Jianying Ji wrote on Wed, Apr 30, 2008 04:39 PM UTC:
Interesting response by Derek Nalls, It does appear that the archbishop
will be getting a hearing and reevaluation. This will certain sharpen
things and advance our knowledge of this piece.
On piece values in general, I second Rich with the addition of Hans's
comment, that piece values are for:
1) Balancing armies when playing different armies.
2) Giving odds to weaker players (this is more easily done with
shogi-style variants, with chess-style variants the weaker player receive
a slightly stronger army)
3) To cancel out the first player advantage by giving the second player a
slight strengthening of maybe only one piece.
As for Joe Joyce's minister and Priestess, my initial estimate was
queenish but that is an overestimate, and is dependent on the range of
opponent pieces. One interesting feature that may impact value is that
minister is more color changing than color bound, while priestess is a
balance of both. This balance between color changing and color bound might
make a nice chessvariant theme.
Another general consideration for evaluating piece and army strength is
approachability, how many opponent pieces from how many squares can attack
a piece without reciprocal threat.