I made a Chess variant inspired by AoE

[Goodspeed]

The core gameplay is Chess, and:
- With obstacles on the map that hinder movement.
- Where you only start with a king and have to buy new pieces for resources, which can be found on the map (treasures give 20 gold once, and mines give 3 gold each turn you occupy them)

See below screenshot for a typical starting position. Maps are randomly generated but always symmetrical.

It has working server-based multiplayer and an ELO-based ranking system including a leaderboard.

It's now stable enough to invite more people to play it. The server is a pleb NAS on my local network though so I'm not sure how many simultaneous games it'll be able to handle.

Discord link: https://discord.gg/bhnd7ZYpXr
(The latest version can be downloaded there)

Full rules

Piece movement/placement
- The pieces move like in Chess with one exception: Pawns can move any direction in a straight line, and capture any direction diagonally.
- Rocks block movement along files and diagonals and nothing can stand on them.
- Trees block movement along files and diagonals but pieces can stand on them.
- Mines (rocks with gold in them) work the same as trees.
- New pieces can only be placed around your king, with the exception of pawns which can be placed around any major piece.


Two additional win conditions compared to regular Chess:
- If a player gets to 150 gold, they win the game. If both players get there on the same turn, the highest gold count wins. If it's equal, the first player to gain a gold lead wins.
- Stalemate wins the game instead of drawing it.


Treasures give 20 gold.
Mines give 3 gold each turn you stand on them with any piece (including on the opponent's turn).


Bidding explanation
Due to the first move advantage, black starts with 10 gold by default. However, the first move advantage differs per map spawn, so 10 isn't always the right number. To balance this, with bidding enabled players get the opportunity to bid for white. The highest bidder gets white, and the opponent gets black with gold equal to white's bid.

Example:
Player A thinks the first move is worth 8 gold and bids 8.
Player B thinks it's worth more and bids 10.
Result: Player B gets white. Player A gets black, starting with 10 gold.

@deuxballesman @uberjz @scarm @callentournies @Aizamk @Le Hussard sur le toit @spadel @[Armag] diarouga

[Djigit]

++ @Scroogie

[princeofcarthage]

Interested

[scarm]

Seems very intriguing, would definitely be interested to try this out.

Where do your bought pieces go? Next to your king?

[Goodspeed]

Yes, except for pawns which can go next to any major piece
Added a full rules spoiler in the OP

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

I assume there are no promotion rules ?

[Goodspeed]

Yeah no promotion

[scarm]

Strategy consideration: aren't knights super good in this? Seems like Rooks and Bishops are very constrained by the terrain, while knights should mostly just be fine to jump over it and their ability to control 8 spaces around them should in theory be more relevant here, as there isn't such a clear "my side, your side" divide (that in my experience often leads to less of these 8 spaces being actually relevant). I guess it is much harder to create an outpost due to the pawn movement rules though. On the other hand pawns are quite expensive comparatively.

Very interesting.

edit: to clarify the movement rules: a rook on a1 could move to c1 and capture a piece on it, and could then on the next turn move to say f1, but it couldn't move straight to f1 through the forest right? And if c1 was a rock instead it would have to go around it?

edit2: actually i didn't consider that maps are a lot bigger, which favors rooks and bishops more

[Goodspeed]

It's not unlikely that knights are broken yeah. They are already disproportionally expensive compared to the regular piece values, but they might still be too cheap. The current costs are based on a few testgames played by people who aren't very good at chess so they're probably not where they need to be

edit: to clarify the movement rules: a rook on a1 could move to c1 and capture a piece on it, and could then on the next turn move to say f1, but it couldn't move straight to f1 through the forest right? And if c1 was a rock instead it would have to go around it?

Yes

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

My gut feeling is that the Queen is too cheap (bigger board+less pieces) but I've yet to play the game.

[princeofcarthage]

How do I (we) play it? @Goodspeed

[Goodspeed]

I'll invite to the discord via PM, but not too many at a time because I'm not sure how scalable the server is (probably very very not scalable)

[scarm]

My gut feeling is that the Queen is too cheap (bigger board+less pieces) but I've yet to play the game.

Interested to see how this will play out. I think the problem with the queen might be that it is very hard to get, as even with black you can only get a queen and no other pieces with all three starting treasures, and that seems like a very low tempo strategy, considering you probably could try and rush a rook or bishop and cut the opponents king off from the third treasure. And building up to 70 gold using only mines seems hard. Even with three mines it would take 8 turns to build up a queen, while your opponent could use that same time and gold to get multiple minor pieces for tempo.

edit: I guess it is only 4 turns on mines, as your opponents turns count as well. Still think the tempo loss from queening is probably not that easy to stomach, but we'll see.

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

My gut feeling is that the Queen is too cheap (bigger board+less pieces) but I've yet to play the game.

Interested to see how this will play out. I think the problem with the queen might be that it is very hard to get, as even with black you can only get a queen and no other pieces with all three starting treasures, and that seems like a very low tempo strategy, considering you probably could try and rush a rook or bishop and cut the opponents king off from the third treasure. And building up to 70 gold using only mines seems hard. Even with three mines it would take 8 turns to build up a queen, while your opponent could use that same time and gold to get multiple minor pieces for tempo.

edit: I guess it is only 4 turns on mines, as your opponents turns count as well. Still think the tempo loss from queening is probably not that easy to stomach, but we'll see.

Yeah you can probably not afford a queen in the early game.

[Goodspeed]

Bump

Discord link: https://discord.gg/bhnd7ZYpXr
The latest version can be downloaded there, also it can be used to find people to play with and/or report bugs etc

Going by some earlier tests, the server should be able to handle a little bit of traffic. Feel free to invite friends but don't go posting it on reddit or anything

[Goodspeed]

Repo is here btw for anyone interested https://github.com/mart90/AgeOfChess