Battle Chess (unitbuilding variant)

Hey everyone!

Some time ago I had an idea for a Chess Variant: Battle Chess. I have been browsing a bit on the forum to see if there is a similar variant, but as far as I can tell there isn’t. I myself am not a good chess player, though I am fascinated by the game. Hopefully players that have a good view on the game of Chess could give some feedback on the game. Do not hesitate to be critical, but please do tell why it isn’t good or why it wont work. Also note that when I talk about ‘pieces’ I mean both pieces and pawns.

Introduction to Battle Chess

 I was thinking about Chess as some kind of strategy game, like Command and Conquerers Red Alert. In that game one builds a base, harvests spice and builds troops to destroy their enemy.

Rules & Goal

Goal: Capture the enemy’s king (just like normal chess)

Rules: all normal chess rules apply to Battle Chess + extra rules (see below)

What’s different from normal chess?

In Battle Chess the players conquers squares and gains coins from them each turn. With these coins players can buy pieces and send them into battle. What kind of army will you create? An elite army with expensive pieces, or a swarm of pawns? How about saving your coins to buy a big suprise army?

Conquering a square is easy: just move a piece onto it, or capture an enemy piece. You then own the square for as long as it is not reconquered by the opponent. If the piece moves away from the square it is still owned by the player who last had a piece standing on it. 

---edit: many rules have changed. Game is under construction. Hopefully its finished before February 2012

It sounds like an interesting idea, though your wording of the rules is a bit confusing.

I agree: I don't think it would work very well OTB, but as a computer game I'd at least download a demo.

Question: I probably missed that sentence, but which rank is the "production rank"?

Also, forgive me if I am mistaken, but isn't C&C an RTS?

I don't think there is really a point to making units wait a second turn after being built to attack.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

.

Some stuff I hope to get feedback on:

- what are proper prices for pieces and pawns?

- how about changing the production rule into: one may not produce anything if 1 or more squares of the production rank are taken by the opponent.
The player does recieve coins and automatically saves them for future turns. If he again owns the entire productionrank, he can produce again.

- anything else that is not clear

Fascinating idea. I would be up for a game of this to help you test. We would have to communicate by message and use the board editor to play. We could play it correspondence style.

Sure, I'd love to try! I dont have experience with the editor though, but that should be easy. Also I hope you don't mind winning by a mile since I am really.. really bad at chess (and Im not being modest here :D).

Here is the fisrt game. $ means unit build.

1.e4   d5

2.exd5    Qxd5

3.Nc3     Qd6

4.d4   e5

5.dxe5   Qxe5+$Pd8

6.Be3   f6

7.Nf3   Qa5

8.Qxe8+$Re1

1-0

Income:
mrguy888: 6 coin(s) dekaleaas: 4 coin(s) 
Savings:
mrguy888: 7 coin(s) dekaleaas: 14 coin(s)

:) that was a not so smart game.. started all wrong. Here is how the income and savings developed. And the final board. I hoped for some more interesting results with that excel overview.. but the game went to quick to get to some conclusions about the economy side.

Prizes where:

Pawn: 5
Knight: 13
Bishop: 13
Rook: 20
Queen: 33

In a more equal game I think the pieces are to cheap. Imagine if two players cant find an opening for some time but keep gaining 10, 11, .. ,16.. thats allmost a queen every two or three turns..

Your pawn was on f6 not f7. Also my bishop was on e3. I think it was a forced mate anyway from that position.

I agree. Try doubling all the prices.

I edited it, think its correct now. Funny how I warn in the OP for quick moves on the king when a piece instantly joins the game and then happily jump in the trap :D

There's two issues I havent figured out yet:
- how does a pawn behave when its bought?
mrguy888 said:
 My ranks of possible options I can think of:

1. Only single moves.
2. Place them on the second rank
3. Let them do a double move from second rank.
4. Let them double move from first rank.
En passant is followed for every double move.

Option 4 seems best to me. Anyone a word on that?

Other:
- what if a pawn reaches the last line? 
Personally I'd like something different than choosing a piece. Because players get to choose a piece already when they buy stuff.  A possibility could be rolling a dice: 1-2 = knight, 3-4 = bisshop, 5-6 = rook. Or a player could be awarded coins: 20? 30? 40? 50? Anyone else a good idea?

