This is just a short page describing some of the thoughts I had on making a Battalion inspired by the game maka dai dai shōgi. I may try to use these ideas myself to make a Battalion, but in case someone else wants to do it, I welcome them to as well.
Maka dai dai shōgi is an immense game. It is played on a 19-by-19 board and includes 50 different types of pieces. It is significantly bigger than even chu shogi, and some of its pieces, such as the teaching king, Buddhist spirit, and hook mover, are arguably even stronger than the lion, the strongest piece in chu shogi, which is already significantly stronger than the strongest piece in Titan's Battalion outside of the Expansion Battalions. It would probably not be a good idea to adapt maka dai dai shōgi in way similar to how chu shogi was adapted into Ronin Battalion. Assuming the important pieces from maka dai dai shōgi were kept in the resulting Battalion, that Battalion would likely be far too powerful. Therefore, I suggest that instead of the pieces of maka dai dai shōgi being incorporated into a Battalion inspired by it, a version of the promotion mechanics should be incorporated. The promotion dynamic in maka dai dai shōgi is unlike that in perhaps any other historical caturaṅga variant.
In maka dai dai shōgi, many pieces' promotions are actually much weaker than their original forms. For example, the hook mover, which is probably the most powerful piece in the game except for the emperor, is worth 148 shogi pawns according to Eric Silverman, but it promotes to an ordinary gold general! Also, while there is no promotion zone, non-promoted pieces with a promoted form can promote when they capture no matter where on the board the capture occured. The promotion is mandatory if the captured piece was a promoted piece and is optional otherwise. The implications of these rules are very interesting—for example, because of these rules, a hook mover practically can't capture a promoted piece much of the time because that would cause it to lose most of its vast power. This can make promoted pieces significantly stronger than they otherwise would be.
There is another thing about maka dai dai shōgi's promotion mechanics that would be worth incorporating into a possible Battalion inspired by it. Specifically, this is the fact that certain pieces are contagious in a sense. The deva promotes to the powerful teaching king, and in addition to this, it seems any non-royal piece, even an already-promoted piece, that captures a deva or teaching king must promote to teaching king as well! Among numerous tactical and strategic implications, this means that once there is a teaching king on the board, there will probably be some teaching king on the board for a while as when a teaching king is captured, the piece that captured it will usually just become a teaching king, usually keeping the total number of teaching kings the same. The dark spirit is similar to the deva, with its contagious promoted form, the Buddhist spirit, being arguably even more powerful than the teaching king, though perhaps still not as powerful as the hook mover.
Finally, in maka dai dai shōgi, the king promotes to the emperor, which can move anywhere on the board and capture any enemy piece except for a protected royal piece. However, I don't think this particular aspect should be included in a Battalion inspired by the game without significant alterations because without a hook mover, an emperor is extremely difficult to checkmate.
At first glance, it may seem impossible to incorporate the promotion-to-a-worse-piece aspect into a Battalion at all because most of the time, most of the Pieces that Battalion would be up against wouldn't promote, and if they did, they wouldn't promote to a worse Piece. To fix the problem of having to come up with promoted versions for many pieces, one could replace the property of being promoted with another property that would act in a similar way to being promoted in maka dai dai shōgi. Specifically, I will call this property the property of being Enchanted. So any Piece from any Battalion would be able to become Enchanted whenever it Captured another Piece. If the Piece it Captured was itself Enchanted, the Capturer would be required to become Enchanted. Pieces from the Battalion inspired by maka dai dai shōgi would be made stronger or weaker by being Enchanted. Some of the strongest pieces from this Battalion would become much weaker when Enchanted, making it a generally bad idea to use those strong Pieces to Capture Enchanted Pieces. Pieces from other Battalions may be unaffected by being Enchanted, or they may be affected in a mild positive or negative way.
Another idea was suggested by potat5479, who considered the idea that the promoted form of each Piece should be the Gold General regardless of which Battalion it was from. She also considered making captures of pawn-class Pieces unable to promote a Piece. I think these are both ideas that should be considered.
Teaching kings and Buddhist spirits are too powerful for Titan's Battalion, but perhaps, making a similar mechanic with a queen-level or Lilac-level Piece could work. I have suggested a combination of Pieces here and here, though of course, it doesn't have to be those. 1 thing I liked about Veteran Chess, a smaller game also inspired by maka dai dai shōgi, was that in that Veteran Chess, the Lady, the equivalent of the deva and dark spirit in terms of the contagion mechanic, was pretty powerful. Any non-King Piece Capturing a Lady would become a Queen, the equivalent of the teaching king and Buddhist spirit, and then, assuming that the original Lady had been sufficiently protected, that Queen would itself be Captured, putting a Queen in the hands of the original controller of the Lady! Their opponent would want to avoid this and therefore would think twice before Capturing the Lady in the first place. This dynamic made the Lady a strong attacking Piece and could be used in a Battalion to turn a relatively weak Piece into a relatively strong Piece. But this only works if the Piece that begins the contagion mechanic is strong enough to be somewhat useful, which the deva and the dark spirit from maka dai dai shōgi arguably aren't. The Lady seems is just about powerful enough, though.
