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Topic: The camel piece (Read 4397 times) |
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NIC1138
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The camel piece
« on: Apr 3rd, 2006, 10:24pm » |
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Arimaa's camel stone refers to the Bactrian Camel, with two humps, or the dromedary, with a single hump??  
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Fritzlein
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #1 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 12:25am » |
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I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig? For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa.
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NIC1138
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #2 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 2:44am » |
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Yes!!! I tought it was a pig too!!! 
Now, what about the elephant? Is it an african or indian elephant? I suppose the gray african elephant would be the silver one, and the brownish asian would be the golden one...
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RonWeasley
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #3 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 7:59am » |
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My brother Fred once turned my horse into a frog. It got pushed around a lot but it could jump over cats.
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Arimanator
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #4 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 2:55pm » |
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on Apr 4th, 2006, 12:25am, Fritzlein wrote:| I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig? For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa. |
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Given that the symbolism's point was to give the players an intuitive knowledge of the relative strengths of the pieces and that a pig is obviously stronger than a cat and weaker than a horse of normal size then I don't see a problem in calling it a pig. 
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Fritzlein
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #5 on: Apr 4th, 2006, 5:47pm » |
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I'm trying to remember the endgame where all the heavy pieces were off, and I kept my cats back on defense while my dogs went forward to create goal threats. At one point I suddenly realized I had "pigs" on the 7th rank. ("pigs on the 7th" is what you call it in chess when you have both of your rooks on your 7th rank. Usually that's good for at least a draw by perpetual check if not an outright mate.)
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omar
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #6 on: Apr 9th, 2006, 8:02am » |
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on Apr 3rd, 2006, 10:24pm, NIC1138 wrote:| Arimaa's camel stone refers to the Bactrian Camel, with two humps, or the dromedary, with a single hump?? |
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Looks to me more like the single hump Dromedary camel 
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omar
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #7 on: Apr 9th, 2006, 8:11am » |
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on Apr 4th, 2006, 12:25am, Fritzlein wrote:| I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig? For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa. |
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You should have seen the first version of the cat; I can't seem to find that image anymore, but it looked a lot like a pig. The current version of the dog is supposed to look like a german shephard.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 9th, 2006, 8:14am by omar » |
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PMertens
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #8 on: Apr 9th, 2006, 5:20pm » |
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oh I thought it was more like a dogo argentino or something (with shortened ears)
Don't shepperds have longer ears ?
Also a dogo would be more useful in battle
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IdahoEv
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #9 on: Apr 12th, 2006, 1:31pm » |
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I always thought a Rhinocerous would be better than a camel. It's more obviously intermediate in size between a horse and a phant, especially to American idiots like me who don't really know what a camel looks like.
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Fritzlein
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #10 on: Apr 12th, 2006, 4:53pm » |
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on Apr 12th, 2006, 1:31pm, IdahoEv wrote:| I always thought a Rhinocerous would be better than a camel. |
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That's funny. I did once see a nature documentary where a rogue elephant was slaughtering innocent rhinos. Yet my first thought was that the second piece should be a lion rather than a camel.
A while back, I was going to suggest that a lion would be a more sensible second-strongest piece than a camel, and cooler for promoting the game, but I got to thinking: While a lion certainly can't take down an elephant, conversely an elephant could never catch a lion, so between those two animals it is sort of stalemated.
Since then, I have come to the conclusion that the problem is there are vegetarians for the top three pieces. For the most comprehensible hierarchy, every piece should be able to eat the next lower piece for dinner. How about Lion > Wolf > Dog > Cat > Rabbit > Grass?
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99of9
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #11 on: Apr 12th, 2006, 5:08pm » |
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You want to play a game where the objective is to get some grass to the other side of the field?
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PMertens
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #12 on: Apr 12th, 2006, 5:42pm » |
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rofl 
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IdahoEv
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #13 on: Apr 12th, 2006, 7:33pm » |
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You might not care about winning anymore after you capture too much of the opponent's grass.
"We're all brothers, man ... i think we both win!"
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NIC1138
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Re: The camel piece
« Reply #14 on: Apr 13th, 2006, 2:06pm » |
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The question about lions and rhinos takes us to the other questioning: Is it an african elephant or an indian elephant? What exactly is the geographic context of arimaa, Iran/msopotamia/arabia? Or perhaps the whole region from north Africa to north India?... With that decided, we can then chose the cat and dog species more carefully...
We could also take out the dog, and make it cat, hawk and rabbit, since the hawk is a very traditional animal in the arab world!... Also, the killer instinct is stronger in cats against birds and hawks against rabbits, than in dogs against cats and cats against rabbits!!..
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