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

["Haugdahl, Stig" <Stig.Haugdahl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Is it possible that in order to research a level n tech, you need to
> > have a number of level n-1 techs?
> 
> I'm going to ask the folks on alt.games.civ2 if they know the 
> answer to
> this one.

The tech level concept of Civ2:
A tech belongs in one of 4 historical periods,
ancient, renaissance, industrial revolution and modern.
In addition, it belongs to one of 5 categories,
military, economic, social, academic and applied.

It looks like there's nothing stopping you discovering techs 
inside a more advanced epoch, while still lacking techs in 
the epochs below, except that you need the DIRECT prerequisites.
After a while, the advanced tech choices will dry up because of
this, unless you are heavy into spying.

(Zinsli: Apparantly, one of the things that suprised some of the folks i
introduced to freeciv (from civ2) was that you could go the direct
route to monarchy.)

The reason for this is most probably that you can't research
two techs in the same CATEGORY after each other. The prereqs
for Monarchy (category social) are Ceremonial Burial and 
Code of Laws, both being in the social category. So after the
last prereq (either Cer or CoL) for Monarchy, you are forced
to choose among the free techs in the other categories.