NO DICE! Why enter chance into a game that is so great because of the lack of it? Also what is the point in getting awarded coins which you will use to buy peices instead of just getting the peices? I think promotion is the way to go.

I think promoting the pawn like normal is just fine. However, I don't see a problem with spicing up the game by adding a variable amount to the amount of coins a player would normally earn. Of course, along with that the prices of the units would have to be raised to keep it balanced.

Oh, and one suggestion. Either the prices of the units all need to be raised (though I think they're rather low in the first place) quite a bit, or there should be a rule about placing a piece to give check or checkmate.

Ok well I guess promotion is the way to go. :) I agree on the luck thing. That is indeed what makes chess a unique game.

On prices.. which would you suggest? We can still adopt those to the 2nd game. 

Did you have something specific in mind? Not sure If I understand this right. Do you mean whenn a pawn gets to the last line one gets a variable amount of coins?

Or: the further away the square is from the productionrank, the more coins it produces? (ie for white: rank3sq.=2coins, rank4sq.=3coins, etc) What amount do you mean gets variable?

Another possibility: a pawn that reaches last line steals ALL savings. (or a percentage) 

Luck could be an element of the game without really making or breaking a game. For instance: if pawn reaches last line player gets a random amount of cash, say min 40 and max 60 coins. Reaching backline is allways good, but If youre lucky you get a bit more. But I agree: if it's about chess.. do not involve luck. I might make a 2nd battle chess variant with lots of dicerolling, but I should check existing dice variants first to see how they do it.

Oh, duh, it's all variable :S

What I meant was a random number of coins a player gets each turn, but now I think that might be a bit much luck.

Anyway, that rank idea sounds good, and it gives me an idea:

Scrap the -16 idea, and instead, value the squares sorta like this (Reverse for black):

1st and 2nd ranks- Nothing

3rd and 4th- 1 coin

5th- 2 coins

6th- 3 coins

7th and 8th- Also nothing

My reasoning for that is that is that if a game made it to an endgame (somehow), the game would be really unbalanced if any particular square is worth too much.

Though, that depends on how you decide to price the pieces...

Just stumbled upon this thread by complete accident!

Earlier this year I began working on a very similar idea. A multiplayer online game, where you have your own army, and the idea is to conquer as much space as possible.

I had planned the game as either some sort of world map, like risk, or perhaps to have given it a space theme (just had placeholder graphics and a grid for the time being). Anyway, I had the idea that the board could be various sizes and shapes, depending on how many players were in the game. You could ally with other players, send reinforcements etc. On a 1v1 game, a standard chess board would be used, on 1v2 or 2v2 the board would be wider, to allow your ally's pieces to be setup next to you. All would be played on a standard layout board, however the number of squares would increase depending on how many players, and also the other idea is that certain planets or territories would be worth different amounts of points, and therefore vary in board size. Conquering a larger board would generate more points/turn, which could in turn buy more reinforcements.

I also had the idea of missions, including checkmate the king, get the king to the other side (for the bong cloud player ;) ), capture and control a space for x turns etc. The game would feature computer controlled and player controlled areas - where a player isn't involved I would have the computer take over.

I started programming in Javascript and used HTML/CSS and the scriptaculous libraries for the front end stuff, as thats the language I know best, and I know its cross compatible on a number of platforms. Plus its a hell of a lot quicker to develop with than say c++ which I'm ok with, or Java which I hate! I started designing the database side of things for a persistent universe, but never got round to actually writing anything.

The first part I began writing was the chess engine bit. Luckily, someone had already started a basic javascript chess engine, however it needed extending to support different sized boards, different number of players, and above all it was quite a weak engine and I don't think it acknowledged the draw rule or en passant correctly. Draw rule I managed to figure out, simply by having a move limit on each game, and I from memory I got it to support different sized boards easily enough, getting the engine to be more sophisticated was the harder part (it could see something like 2 moves ahead, which is probably a 1200 rating), and I think thats about where I left it, the maths did my head in. 

Haven't touched it for several months, but knowing others may be interested in a similar sort of game might make me return to complete it over winter. If anyone has experience writing chess engines, drop me a message