Saturday, July 17, 2010

[shefwmrs] Super chess

A few bells and whistles for fairy chess:

Multiple pieces may occupy one square.  However, if the enemy attacks a square with multiple pieces on it, they are all captured.  At the beginning of the game each player's pieces are concentrated on one square on opposite corners of the board (so we cannot have an infinite range bishop).

A truck piece can carry a piece to another square at a higher speed than the carried piece can normally move (though perhaps slower than an unladen truck).  Loading and unloading is done with multiple occupancy.

The board slowly shrinks, ultimately down to just one square, leaving only one man left standing, ensuring a decisive result.  What mechanism?  Maybe a square eater piece?

Artillery pieces may capture a remote piece without moving.

A piece may take a move to defensively fortify a square.  Such a square, if occupied, may withstand one attack without being captured (but the defensive fortification comes down).  Or maybe just a side of a square, so it takes four moves to fortify all four sides.  But then it's unclear about diagonal attacks.

Pieces promote after capturing ("veteran status").

Captured pieces may be dropped, like shogi.  A small advantage will hopefully slowly magnify.

At the beginning of the game, a random device synthesizes a wild set of fairy pieces.  Each player is given the same initial budget, and subsets of pieces are iteratively auctioned off (subsets and price chosen by cake-cutting method), as well as who moves first.

Inspired by dai shogi and larger.  I'm imagining very large boards and computer agents.

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