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ocmiente
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Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« on: May 14th, 2010, 8:33am »
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Yes... I know... Arimaa is already complex enough that we don't need more variations... but I've been thinking about games with pieces that increase in strength when things happen - like pawn promotion in chess, or getting a king in checkers.  
 
So, I was thinking, get an Arimaa board, put gold and silver checkers where the Arimaa pieces usually begin.  Rules are the same as for Arimaa, except that units that consist of only one checker act as rabbits.  Units with more than one checker have the corresponding strength (a two checker stack can push/pull/hold a one checker stack, three is stronger than one or two, etc.).  A move is the same as for Arimaa, with the additional move that you may choose to use two steps in your turn to stack one of your units on top of an adjacent unit (the number of steps this should take is negotiable - as is the number of times you can do this in a turn - I would think that once per turn would be a good place to start.  
 
Only single checker stacks (rabbit equivalent) can goal, and if all of a player's single checker stacks are gone, that player loses (same as rabbit rules for Arimaa).  
 
The player would have the problem of deciding how many pieces to promote at the expense of having a good small army defense.  On the other hand, an army of rabbits is pretty useless - so some balance is needed.  Promoting a piece to a cat equivalent is very useful, since you gain the ability to move backward and bully the rabbits, but additional promotions might not be as beneficial... A player might try to get a stack of 15 checkers, leaving one rabbit so he doesn't lose - but that would almost certainly be a bad idea.  
 
 
 
 
 
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ocmiente
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #1 on: May 14th, 2010, 8:51am »
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One more thought about starting position.  
 
Gold and silver lay out 16 pieces each, single stack to begin.  Each player has an additional 13 pieces.  Gold begins by stacking his 13 pieces however he likes on top of his other pieces.  13 pieces allow for a standard Arimaa setup - but the players could choose to distribute the power however they liked.  Silver follows gold and places her pieces, and then Gold begins play as usual.  
 
So, this could be played with the pieces from two three standard checker boards sets.
 
<EDIT>So, maybe only start with 16 + 8 additional pieces, so it could be played with 2 checker sets.  This would not allow a normal Arimaa piece distribution.
« Last Edit: May 14th, 2010, 10:11am by ocmiente » IP Logged

Hippo
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #2 on: May 14th, 2010, 9:23am »
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Not bad at all. The game would be bad if you could divide pieces. If you can only reduce the number of pieces, it could be interesting.
 
For the 2nd variant I think silver will have very big advantage as he can create apropriate stones to match gold's.
 
The game would lose at least one dimension ... blockade by players own rabbits would not work at all.
« Last Edit: May 14th, 2010, 9:27am by Hippo » IP Logged

ocmiente
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #3 on: May 14th, 2010, 9:30am »
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Yes... blockade might be an issue... but I have a possible solution.  
 
Promotion is only possible by moving into a trap space.  
 
So, a player would have to have at least two pieces around the trap, and one piece in the trap, so that a piece outside the trap can move onto the piece in the trap square.  
 
This would also allow for frames.  
 
Quote:
For the 2nd variant I think silver will have very big advantage as he can create apropriate stones to match gold's.

 
The advantage could be reduced by taking turns placing only some of the pieces.  So, let's say you use 24 pieces each (so only 2 checkers sets needed), both players place the initial 16 - one piece per stack.  Then gold places 4, then silver places 4, then gold the remaining 4, then silver the last 4.  The specific numbers could easily be changed if there was any advantage to these numbers.  Of course, Silver could always have the strongest piece after the initial placement, which Gold could counter quickly on its first move - provided that promotion takes only one step, rather than two, as I originally suggested.  Having promotions happen only on a trap space seem to make that unnecessary - so I think making promtion take the same number of steps as any other move is better/simpler.  
« Last Edit: May 14th, 2010, 11:56am by ocmiente » IP Logged

lightvector
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #4 on: May 14th, 2010, 12:13pm »
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It's extremely hard to tell without playing, but it seems that this would result in an entirely different game than normal Arimaa.
 
It would seem highly beneficial to sacrifice one of your rabbits (or any other piece you own) to make your elephant stronger, or to make multiple elephant-strength pieces. If the opponent does not do the same, then you will have the strongest free piece, which is a probably a strong advantage, just like in normal Arimaa.
 
So both players keep trying to outdo one another, making stronger and stronger pieces. This would probably stop at some point, when the added value of stronger pieces is outweighed by the value of extra rabbits to defend and to threaten goal, when the board starts clearing out. I'm not sure if this is how these variants would actually play, but if this is even a little bit true, we already have a drastically different game than Arimaa, with drastically different strategy.
 
Granted, the strongest free piece would matter a little less. Lone-elephant strategies would probably become infeasible. A lone elephant can be overcome at any time if a horse and a dog (or any other combination of pieces strong enough) decide to stack. Again, it's extremely hard to tell without playtesting, but I think this alone changes the game so dramatically that such a variant probably would be barely recognizable as Arimaa, in terms of the strategy and tactics.
 
 
 
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JoeHead
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #5 on: May 15th, 2010, 2:02am »
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Interesting rule. People always come and invent new rules to make game "better", more "interesting", more "fighting".
I got also an idea how to improve rules.
 
