result.
So those are my brief thoughts, taking just a few minutes to look at each game. Keep up the good work, and consider what I've said, but remember that they are your games and you may do whatever you want in the end.
Thank you, I appreciate them all. I will continue to tweak them, and probably rework the powerful piece variant quite a bit. I think it could be made more playable with the addition of some unique rules, maybe restricting drops and modifying the emperor's move, or exchanging it for another piece.
Keep working on them. Some look great. The Taikyoku king moves two squares instead of one. Maybe you could consider an adaptation of that.
Sure, I'll take a look at that. I'll do something different with the emperor anyway, whether it's replacing it or restricting it.
What do you think about the fire demon? Is pairing it with such a relatively weak piece a good or bad idea? How about its' ability to completely destroy other pieces? I really like the idea, but if you think it's better off in a 2D variant, than I'd like to know what you think. And do you think I have too many lion-like pieces? What kinds of pieces do you think would be best for a 1D variant with powerful pieces like this?