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(Message started by: omar on Nov 10th, 2011, 2:35pm)
Title: Home rules
Post by omar on Nov 10th, 2011, 2:35pm
I've started including a page of 'Arimaa Home Rules' with Arimaa sets I mail out. It basically describes some of the alternate ways that I play Arimaa at home.

I've uploaded this page to the site now. Feel free to download a copy.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/learn/homeRules.pdf
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Dolus on Nov 10th, 2011, 2:44pm
Thank you, Omar!

Those are some interesting variants and tweaks on how to play the game. I don't remember who I read was doing this, but I like the idea of using the die in a learning game or against weaker opponents to help level the playing field.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 11th, 2011, 6:31pm
Heheh, you already know what I think of the dice variant :-X.  Choosing an army based on a points budget doesn't sound much more promising to me.  I suspect it would either (A) give Silver a huge advantage if she got to budget after seeing how Gold purchased or (B) make a lot of games resignable after the setup if the players chose simultaneously in secret.

Those variants aside, I believe the "reduced set" Arimaa has a great deal of potential.  Some combinations of pieces will presumably be more interesting than others, and one would just have to try to see which work best.  A crazy thought would be "single-rabbit" Arimaa, where all the pieces are in play but each side has only one rabbit.  Would that be intense or would it bog down?  Also I had earlier suggested removing HDC from each side.  The "no-tie" Arimaa should play considerably faster than with a full set, but without being razor sharp from move one like the suggested RRRRCC.  It could be a happy medium to retain complexity while speeding up progress.  Also, by all accounts, JDB's experiment with his bot no_MHH was a big success.  People enjoyed the looser play and learned from it as well.

I would be interested to hear any other reports of reduced-material Arimaa, how it affects game play, game length, standard strategies, etc.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by omar on Nov 12th, 2011, 1:09am

on 11/11/11 at 18:31:04, Fritzlein wrote:
Heheh, you already know what I think of the dice variant :-X.  

Yeah, yeah, I know you don't like the dice version :-) But hey Dolus likes it. Different people have different tastes.


Quote:
Choosing an army based on a points budget doesn't sound much more promising to me.  I suspect it would either (A) give Silver a huge advantage if she got to budget after seeing how Gold purchased or (B) make a lot of games resignable after the setup if the players chose simultaneously in secret.

Oops, I forgot to mention that we take turns picking one piece at a time until the points are spent. I just updated the page.


Quote:
Those variants aside, I believe the "reduced set" Arimaa has a great deal of potential.  Some combinations of pieces will presumably be more interesting than others, and one would just have to try to see which work best.  A crazy thought would be "single-rabbit" Arimaa, where all the pieces are in play but each side has only one rabbit.  Would that be intense or would it bog down?  Also I had earlier suggested removing HDC from each side.  The "no-tie" Arimaa should play considerably faster than with a full set, but without being razor sharp from move one like the suggested RRRRCC.  It could be a happy medium to retain complexity while speeding up progress.  Also, by all accounts, JDB's experiment with his bot no_MHH was a big success.  People enjoyed the looser play and learned from it as well.

I would be interested to hear any other reports of reduced-material Arimaa, how it affects game play, game length, standard strategies, etc.


There is definitely room for a lot of experimentation here.  I too would like to hear what others have tried.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 12th, 2011, 4:04am

on 11/12/11 at 01:09:40, omar wrote:
Oops, I forgot to mention that we take turns picking one piece at a time until the points are spent. I just updated the page.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that.  That sounds much more playable than either of my ideas.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by megajester on Dec 6th, 2011, 5:38am
Over the weekend I was visiting my in-laws and played several games of Arimaa with my brother-in-law (who is registered on the site as "utku"), with a couple of home rules to make the game faster.

We had a number of points with which we "bought" our pieces, either 15 or 12 depending on what we felt like. Elephants were free. Camels cost 5, horses 4, dogs 3 and rabbits 1 (we didn't bother with cats). We experimented with camel + rabbits, 2 horses + rabbits, camel + 2 horses + few rabbits etc to see which setups played better against which.

We started by positioning our pieces wherever we liked along our back 2 ranks, so we would fill the second rank with our main pieces and some rabbits and put the leftover rabbits somewhere along the back rank.

The games were fast and furious, and even though I beat him most of the time he really enjoyed the game!
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by omar on Dec 9th, 2011, 10:07am
Thanks for sharing that megajester. You should try some games with a dice to give your brother a better chance.

