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

[Matt Lowry <mclowry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Haugdahl, Stig wrote:

> > > 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.
> 

Hey hey!  We can kill two birds with one stone. I have been pondering on
and off how it might be possible to implement decent AI for advisors that
can handle arbitrary tech rulesets. It dawned on me that what was really
needed is some of those tech flag bits to signal whether a tech was of
interest to a trade advisor or military advisor or who ever (well duh I say
in hindsight). I was about to whip up a patch to do just that when this
came up. 

Clearly flags to represent the catagories and historical periods mentioned
above will be required to support the civ2 tech rules, but they would also
do the job for helping advisor AI.

So, I was about to whip up a patch to add in these flags when I realised
that the hard part is working out which flags to put to which techs.
Also, what precisely is "Applied"? ... I assume this is meant to be for
techs that "help you do stuff" like bridge building or construction ...

Perhaps the kind people of alt.games.civ2 can help here ... posting now ...

Now, it doesn't appear to be a certain thing (the scheme described above),
but it seems to me that adding in the flags will enable the implementation
of a tech selection rule that is more-or-less the same as civ2.
Should be sufficient? If there is no consensus on the civ2 scheme is 
there any alternative? Also a game option "tech_select_style=[civ2/free]"
or some-such would be nice if this path is persued ...

Enjoy!
------------------------------------------------
 Matt Lowry      ( mclowry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx )
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In October 1998 three Linux developers disappeared
  into the woods near Redmond, Washington in an
       attempt to compile their kernels.
    A year later their source code was found.
          THE  BILL  WITCH  PROJECT 
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