Weiqi

Weiqi (围棋, Go) is a real, fully-implemented board game between two cultivators - actual capture, actual ko, and real territory scoring, played out on a clickable board page. No stakes, no herb cost, no need to stand near each other.

Starting a Match

• /cultivation weiqi invite <player> offers a match. Nothing happens until they accept.
• /cultivation weiqi accept <player> accepts and starts the match immediately. Accepting makes you Black - you move first. The player who sent the invite plays White.
• /cultivation weiqi decline <player> turns down a pending invite.
• An unanswered invite expires after 60 seconds.
• There is no proximity requirement and no resource cost - you don't even need to be on the same world as your opponent.

Playing

/cultivation weiqi board opens the board page, and it reopens automatically for either player whenever there's something to see. Everything happens on that page:

• Click a point to place a stone there.
• Pass your turn.
• Resign the match. Resigning is arm-then-confirm: the first click arms it, and a second click within 10 seconds actually resigns. Any other action - a move, a pass, logging off and back on - disarms it, so you can never resign by accident.

There is deliberately no /cultivation weiqi move text command - every stone is placed by clicking the board.

/cultivation weiqi status reports the board size, whose turn it is, the move number, prisoners taken by each side, komi, and the time left on the current turn clock.

The Board and the Rules

The board is 9x9. Every classic Go rule is enforced properly:

• Capture. A group with no liberties left is removed the instant its last liberty is filled.
• Suicide is illegal - unless the same move captures an enemy group first, which frees up the liberty your own stone needed. Captures always resolve before the suicide check.
• Ko. This is simple (single-move) ko, not full positional superko: the one point that would immediately recreate a just-resolved capture is banned for exactly the opponent's next move, then free again.
• Scoring is Chinese-rules area scoring: your score is your stones still on the board plus every empty region that borders only your color. An empty region touching both colors, or bordering no stone at all, counts for neither side. White additionally receives komi, currently 5.5 - a fractional bonus for moving second that makes an exact tie impossible.

New to Go? The in-game Codex has a full Weiqi article that teaches the ruleset from scratch - see The Codex.

Ending a Match

Two passes in a row end the game normally, and it is scored exactly as it sits on the board.

• If a player sits on their own turn for too long (180 seconds), their turn is auto-passed for them.
• Two auto-passes in a row - both players away back to back - end the match as abandoned instead of scoring it. Nothing is recorded and nothing is paid out.
• A disconnected player has 120 seconds to reconnect before their side of the match is abandoned the same way, board intact until then.
• A match is also abandoned outright if it runs longer than 60 minutes of wall-clock time.

Rewards and the Title

The first time you beat a given opponent in a real, played-to-completion match, both players receive 5 Merit, and the winner receives an extra 3 Merit on top. This pays once per distinct opponent, ever.

A match that ends by resignation only pays Merit once at least 20 total moves (both players combined) have been played, to stop a two-move resignation farm - a match that ends by two passes has no such floor. An abandoned match pays nothing at all.

Winning ten Weiqi matches earns the title Hand of Black and White (黑白手).

For Server Owners

Every value on this page lives in mods/Siren_Cultivation/Society/WeiqiConfig.json.

For the other quiet pastime that shipped alongside Weiqi, see Tea Ceremony.