RicOlie_2

darth_ender said:

Okay, these are some of the ideas I've come up with in order to meet the following shortcomings of the existing game:

1) Unpromoted pieces in general (though not always) should have some backward movement, but different and preferably weaker than their forward movement.

Definitely agree, especially if you go with permanent promotion.

2) Pieces need to be more offensive than defensive.

I agree for the most part, but I think there should be one mostly defensive piece in back, closer to the king.

3) The setup needs to also be geared more for offense than defense.

I agree, but I would argue that this is already the case.

4) There should not be too many pieces regardless of board size, or else they defend too many squares and the board gets really cluttered and difficult to effectively move on, particularly in certain sections where action is taking place.  It is especially wise to avoid moves that cover too many adjacent squares so there are "holes" in a piece's coverage.

Being the kind of guy I am, I say the bigger and more numerous the better, but that's probably not the way to go. :) I think that pieces with universal coverage, like the lion, can be restricted with a short range. Right now, the lion can only move two squares at a time, which really restricts its range. If you go with dropping the pieces at their lower value, the lion and similar pieces would work better than they do now. I think that having holes in a piece's coverage is good, but I don't think it matters if there are pieces like the lion, since they are limited in other ways. But the final decision is up to you of course.

5) Promoted pieces should have stronger abilities, including improved backward movement, but should still not be too powerful; there still need to be gaps in their coverage.  The only exception would be the lance or similar piece, whatever we decide on, and this is compensated for by its inability to jump at all.

As I have said, if the piece can't move very far in a single turn, then I think it's limited movement makes up for it's ability to cover the entire board.

6) Though I believe alternately promoting and demoting adds an interesting dimension for both sides when their moves are very different (as in Micro Shogi where a gold general promotes to a rook), since pieces have similar style moves in most cases on both sides, it might be best to at least try permanent promotion and the ability to drop only the weaker face up.

I'm certainly willing to give this a try. Would there be a promotion zone like there is in regular Shogi, or would pieces promote upon their first capture? If you meant the former, I suggest going with the latter instead. Most Shogi variants either have the promotion zone or alternate between promoted and unpromoted values, but I think a first capture promotion makes a lot of sense. So much of the action takes place in the middle of the board that few pieces would get promoted until being dropped and moved. I don't think the game would be as much fun if pieces didn't get promoted as often, since there aren't a lot of different pieces. In other Shogi games, pieces often promote to the value of pieces that are already on the board, so the player has most of those moves available from the start. But in variants like this, the player starts out with the weaker values and has more limited options. Increasing the likelihood of promotion is a good thing in small variants, in my opinion.

7) I therefore wish to use the following pieces with brief descriptions of their moves.  All are based on pre-existing pieces following strict interpretive rules for changing them to single-dimensional moves, which you already know.

Pawn/Go Between - You already know this one
King - You know this one too
Tile General/Copper General: T-jumps to second square forward or steps one square back/C-steps one square forward or back, or jumps to second square forward
Heavenly Horse/Cavalryman: HH-jumps to third square forward or back/Cm-steps one square forward or back or jumps to third square forward or back
Goose/Phoenix: This one you know
Howling Dog/Silver Cannon: I'm still not sure about how I want to do this one.  I was talking about using the reverse chariot, but I also might just want to use the howling dog instead, which moves like a lance, but also has the option to take a single step backwards
Flying Swallow/Bishop: FS-like a bishop foward, or one step backward/B-you already know

That's it for now.  I may want to still use the reverse chariot instead of the howling dog, but otherwise, I think I want to try this piece combination.  I'm almost tempted to end our current game and give this a chance, but I still need to work out the setup.

 I think you should use the RC rather than the HD unless you think it's important to counterbalance the powerful SC.

darth_ender said:

I saw my most recent sub-person bunch of cells today for the first time!  It was neat to see this genetically unique, but altogether unimportant (yet) lifeform.  I watched its tiny little appendages moving against my wife's full bladder, its heart beating, stimulated by its own pacemaker cells, propelling minuscule amounts of blood through its 9 week-old bloodstream.  This non-viable organism will no doubt further alter my wife's body, making her less likely to ever pose for the cover of Cosmopolitan.  My limited financial resources will certainly be further strained.  There will be one more mouth in this world to consume its finite resources.

It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen...except for my other children and my not-as-skinny-as-she-used-to-be, stretch-mark-covered wife :)

 Congratulations! :) How many do you have now?

Ah, yes, it's there. I tend to miss details like that. :P

February 24:

A.D. 1208: Traditional date for St. Francis' reception of his vocation in a chapel outside of Assisi.

A.D. 1510: Pope Julius II excommunicates the Republic of Venice.

A whole republic...I guess they made him mad. :D

A.D. 1582: Pope Gregory XIII announces the new calendar (the Gregorian and modern calendar) as a replacement of the less accurate Julian calendar.

Ln-28

DuracellEnergizer said:

BERU: (punching Ben playfully in the chin) Don't be such a stranger in the future, Ben, okay?

 Did I just miss the part where you introduced Obi-Wan as "Ben"? Or did Beru just decide to nickname him all of a sudden? :P

Oops, I mixed it up with the silver general. I will move to 29 then. I also forgot to clarify your move. Your GB is already on 15, so did you mean 16?

C-30

Ln-26

Regarding the lion, I don't know that it's a problem. It's a powerful piece close to the enemy, but it's limited because it can only move two squares at a time. I think it's a balanced piece because of this, but if you think it needs to go, we'll save it for a version with just powerful pieces.

I could go with the RC/SC piece as well. The gold cannon doesn't do much anyway and I've found that it often gets in the way rather than helping, but the lance/RC is often useful.

Ln-24

L*25

Ln-26

Knx24+Ln

February 23:

A.D. 303: Emperor Diocletian orders a general persecution of Christians.

A.D. 1455: Estimated date for the first printing of a book (the Bible) by Johannes Gutenberg.

A.D. 1997: The first successful cloning of an adult animal takes place in Scotland. The result of the cloning is a sheep named Dolly.

C-28

Got it. SC-24

Whaa??

Do we have different boards again? :P

EDIT: Or did you make a bad move that I didn't see?

GCx20+SC

P-18

Gsx14...and this time it's on purpose. ;)

I think you're right about the fire demon. I'm thinking of making a board that's two or three squares wide but about the same length as the one we're using now. Maybe a weak fire demon-type piece could work there since there would be more pieces. Another idea with the fire demon is that it could only burn the piece in front of it, allowing it to capture up to two pieces. And if we wanted, we could make its demoted side a pawn or something to balance it out. But you're probably right about keeping it out of Ito Shogi. We do want to keep it Ito Shogi after all, so it's best to keep it similar to the original.

Your kirin is already on 10 (see post 1001). If you meant either K-8 or K-12, then GC-23.

This seems like something that should be fairly easy, so I figured I would mention it. I don't know how many people besides myself would be interested in it, but it would be nice to receive notifications of new threads in certain forums. However, it's just a small thing and I can easily live without it if it isn't easy to implement.

It happened again with Warbler's chess thread.

I'm noting every time it happens here so it's easier to figure out any patterns. And there may be something in common between the threads that only Jay can figure out.