LOL! And here I just thought you were playing Devil's Advocate.
I decided to take the question seriously for purposes of an answer because
I do think a lot of people will not look beyond the size. If I could
squeeze all the basic info to play the game into a couple long comments,
fort can't be all that hard.
And I still think it's clunky as a game - I deliberately overstuffed it
to test out a bunch of features.
Finally, I disagree with this statement of yours: 'I was just asking
whether the routes for these new multiples of four pieces could become
instantly visualizable with enough practice. Your answer was no.'
My 'No' was to the question: 'Is this game too difficult, by virtue of
its non-visualizeable pieces, to play?' Again I say 'No!' to that.
But I do agree with what you thought I said: No, the pieces aren't
instantly visualizeable. But anyone can count by 2s really fast on a
checkered gameboard... :-D So you are overly optimistic. ;-)