About a week ago I played Yu-Gi-Oh style Arimaa with my neices. What is Yu-Gi-Oh style Arimaa. You use a reduced set of pieces, a dice and you take on the role of characters; most importantly before making your move you trash talk your opponent. We used characters from Sonic X. I was Eggman. It was hilariously fun :-)
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by leo on Dec 11th, 2011, 12:56am
Any chance those rules get implemented into the game room and the bot developers work on them?
Especially the trash talk bit :]
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by omar on Dec 20th, 2011, 10:21pm

on 12/11/11 at 00:56:02, leo wrote:
Any chance those rules get implemented into the game room and the bot developers work on them?
Especially the trash talk bit :]


Come to think of it would be quite fun to trash talk against a chat bot.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Dolus on Dec 21st, 2011, 10:54am

on 12/20/11 at 22:21:39, omar wrote:
Come to think of it would be quite fun to trash talk against a chat bot.

If I ever get my bot development environment set up, I'll try to add trash talking as a feature of my bot. :D (and excuse making when it's losing)

"Err.. uh.. I meant to give you a camel handicap!"
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by UruramTururam on Dec 22nd, 2011, 2:06am
"Dont laugh, computers are people too!"
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Boo on Dec 22nd, 2011, 11:37am
Another variants to use a dice:

1) Player throws a dice before his move. He must spend all his quarter moves moving a piece, that corresponds to a dice points:
6-elephant; 5-camel; 4-horse; 3-dog; 2-cat; 1-rabbit.
If no such piece is left on board, player has to miss his turn.
If there are several pieces of one kind, the player is free to distribute movement points as he wishes

2) Player throws 4 dices, and gets 4 quarter-moves.
If a player pulls or pushes, the opponent takes one his dice.

3) Random traps.
Before the game starts, determine the trap locations by throwing a dice.
1st throw determins file: 1-B, 2-C, 3-D, 4-E, 5-F, 6-G
2nd throw determines line: 1-2nd; 2-3rd; ... ; 6-7th.
You will need 8 dice throws to determine all trap locations.

And another one without a dice:

Rabbit-bomberman
Each player before the 1st move writes down which rabbit will be a bomberman (e.g. "a2") and keeps his choice in secret.
When during the game, opponent pushes or pulls the bomber-rabbit, the player may choose to reveal his secret and explode the rabbit. In such a case all adjecent pieces (friendly pieces also!) are removed from the board.
Note: the number of bomber-rabbits is up to the players' agreement.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Dolus on Dec 22nd, 2011, 11:50am

on 12/22/11 at 11:37:49, Boo wrote:
Another variants to use a dice:

1) Player throws a dice before his move. He must spend all his quarter moves moving a piece, that corresponds to a dice points:
6-elephant; 5-camel; 4-horse; 3-dog; 2-cat; 1-rabbit.
If no such piece is left on board, player has to miss his turn.
If there are several pieces of one kind, the player is free to distribute movement points as he wishes

2) Player throws 4 dices, and gets 4 quarter-moves.
If a player pulls or pushes, the opponent takes one his dice.

3) Random traps.
Before the game starts, determine the trap locations by throwing a dice.
1st throw determins file: 1-B, 2-C, 3-D, 4-E, 5-F, 6-G
2nd throw determines line: 1-2nd; 2-3rd; ... ; 6-7th.
You will need 8 dice throws to determine all trap locations.

And another one without a dice:

Rabbit-bomberman
Each player before the game writes down which rabbit will be a bomberman and keeps his choice in secret.
When during the game, opponent pushes or pulls the bomber-rabbit, the player may choose to reveal his secret and explode the rabbit. In such a case all adjecent pieces (friendly pieces also!) are removed from the board.
Note: the number of bomber-rabbits is up to the players' agreement.

Ooh, I would hate the restrictions on 1 and 2. I can imagine (I have two rabbits one step from goal, but I just can't roll that darn 1!)

3 I would like better. It leaves me with more control over how I play the game.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by omar on Dec 31st, 2011, 7:25pm

on 12/22/11 at 11:37:49, Boo wrote:
And another one without a dice:

Rabbit-bomberman
Each player before the 1st move writes down which rabbit will be a bomberman (e.g. "a2") and keeps his choice in secret.
When during the game, opponent pushes or pulls the bomber-rabbit, the player may choose to reveal his secret and explode the rabbit. In such a case all adjecent pieces (friendly pieces also!) are removed from the board.
Note: the number of bomber-rabbits is up to the players' agreement.


Boo, I am amazed to see you mention this. The first time this was mentioned was by Karl although he was being sarcastic about it. Karl and I were commuting to work one day; I think it was around fall of 2006; and I was telling him about the dice variation. Karl wasn't fond of adding an element of luck to Arimaa and he said something like: why don't you also add kamikaze rabbits that blow up the pieces around them. I laughed it off at the time. But when I thought about it later, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. It would add an element of hidden information to the game.

