Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I have submitted revisons which should appear shortly. After playtesting
and crtique by Michael Howe and further testing of my own, I have made
these changes:

1. The positon of the Kings and Knights in the opening setup is swapped.
M. Howe observed that it was usual to move a Knight on the opening move to
liberate a Rook, which in effect pinned the opponents Knight--to move it
would allow RxR on the tenth rank and the recapture is a suicide capture.
This has a considerabe cramping effect though it did not affect play
balance as both sides could use the tactic. With Kings in this poistion
the pin still occurs but is much less significant as the King can move on
the file without exposing the Rook and it is much easier to untangle the
position. 

2. I have changed the last piece rules so that the suicide capture of the
opponents last piece with your own last piece is a draw--which seems more
logical. The situation itself is rare.

3. Pawns may take the double step anywhere on the board as many times as
desired.

4. I have replaced en passant with M. Howe's excellent Pawn rule: a pawn
may not move across a square attacked by an enemy Pawn.

5. A pawn on the tenth rank remains a Pawn, but on any subsequent turn may
promote in place to King (winning unless the opponent can capture).

Changes 3-5 have made Pawn play much more dynamic and exciting, while
eliminating many dull draws when the armies are reduced below 10 points
but winning by annihilation is not feasible.

Mason,

I have not found Decima to be overly drawish, especially in the latest
version I descibed in my previous comment. In my test games (Zillions of
Games vs. itself at the most intelligent setting), the outcomes in order
or frequency:

1. Win by getting two pieces to the tenth rank.
2. Win by getting a King to the tenth rank.
3. Win by annihilation of the enemy army (including forced suicide
capture).
4. Draw.
5. Win by Pawn promotion.
6. Win by getting more than two pieces to the tenth rank.


The Pawn promotion seldom wins outright by often leads to a win by another
means by forcing a suicide capture by a key defensive piece. 

Some very small endings are decisive  for example Pawn vs. Pawn is a win
by annihilation or promotion in all cases except where the Pawns are in
front of each other on the same file. King vs. X is only a draw if X is a
Rook or if X is a King in certain positions. King vs. Queen, Marshall, or
Seneschal is loss by annihilation. King vs. Palladin, Pope, Duke, Bishop,
or Knight is a win by reahcing th etenth rank. King vs Pawn will depend on
the positioon, but will only draw if the King catches the Pawn on the
promotion square--all other King vs. Pawn endings are decisive.

Thanks for the information. I have now rated Decima 'Excellent'.

I would probably play the Zillions file right now, if I had ZoG on my
computer. Dang! Why does Zillions of Games have to cost money, though?
I'd download it right away if it were free.

Very nice!  You were able to submit an update with the user-submission
system, and the editors had no problem moving the existing comments to the
new page.  It is indeed a new age at the CVP!

The idea of Decima is very nice.  The number 10 is included in an
interesting way, via the point values, and these values also have a very
nice way of helping to level the value of the pieces.  What the material
value of the pieces should be relative to the pawn would be very difficult
to determine.  But, this helps to add interest to the game ...

A number of pages (such as this one) have become mangled.  Somehow all the HTML codes have become escaped out.

I have now done some search and replacements in the database, and I took care to revert H. G. Muller's Interactive Diagrams page back to using HTML entities for the less-than and greater-than signs, because that page is actually using them to illustrate HTML code.

The page cleaned up nicely!

Would someone venture to discuss piece values for this game? Ten years ago, Greg has stated that is very difficult but nothing more :)! I agree, but where to begin. I think is obvious that pieces have very different opening and endgame values, as purposelly the pieces with smaller speed (and usually fighting value) were designed to hold more victory points :)! My take is that the queen is quite powerfull in the opening and middle game but losses importance in the endgame. So what do you guys think?

I had played a few games of this game and I honestly cannot find an approach to finding piece values for this game. I mean at least a theoretical one.

HG's experimental method which implies pitting up different pieces in different armies in an otherwise equal and known environment, should theoretically work, but it seems at first glance quite unfeasible. First and foremost that is because pieces loose or gain a lot during a game as pieces with low mobility have more winning points ("points" as they are described in the rules). To me for this specific reason, this game is a marvel.Also in the late mid game to the endgame, a king especially but even a knight worth much more on more advanced rank. This is akin to regular chess king safety, but look more like Arimaa rabbit threats, as the goals of the game are quite similar.

To be honest I don't think we  can easily find a way, but I cannot prove it :)!

I notice the download link for the Decima .zrf is broken. I am downloading .zrf's for my games and some others, this is the only one missing.