In any part of the game I can do whatever I imagine. Eg: I dont like your E, so I just take it out of the board. I want to win now: so I take my rabbit and just place it on the back row, or even simpler, I could just wipe all your pieces away.
 
... What an interesting rules, eh? It is extremely hard to tell how would these work in real game... Lets go playtesting Smiley)
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #6 on: May 15th, 2010, 2:28am »
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on May 15th, 2010, 2:02am, JoeHead wrote:
Interesting rule. People always come and invent new rules to make game "better", more "interesting", more "fighting".
I got also an idea how to improve rules.
 
In any part of the game I can do whatever I imagine. Eg: I dont like your E, so I just take it out of the board. I want to win now: so I take my rabbit and just place it on the back row, or even simpler, I could just wipe all your pieces away.
 
... What an interesting rules, eh? It is extremely hard to tell how would these work in real game... Lets go playtesting Smiley)

Oh come on be nice. All the guy's saying is "What if we took the principle of Abstract Chess and applied it to Arimaa?"
 
After all, how was Arimaa concieved in the first place? In an attempt to make chess "better", more "interesting", more "fighting" for humans! Am I right?
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ocmiente
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #7 on: May 15th, 2010, 7:34am »
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Quote:
"Anyone can invent a new chess variant within ten seconds (try it) and unfortunately some people do".
D.B. Pritchard, author of The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
 
I don't think you can say it much better than that... and I started this thread Smiley
 
Still, if it weren't for variants, we almost certainly would not have Arimaa.
 
And I hadn't seen 'Abstract Chess' before, believe it or not.  Thanks for the link, magajester.  I guess this variant would be called 'Abstract Arimaa' then.  
« Last Edit: May 15th, 2010, 7:37am by ocmiente » IP Logged

omar
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #8 on: May 15th, 2010, 9:45am »
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Interesting variant Thomas. I tend to agree with Hippo that demoting should not be allowed. Instead of allowing stacking only on a trap I would suggest it can be done anywhere but that only single unit stacks can be placed on other adjacent stacks; this makes building stacks a bit slower. Also I might suggest that a stacking move uses up the whole turn. Of course you will have to play test it quite a bit to see what works and what doesn't.
 
JoeHead, please don't be annoyed. I think as the Arimaa community grows there will be more variants proposed. Also people will want to present their game to the Arimaa community to get an opinion even if it is not Arimaa related. I think this is a compliment to Arimaa and the community here.
 
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starjots
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #9 on: May 15th, 2010, 11:58am »
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That's a very interesting sounding variant.
 
Doing the math, a regular Arimaa set up would require 8+2x2+2x3+2x4+1x5+1x6 = 37 checkers to start with.  So you are looking at a much sparser game with 16 starting checkers.  To maintain the flavor you might start with double stacked checkers (32), same effect since every piece starts equal.  The downside is that this also requires unstacking moves for rabbits.
 
I thought of a minor variant the other day:  make the board a logical cylinder. That is, have the sides of the board "wrap" and the 'A' file and 'H' file be adjacent.  Perhaps this is because I hate getting my camel slammed up against the edge by an elephant all the time Smiley
 
Ooops... i see you thought of the sparsity thing already!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
« Last Edit: May 15th, 2010, 12:01pm by starjots » IP Logged
Hippo
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #10 on: May 16th, 2010, 10:00am »
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For the cyllindric variant ... the trap distances would be better to have even ... either reduce the width to 6 or move one pair of traps near the original border. One could also experiment with other positions of traps ... . The main issue against such variants is the arimaa comunity is so small yet, that finding an opponant for one of a lot of possible variants would be almost impossible. ... The only possibility I could imagine would to have agreed set of allowed modifications and generalised game engine to allow such play. But own server with generalised arimaa history would be needed ... May be in 2030 after arima comunity grows enough and base arima would start to be boring? ... the generalised dimensions ... the board topology including width and position of traps ... set of basic stones ... may be abstract ones represented by numbers.
Special stacking rules (constraints) allowing dynamic changes of the set of basic stones even during the game.
« Last Edit: May 16th, 2010, 10:02am by Hippo » IP Logged

gatsby
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #11 on: May 25th, 2010, 3:01am »
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I also came up with that idea of stacking pieces a while ago. Maybe it could be combined with a go-like capture, i.e. capture by surrounding enemy pieces with one's own pieces.
 
By the way, I have sometimes wondered if a go-like capture was ever considered an option at any stage of arimaa's design and, if so, why it was discarded. Getting rid of the traps, which are like unpleasant spots on the board  Wink, seems like a good a idea for an arimaa variant...
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Re: Alternative rule - stackable pieces
« Reply #12 on: May 26th, 2010, 8:40pm »
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on May 25th, 2010, 3:01am, gatsby wrote:
I also came up with that idea of stacking pieces a while ago. Maybe it could be combined with a go-like capture, i.e. capture by surrounding enemy pieces with one's own pieces.
 
By the way, I have sometimes wondered if a go-like capture was ever considered an option at any stage of arimaa's design and, if so, why it was discarded. Getting rid of the traps, which are like unpleasant spots on the board  Wink, seems like a good a idea for an arimaa variant...

 
Yes, actually we did try a go-like capture before traps were introduced. It didn't allow for exchange situations that much and the side which made some initial captures seemed to get a strong advantage because the side with fewer pieces has a harder time surrounding the opponents pieces and making captures.
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