Last year I actually played a few games of this with Naveed. It's quite fun. Instead of rabbits with bombs we said the special rabbits are really skunks disguised as rabbits and at the opportune time could let out a spray to knock out the stronger enemy pieces around them. Rabbits and friendly pieces are not effected.  We actually made up some cards to help play this. We also made two sets of rings of eight different colors which we slipped on the rabbits so that each rabbit of a side has a collar with a unique color. There are two sets of 16 cards. One set is for the gold player and the other set is for the silver player; the cards have a gold or silver back side to indicate which player the card belongs to. In each set the back of eight cards has a picture of a skunk while the front of each card has one of the eight different colored rings. The back of the other eight cards has a picture of a flag while the front of each card has one of the eight different colored rings. At the beginning of the game during the setup stage the players keep two of the eight skunk cards and put away the rest. The two cards they keep are used to track which rabbits are really skunks and are kept facing down; although the player owning those cards can look at them at any time. The players also keep the eight flag cards facing down. During the game a player can look at his own flag card and select up to two cards and place them in a separate stack. When a player wants to reveal the skunk they cannot take any steps on the board and can only show the face of the skunk card. The color of the ring indicates that the rabbit with the matching color ring is the skunk. The stronger enemy pieces around the skunk as well as the skunk are removed from the game. But if the opponent had already flagged this color then the stronger pieces are safe and only the skunk is removed from the game. We were still experimenting with which squares around the skunk should be effected. All 8, just the four orthogonally adjacent squares or just the ones in front and behind or just the two side squares.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by Boo on Jan 1st, 2012, 3:55am

Quote:
Boo, I am amazed to see you mention this.


I don't deserve the credit, chess has those ideas floating around for ages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_chess
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by omar on Jan 6th, 2012, 6:01pm

on 01/01/12 at 03:55:14, Boo wrote:
I don't deserve the credit, chess has those ideas floating around for ages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_chess


But Atomic chess doesn't have any element of hidden information. Your description did and that is what surprised me because it was so close to what I had been play testing.
Title: Re: Home rules
Post by supersamu on Sep 10th, 2013, 12:10pm

on 12/06/11 at 05:38:20, megajester wrote:
We had a number of points with which we "bought" our pieces, either 15 or 12 depending on what we felt like. Elephants were free. Camels cost 5, horses 4, dogs 3 and rabbits 1 (we didn't bother with cats). We experimented with camel + rabbits, 2 horses + rabbits, camel + 2 horses + few rabbits etc to see which setups played better against which.

We started by positioning our pieces wherever we liked along our back 2 ranks, so we would fill the second rank with our main pieces and some rabbits and put the leftover rabbits somewhere along the back rank.


I did the same thing 2 days ago, with some small changes:
- Cats are available and cost 2
- Gold and silver choose their piece alignment separetely
- The piece alignment gets revealed and gold sets up his pieces according to megajester´s rules
- Then silver sets up his pieces according to megajester´s rules and gold gets to move first, but can only take 3 steps

I played two games with a 15 points budget against my mother.
On the first game I chose Camel, Horse and six rabbits, my mother chose two dogs, two cats and 5 rabbits.
I won the game and suggested that we try the same thing with reversed pieces and reversed colors. I won the game as well and now I have some convincing to do so I can play this Variant again.

Interestingly, Material evaluators suggest different things:

http://arimaa.janzert.com/eval.html

DAPE thinks gold is ahead by 0.64.
FAME thinks silver is ahead by 0.33.
HarLog thinks silver is ahead by 0.27.
(gold being the side with Elephant, Camel, a horse and six rabbits)

I think the side with the camel and horse has a big advantage. What do you think?

Some Ideas to make the Variant interesting:

(From now on, when I say "x-pt.-list", I mean 6 different piece alignments, where every piece alignment has a budget of x points)

First Idea: Player A writes x-pt.-list A, Player B writes x-pt.-list B
A D6 is rolled to see which Piece Alignment from List A Player A has to play with.
A D6 is rolled to see which Piece Alignment from List B Player B has to play with.

Second Idea: Player A writes x-pt.-list B, Player B writes x-pt.-list A
A D6 is rolled to see which Piece Alignment from List A Player A has to play with.
A D6 is rolled to see which Piece Alignment from List B Player B has to play with.

Third Idea: The players collaborate on the list and two dies are rolled, one for the piece alignment of the gold player, one for the piece alignment of the silver Player.

These are my thoughts so far.


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