Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Jan 4, 2018 05:45 AM UTC:
It is an excellent concept, and, in my opinion, an excellent game. That said, balance is very difficult to accomplish. There are complaints about Betza's standard armies not being balanced, and while they are not perfectly balanced, they are pretty darn close - especially given that they were developed before the advent of sophisticated engines capable of evaluating them. This was the culmination of Betza's life's work - it is unfortunate that he disappeared right before such tools became available. The first version of ChessV, 0.1, was pretty much a Betza engine - Chess with Different Armies and Chess with Differently Augmented Knights. As soon as it was ready I emailed him, but he had gone dark a few months before ...
Regarding the suggetions, I think 10x8 "Capablanca with Different Armies" is certainly worthy of pursuit, and probably easier to balance than 8x8 since there are more pieces. In fact, I made such a game of standard capablanca vs. colorbound capablanca about 11 years ago. Here's the starting array:
It is an excellent concept, and, in my opinion, an excellent game. That said, balance is very difficult to accomplish. There are complaints about Betza's standard armies not being balanced, and while they are not perfectly balanced, they are pretty darn close - especially given that they were developed before the advent of sophisticated engines capable of evaluating them. This was the culmination of Betza's life's work - it is unfortunate that he disappeared right before such tools became available. The first version of ChessV, 0.1, was pretty much a Betza engine - Chess with Different Armies and Chess with Differently Augmented Knights. As soon as it was ready I emailed him, but he had gone dark a few months before ...
Regarding the suggetions, I think 10x8 "Capablanca with Different Armies" is certainly worthy of pursuit, and probably easier to balance than 8x8 since there are more pieces. In fact, I made such a game of standard capablanca vs. colorbound capablanca about 11 years ago. Here's the starting array:
http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=Capablanca+Chess+with+Different+Armies&settings=SS_vs_CC