[HN Gopher] 'Sovereign chess' is a battle without loyalty or hum...
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       'Sovereign chess' is a battle without loyalty or humanity (2020)
        
       Author : amichail
       Score  : 129 points
       Date   : 2022-04-03 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | gleenn wrote:
       | That just seems like a crazy amount of pieces and complexity. It
       | looks cool but god strategy must be so hard. If you have played
       | people who start taking long times to think through moves, I feel
       | like this would basically lock people up for hours.
        
         | SovereignChess wrote:
         | On a player's opening move, their possible move options are
         | identical to traditional chess, since they only control the
         | pieces of their color. As they land on color squares, the move
         | options can increase, but for typical chess players, the
         | learning curve is not too steep.
         | 
         | Most games end in under 40 moves...
        
         | lordnacho wrote:
         | I was going to say the same thing. The problem with creating
         | complications is you need a fairly large ecosystem to ensure
         | that you discover (through people playing) the many intricate
         | strategic situations that can happen.
         | 
         | It's like when you play civilization and there's a zillion ways
         | to win, it leads to a lot of time being spent becoming even
         | slightly familiar with the game.
        
       | bondarchuk wrote:
       | See also the recent review in Abstract Games magazine:
       | https://www.abstractgames.org/gamereview23.html
        
       | iliekcomputers wrote:
       | Chess variants are very interesting. It'd be very nice if someone
       | could build an online version of this actually.
        
       | amichail wrote:
       | Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/SovereignChess/videos
        
         | 7373737373 wrote:
         | Can't find any videos of people actually playing it
        
         | armchairhacker wrote:
         | Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhq7oppTUuc, this guy does
         | a lot of other board games too.
        
       | forum_ghost wrote:
       | Finally, a game that teaches principles of realpolitik?
        
         | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
         | A long time ago I played Galaxy Plus - a variant of Galaxy PBEM
         | game with simple rules and a galaxy full of races controlled by
         | humans - 50 players start a game, 1-3 win in the end.
         | 
         | It was one of the most intense gaming experience I have ever
         | had. With 3 turns per week, a single game could last for a
         | year, and to win you had to be a good diplomat to not get
         | swarmed by your neighbors. It also taught me a lot about
         | politics.
        
         | tmsbrg wrote:
         | That would be Diplomacy [0]
         | 
         | Worth trying out online for example through webDiplomacy [1].
         | It's my favourite game.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
         | 
         | [1] https://webdiplomacy.net/
        
           | ekanes wrote:
           | What a fantastic game it is. Thanks for that link, maybe I'll
           | play again.
        
           | zzzzzzzza wrote:
           | try dominions 5
        
           | cjbgkagh wrote:
           | I would play this more often but I'm running out of friends.
        
             | aidenn0 wrote:
             | Assuming this is a "diplomacy destroys friendships" joke...
             | 
             | Games are a place where we can see culture clash in the
             | small.
             | 
             | My sister didn't speak to me for days after, having folded
             | to a bluff in poker, she flipped over my hand and called me
             | a cheater.
             | 
             | To any poker player, my behavior was fine and she would be
             | way out of line for revealing my cards.
             | 
             | On the other hand, I was intentionally misleading a family
             | member for personal gain at their expense, which away from
             | the poker table would be a huge breach of trust
        
               | cjbgkagh wrote:
               | It's a short version of I'm running out of friends to
               | play diplomacy with. Not everyone likes realpolitik as
               | much as I do.
               | 
               | In poker the adversarial aspect is clearer. In diplomacy
               | you have to develop trust to later exploit it by breaking
               | alliances and traitorously conspiring with enemies in a
               | way that guarantees your former allies loss. The betrayal
               | is more acute in a way that feels more fundamental.
               | Telling them that they were naive for trusting you and
               | they must do the same if they want to win tends not to go
               | down so well.
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | My question is it possible to be good at Diplomacy
               | without being a socio opath in real life. In poker,
               | someone being good at bluffing is scary (separately from
               | just being better at the math part), much like someone
               | being better than you at sports is physically
               | intimidating off the field because they could beat you
               | up. Diplomacy even more so than poker, because
               | manipulation and deceipt is the only skill in the game.
               | It doesn't even have the cooperative part of the real
               | world's "build something of value together" -- it's a
               | zero sum or negative sum game.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-03 23:00 UTC)