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It is a bit difficult to diagnose the problem. By adding the ?nocache=true you bypass the CloudFlare cache, but the browser would also consider it a file that is distinct from the one without that suffix. So it would keep separate copies in the browser cache for each of those, and when you have seen the correct one through the ?nocache=true prefix requesting the file without prefix might still give you the obsolete one.

And the problem is that in the context of pages in articles by others you have no control over whether this suffix is added.

ok, that does fix it

It looks like a Black piece on my monitor.

Try adding "?nocache=true" to the end of the URL, press enter, then flush the cache with Ctrl-Reload.

This still is white for me.

the ferz knight in this interactive diagram is wrongly colored for black

Not for me. Try to flush your browser cache; this problem was already detected and fixed in Herculean Chess, and that fix should be effective here too.

the ferz knight in this interactive diagram is wrongly colored for black

More like Warcraft.

A very well designed variant, reminds me of Starcraft.

Oops, that is indeed a problem. The promotin pieces must always be defined first, so that maxPromote can specify how many promoting types there are. CwdA did not have this problem, as they had only one type of Pawns, defined first in the common part. I guess I must glue the variable parts of the diagram together a bit more carefully to get the desired order (using more + delimiters in the stored definitions to split them up). I will work on it.

I just realized that in universal diagram, only white can promote (presumably because white pawns are first to be defined)

The AI responds with knight to c6, ignoring the check.

OK, fixed. Thanks for spotting this. The problem was in the j prefix for indicating ski-slides. (The alternative definition gyafW did work without problems.) The Betza parser splits such a move into 2 legs, one to jump over the adjacent square, and a remaining normal slide. But it adapts the range of that slide by subtracting 1 (so that jR4 moves 2, 3 or 4 steps.) Infinite range is indicated by 0, however, and this was adapted to -1. Now the move generator of the AI (in contrast to that of the UI) did not interpret the -1 as an infinite slide, but as a slide up to half the board. I now changed the Betza parser such that it refrains from decrementing a range of 0.

View. I just set white to orc, move black king to e6 and move wywern to h3 (as a setup), click play and move wywern to e3 to give check. The AI responds with knight to c6, ignoring the check.

1. Ke6 Yh3 2. Ye3 N'c6

Thats cool. The AI doesnt seem to understand checks from Wywerns (ski rook) though, it will happily move its king into check from them.

Ughh, the JavaScript from the Asymmetric Chess comment and the CwdA comment had some variables with the same name (because I of course cloned the latter to make the former), and when they are on the same page (as they are, in the comments listing) one uses the variables of the other. With as a result that in Asymmetric Chess there was a second King piece type, which was not considered royal.

Were you playing on the comments page, or did you create a separate page for the comment first by clicking 'View'?

Thats cool. The AI doesnt seem to understand checks from Wywerns (ski rook) though, it will happily move its king into check from them.

I love this universe! (´ ˘ `)

The mate with Wyvern animation is incorrect (this one), Wyvern moves one step there, you probably accidentally put Griffin mate there. Proper mate would look something like this

Now I think that Guard (Orcish Pawn) must have promotion to Harpy (Orcish Bishop) only (earlier they can promote to Werewolf also). This is about 2% winrate nerf of Orcs.

Returning Rangers (Elvish Bishops) and Unicorns (Elvish Knights) to their natural starting positions ('c' and 'f' files for Bishops, 'b' and 'g' files for Unicorns) maybe is about 2% winrate nerf of Elves too.

In future, I will check update of race winrates (this will spend several days).

Update rules.

Remove next rule:

0. Elvish Knights and Elvish Bishops are exchanged with starting places: Knights stay on the files "c", "f" and Bishops stay on the files "b", "g" (need to defend all Elvish Pawns)

This rule was introduced because of Elf-Elf mirror matchup, having 1. Qc3 move attacking g7 Pawn (and opponent must reply 1.... gf6 or ef6, because if Qe6 then 2. Bc4!).

But this rule has influence to Elf-Human matchup, having 1. Rh4 attacking h7 pawn (and if 1.... g6 or Nf6 then 2. Bd4).

So I think this questionable rule must be cancelled.

Now I start to get new statistics of mathups, with Fairy-Max auto battles:

• at 1000 ELO (0.6 sec per 40 moves)
• at 1400 ELO (6 sec per 40 moves)
• at 1800 ELO (1 min per 40 moves)
• at 2000 ELO (10 min per 40 moves)

How I get these ELO? I have ~95% winrate FIDE chess White vs Black when 1st White engine has 10 times more time than 2nd Black engine.

At low ELO I can get statistics very quick and modify rules to balance sides for it. But at higher ELO I can get statistics much slower, and can just check if balance is OK or not.

~10 000 games must be played for 1% accuracy (~100 games has only 10% accuracy - even equal sides may play 60-40).

I think the only things to be modified must be promotion rules. For example, introducing limitation of Orcish Pawns to promote only minor Pieces, lower Orcish winrate from 58% to 52%. Now I think that Elves and Orcs are a little stronger than orthodox Humans (~+2% winrate) and this point must be fixed.

Also, the most interesting thing is getting Pawns and Pieces values (at different ELOs). By statistics and changing start Pieces I can get only starting values. For example, starting values of orthodox Knight and Bishop are equal.

