Fractional Multicolour Go

[martin3141]

@Vsotvep

Awesome idea! I volunteer as lab rat!

Fantastic, I look forward to the first game

@Vsotvep

Another idea, would be that each player controls their own colour, but has to choose a second colour for each of their stones. So the Blue player has the choice of playing Blue | Red or Blue | Yellow stones. This obviously makes the game even more diplomatic than it already is in the current form.

Interesting idea, and if a player plays stones of varying second color, they might even end up capturing their own stones

I agree that this variant is similar to diplomatic go (like every multiplayer go variant), but I see subtle differences. For example this ruleset clearly incentivises players who share a color to cooperate (especially if we play with the scoring I suggested).

@Vsotvep

Another way of considering life would not be that both colours of a stone need liberties, but either colour of a stone needs liberties. With three players this would effectively make every stone immortal, but with 4 or more players it could become interesting, with lots of possibilities to live.

I considered this before, but thought that it would change the game too much to my liking. For example imagine a player surrounds territory, but eventually another player who shares one color simply starts playing stones inside, and there’s no way to stop them.
In fact I believe this might make it impossible to create a group that is permanently alive, independent of other players, because opponents that share a color could always close the eyes. Maybe this is not as much of a problem as it seems, as those players may not want to capture the group, provided that they profit from your points. But the possibility to create an independently living group seems appealing to me.