[Freeciv-Dev] Random suggestion on advance costs

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx>]

  This just popped into my head -- would it be worth it to make the number of
turns needed for a scientific advance be an intrinsic property of the advance
itself? (rather than depending on how many advances the player has gotten)  It
always seems silly for an early advance you forgot about to take 10 times as
much effort to research later in the game.

  We could set the costs explicitly, or calculate them automagically..either
way, more 'important' or 'advanced' techs should require more science bulbs than
simpler.  (for example, The Wheel should probably have a cost <100,
mostly-useless techs like Chivalry should have a fairly low cost, and
powerful techs like Gunpowder, Steam Engine, and Railroad should have a higher
cost than average)  I think a reasonable heuristic is for the cost of a
tech to vary according to the number of other techs that it depends on; the
increase could be linear (+100 bulbs for each dependency) or exponential
(double the cost for each dependency, or something)  This wouldn't take
'importance' into account, but that's subjective anyway :) -- however, it would
have the effect of making 'advanced' techs more expensive.

  This would, I believe, have the same *overall* effect as the current system:
as the game progressed, technology would get more expensive to acquire.
However, it would also make it more difficult to acquire advanced technology
in the extremely early stages of the game by means of very focused research
(for example, it might make it less attractive to go straight for Gunpowder)
  I think this would have a beneficial effect on gameplay.  The main concerns
I'd have are that (a) it might become too easy to get some important early techs
that you skipped at a later point in the game, and (b) it might make it harder
for players to pursue different tech paths from one another (by making it too
expensive to pursue a highly targeted goal, which is the whole point :) ).  For
(a) you have to wonder if that tech is really that important if you survived so
long without it.  (b) is not so bad as long as the weighting is chosen sensibly,
so that there's a "horizon" of 2 or 3 techs that a player can research at a
given time, and I don't think it'll be too much of a problem -- in addition, I
don't think it's possible to play effectively with different tech paths under
the current system, as most people (AFAIK) go for ultra-powerful military techs
like Gunpowder and some of the sea advances, which basically require you to
respond in kind or be crushed.

  I definitely do *not* have time to code this, though, so if someone who does
likes this idea, please implement it!  It shouldn't be hard..eg,
techcost=numprereqs*costperprereq+numknowntechs*costpertech

  will allow various combinations of the current system and this one to be
realized.

  Daniel