[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Random suggestion on advance costs

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2000 at 02:04:30PM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> 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)

Agreed, this seems more natural than the present system.  It looks like
this is the system Civ must have started out with before playtesting
:-)

>   We could set the costs explicitly, or calculate them automagically..
> [...] 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

Yes, that's interesting.  But

> 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

this is a definite drawback!

>   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 :) ).

I can't see the point!  If all players pursue the same tech goals in the
same order, your proposed system will be identical to the existing one;
all it does is make it more difficult for players to deviate from that
one route.  So, in effect, all it does is limits their strategic
choices, as far as I can see.

Now in my experience, if you really want to beat the best in this game
it's a head-to-head race for the best wonders and some of the good units,
so the realistic choice of tech paths is very limited already.  Basically,
I win games by keeping my opponents ignorant of my choices in tech goals,
not by varying them.  So I would be very much opposed to the change you're
proposing, it makes variant tech strategies even less likely to succeed.

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