Value of Bishops vs. Rooks

I want to say some things but the end of it is I don't think anything should be changed. 

In 4 Player with the larger board bishops are significantly more valuable than rooks. 

Rooks can only be used to defend for the first half of a game, and it's limited to just the pawn ahead of it and the piece to the side. Very difficult to maneuver them out from the corner to attack.  It takes about 4 crucial tempo moves to get other pieces out of the way, shuffle the rook out and around. 
In the first ten or so moves of a game they are more like targets than functioning pieces.  

Bishops can be used right from the start to attack, to defend, and all throughout the rest of the game.  
So my feeling is like the point values should be changed to like Rooks 4 Bishops 5.. or Rooks 5 Bishops 6.  

Then I think Hold up NO Stupid!  That's just adding another element of complication to a game which is already real hard to keep track of mentally.  Just keep it even stevens like it is.
thank you  

bishops - 5

rooks - 4

imo

are bishops worth 2 knights? then B = 6 and R = 5? pretty close either way, 5/4 is my choice.

better would be:

N= 4

R= 5

B= 6

Q= 11

Personally, knights are better than rooks to me in four-way due to their moving capabilites. AN example would be a fork where bishops could check but can be captured by a queen, ( or something ) so personally knights are actually more important than the rooks. But, Rooks are essential to late late late late late game play. near the end. I quite frankly use them all the time to checkmate. they should not be lowered. But if we were changing the system. Bishops would be 5 knights 4

and rooks 5.

but if you want the truth I believe pawn queens

should be two points where the actual pawns are one.

Bishops are worth more in the opening, rooks worth more in the endgame. They even out though, hence the 5 and 5

The other thing that hasn't been mentioned that adds to the 'value' of this discussion is how easily rooks are taken. It hardly seems a game goes by without someone (or more than one someone) taking the knight pawn with their queen or bishop and either nabbing or at least heavily threatening the rook.

I think A good  value would be 
Bishop: 6
Rook: 4
Knight: 4

This makes the queen 'worth' a little less (since she is now valued less than the bishop/rook or bishop/knight combination... but in four player the queen, being one piece, is in some senses more vulnerable, and thus less valuable, than the pair of lesser pieces.

Why not, since we have a point system make them each 5 points, R, B, K?

They all are very important and what makes one more than the other really? Not much if anything.

How about checkmating a king with 2 bishops on a 4PC board in less than 50 moves? You can do that with 2 rooks easily.

In the endgame a rook can support a pawn and that pawn will become a queen. Try to support it by a bishop.

Knights are good for forks. But they are slow. The board is 14x14. It is nice that they can cut the corners of the cross-like board. But still they are slow.

In any case we should meet these requirements and use integers (whole numbers):
Q < R+R
N < R
N < B

By the way, we have now the Analysis Board. You can set up any initial position and play with/against yourself.

What color do you prefer?

[StartFen4 "R-0,0,0,0-1,1,1,1-1,1,1,1-0,0,0,0-0-3,yN,yN,yN,yK,yQ,yN,yN,yN,3/3,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,3/14/bR,bP,10,gP,gR/bR,bP,10,gP,gN/bR,bP,10,gP,gB/bK,bP,10,gP,gQ/bQ,bP,10,gP,gK/bR,bP,10,gP,gB/bR,bP,10,gP,gN/bR,bP,10,gP,gR/14/3,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,3/3,rB,rB,rB,rQ,rK,rB,rB,rB,3"]
[Variant "FFA"]

The comparison between rooks and bishops is similar to knights and bishops in regular chess in my opinion. In regular chess bishops are generally stronger than knights in the endgame and in 4-player chess the rooks are stronger than the bishops. In the opening it's the other way around.

I feel like the knights' potential is perhaps a little undervalued — although I think their points value is adequate compared to rooks and bishops. They may be slow, but they can be very dangerous in attacks with double checks. Unlike sliding piece checks, a knight check cannot be blocked once a king is within reach. Knights can be very pesky.

I can prove that the only value for the rook is 5 and the bishop is 5 when the queen is 9 and the knight is 3:
First, lets set rook=x, bishop=y

based on the equations in #11, we have:

2x>9

x>3 (ignorable since the first equation is equivalent to x>4.5)

y>3

Since a queen is better than two minor pieces, we could have the fourth equation: 

y+3<9 or y<6

Combining #3 and #4, we have 3<y<6 and x>4.5 as a result, meaning that bishops must be 4 or 5 and rooks must be 5 or higher.

Now, if a rook and knight is weaker than a queen (a knight in a 14x14 board is much less effective compared to an 8x8 board), we have x<6, meaning that rooks must be 5.

Now, if we have another requirement that two bishops are weaker than a queen, then bishops can only be at 4. This, however, would be controversial because of many early mates on by the bishop on the diagonals, 4 would be way too low for such a piece. Therefore, since as mentioned in #11 as well, bishops are worse than rooks in endgames. So, the following values for the bishop can be decided:
Bishop in the opening - 5.5

Bishop in the middle game - 5

Bishop in the endgame - 4

Averaging them together, we have 4.8333, which round up to 5.

Hope this solves the discussion.

@cjxchess17,

 
Good analysis.

> Combining #3 and #4, we have 3<y<6 and x<4.5

A typo: x>4.5

A quotation from the rules:

Checkmating an opponent (+20 points)
Capturing active (colored) pieces:
Pawns: +1 Knights: +3 Bishops: +5 Rooks: +5 Queens: +9 Kings: +20 Promoted Queens: +1
Checking two players simultaneously: +5
Checking three players simultaneously: +20

In case of stalemate, insufficient material, 3-fold repetition or the 50-move rule, the remaining players receive 10 points each.

My opinion is:

"Q=9, R=B=5, N=3, p=1" is good enough.

But I am not sure these things are balanced:

1. King/Checkmate = +20.

2. Promoted queen = +1.

3. Checking 2 players = +5.

4. Checking 3 players = +20.

5. Draw = +10.

 @BabYagun

Did they change the value of doublechecks from 6 to 5 or has it always been 5?  Maybe I'm confused.

It was always 5, as I remember. Also there are no changes of double checks in this log: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/changelog-9-04-2017

I think triple check is worth too many points compared to checkmate and also compared to capturing material. Perhaps +10 would be better. Then the "best check" (excluding checkmate) has a similar value to the "best piece capture" (+9, excluding the king). Or maybe +15, since triple check is rarer than a queen capture.

Even though triple check is rare, a checkmate is ultimately more powerful than a check, so I think that should be reflected in the points value. A checkmate (or king capture) should be worth more than anything else in my opinion.

> A checkmate (or king capture) should be worth more than anything else in my opinion.

Sounds reasonable.

> Even though triple check is rare, a checkmate is ultimately more powerful than a check

One of the questions is: Should players earn any points for double and/or triple checks at all? And why. (If they should, then we can discuss if it is +5, +10 or whatever.)

On the value of bishops vs rooks, a rather different calculation:
Ask 100 of the top players if they would rather give up one of their bishops (randomly selected) or one of their rooks (ditto) while their opponent loses the opposite piece (ie rook vs bishop). I'm willing to bet that you won't get even one percent of them to choose to give up the bishop!

Now if you were to ask them to give up two knights vs one bishop I'm guessing they would hesitate a lot longer and some of them might choose to give up the bishop.