But there is also mid values which can be used at middle-game exchanges (theoretically, these mid values are best values for Fairy-Max engine, i.e. with these values Fairy-Max must have maximal winrate (vs engines with other values). For example, mid values of orthodox Bishop will be greater than orthodox Knight, because having less Pieces and Pawns at the board than at start.

It was surprising for me, but as it has appeared, that a pair of Unicorns can ckeckmate a bare King without the help of the own King, like a pair of Werewolves. The demonstration of this: Unicorns

Update rules:

Guards (Orcish Pawns) can promote only to minor pieces: Werewolves (Orcish Knights) and Harpies (Orcish Bishops).

Update statistics:

Human-Elf: 49,2% (human) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Elf-Human: 48,1% (human) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Human = Elf, 48,65% (human) by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Human-Orc: 48,2% (human) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Orc-Human: 47,7% (human) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Human = Orc, 47,95% (human) by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Elf-Orc: 50,3% (elf) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Orc-Elf: 48,1 (elf) by 500 games (+/- 3,5%)
Elf = Orc, 49,2% (elf) by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Update units' power:

King: Hero = 3.0

Queen: Angel = 9.8
Rook: Griffin = 5.0
Knight: Knight = 3.3
Bishop: Monk = 3.3
Pawn: Footman = 1.0

Queen: Dragon = 9.0
Rook: Wyvern = 4.8
Knight: Werewolf = 3.9
Bishop: Harpy = 2.9
Pawn: Guard = 1.1

Queen: Phoenix = 8.6
Rook: Pegasus = 5.1
Bishop: Ranger = 2.2
Knight: Unicorn = 4.1
Pawn: Sprite = 1.2

Overall:
Human = Elf
Orc > Human/Elf by 0.6 pawn

I think that there are two good ways to balance Orcs:
1) Orcish pawns promote only to Nightriders (special unit) but it seems as too big nerf, or
2) Orcish pawns promote only by simple turn (don't promote automatically)

In both cases I need to configure promotion at Fairy-Max.

Current statistics with Fairy-Max:

Human-Orc: 40,1% (human) by 500 games
Orc-Human: 43,6% (human) by 500 games
Human < Orc, 41,85% by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Elf-Orc: 42,3% (elf) by 500 games
Orc-Elf: 40,8% (elf) by 500 games
Elf < Orc, 41,55% by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Human-Elf: 49,2% (human) by 500 games
Elf-Human: 48,1% (human) by 500 games
Human = Elf, 48,65% by 1000 games (+/- 2,5%)

Unit's power by statistics (500 games per unit):

Hero = 3.0

Footman = 1.0
Knight = 3.25
Monk = 3.5
Griffin = 5.0
Angel = 9.5

Guard = 1.15
Centaur = 3.1
Werewolf = 3.85
Wyvern = 4.7
Dragon = 8.7

Fairy = 1.2
Hunter = 2.4
Unicorn = 4.05
Pegasus = 5.2
Phoenix = 8.2

"E4 means this leaping push?"

Indeed. Fairy-Max uses the primary rights-code '4', which would mean a move without any rights and without continuation (which thus would be totally useless) as an 'escape' for indicating moves that only 'virgin' pieces have. The preceding hex digit is then used to indicate what the move can actually do: a slider step creating e.p. rights on the visited square, (which is interpreted as castling on a royal piece), a sliding step creating no e.p. rights, or a jump over the square. The lowest two bits would specify the rights for the next (terminating) step. For E = 1110 this would be move-but-not-capture

"If I'll want to make Orcish Pawns have promotion only to Nightriders (unique unit, which is absent in starting army), then I would put the Nightrider to #7 (or #9 black), moving the Orcish Queen to the end of list, it will work correctly?"

That might not work. IIRC Fairy-Max will always use #7 for both sides, unless the initial setup would contain a #7 for white, and a #9 but not #7 for black. So if black does not initially have #9... Of course the code can be easily changed; the rule that each side promotes to #7 if it has a #7 in the initial setup, and to #9 otherwise, irrespective if they have it or not would have the same effect in all currently supported variants. And Fairy-Max 5.0 takes the promotion piece from a board-size table ayway (to make Grant Acedrex possible, where the piece is determined by the promotion square).

Before version 5.0 Fairy-Max did have problems with Nightriders, because these make mutual perpetual chack possible, Sooner or later the search would stumble on a position where this occurred, and because each check evasion extends the search by 1 ply (i.e. the check evasions are not counted in the search depth), this wouldleed to infinitely deep recursion, and a crash due to stack overflow. But Fairy-Max 5.0 doeshave in-search recognition of repetitions, and I think this should cure thisproblem. (Otherwise Griffons (in theGrant Acedrex sense) would also have been a problem, as these can do this too.

Jörg Knappen

Eagles are bad because there are Griffins (Human Rooks), which are hybridize eagles. Ents are good, but require redefining all the Rooks from flyers to something siege. There is no problems for Orcs because of Cyclops instead of Wyverns. But there is a problem for Human, because the closest analogue is Elephant (instead of Griffin). As an alternative there is a (sieged) Tower, usually associated with the Rook (by image), but I'm not sure that it is a good unit.

In general, there is a very interesting idea to use exactly Tolkien's setting, but I'm afraid that I haven't enough imagination to find matching units for all 3 races.