>not a single balance update since the 8th century
You're just begging AnarchyChess to correct you.
OK, I looked it up on Wikipedia. The bishop and queen were the last to have their moves set changed to the modern form in the 15th or 16th century. But even since then there have been some tweaks, such as the 3 move and 50 move rules for draws, and the orientation of the board. So you could maybe argue no balancing since the 16th century, and only a few bug fixes after that.
Yeah, chess was really hard when the board had to be vertical. Horizontal orientation was a huge improvement to the player experience.
Not quite true. Before the ~15th century, the queen moved like the king and the pawns could only move 1 square from their starting square. These changes were made to make the game more exciting and less slow.
Also castling and en Passant
That old set excavated in Britain (Lewis Chessmen) had other pieces as well, such as the Berserker.
It doesn't get balance updates because the sides are virtually identical, it's not hard when your game design doesn't take risks
You are quite correct that an asymetrical game is much harder to balance.
However having identical sides and a symmetric playing field doesn't always guarantee a balanced game. For example, if one piece or position dominates all others it can lead to a lack of viable options and just one way to play, making the game uninteresting. You don't just want the players to have equal strength, you also want the universe of possible playing strategies to contain many different strong options.
Also, in that case having first move advantage would be seen as unbalanced.
Queen OP, pls fix.
Actually it has had balance changes. Chess clock for instance is a balance update between the players, but there's also been balancing between pieces. En passant and castling but also changing how the pieces work (for example bishop).
Despite the obvious symmetry of the game there's still a lot to balance.
Devs abandoned it, players won't
The map is 64-bit.
It is too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc.
Polytopia addresses these limitations.
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Folks over at c/AnarchyChess are feeling so triggered rn
It's ok, we're two steps past them now. I think we're safe.
Eh. My last move was to tie a ballistic missile to a pawn and roll it down a pinball machine. Their move is to keep it from hitting the bottom and exploding. That would keep them occupied for a while.
pawn hitbot STILL bugged after a dash action
I mean it did get forked into shogi.
Well, balance is quite a bit easier if everything is a mirror match. And they still fucked it up, white has the starting advantage.
Nah, staring position is zugzwang, black gets to capitalise on whites blunder in the opening.
Having your opponent make the first move can absolutely be an advantage since it hints to the strategy they're going with.
I typically choose black for that reason.
Bruh, queen is so OP! It's BULLSHIT!
She's such a Mary Sue.
But if you wanted to turn chess into a 4X game, here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi?wprov=sfla1
"One game may be played over several long sessions and require each player to make over a thousand moves."
I got bored with chess so I started playing Shogi. It's the same thing, but different.
Rocket League is also like chess. Basically the same, just different.
What is the smallest change you can do to the game, so that computer wont win against master anymore?
Every time a piece is about to hit another, the players have to arm wrestle and the winner takes the loser's piece (if you can't arm wrestle then you lose automatically).
Machines will win 100% of arm wrestling matches if they're built to do so. We can't compete with the strength of a hydrologic servo.
You can only move pieces to squares with pictures of crosswalks on them.
Holy hell
