[Freeciv-Dev] Science (was cheating)

[Mathias Broxvall <matbr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Mike Jing:
> The current formula already took this into account.  It may benifit from 
> some fine tuning, but the basic idea works very well.  The most important 
> effect of the way tech cost is calculated is that it gives a player who is 
> behind in science a chance to catch up, or at least not to fall too far 
> behind, because it costs less to research new techs when you are behind.  
> This may seem illogical at first glance, but I think it makes perfect sense 
> gameplay-wise.

Some time ago I implemented a similar feature - to level things out for the
poorer civilization (with respect to tech level). My idea was that
rediscovering a science already discovered in another country is realy much
easier than producing a new technology. It simply is much easier for Mr. Saddam 
(or rather India/Pakistan/Israel/North Korea etc...) to get nukes today rather
than if the americans (and switz) had never discovered it. Especially from
democracies there is a constant stream of media information, guest researches
etc. spreading the word about some new technology. I'm not saying that it's
trivial to build a nuke just because I've heard the media "explanation" of what
nukes are (take a large pile of uranium and make it implode... ha!), it still
takes a lot of scientific work to actually discover how to refine natural
uranium into it's two isotopes etc... But it's easier now than sixty years
ago!

Another analogy is the swedish stealth attackboats which probably hadn't
been built unless the americans had invented stealth fighters/bombers...
Perhaps this effect should also be dependent on the technology. It's more
likely that I rediscover the law of gravity after hearing about it than a
highly technology dependent science such as computers.

So what my small patch did was to lower the cost of technologies dependent of
how many other civiliziations had discovered them and how long they had been
discovered... It didn't take into account the relationships and the state of
the civilizations already having the technology.  Perhaps traderoutes should
also increase the information leak? I think I called this leak of information
for "technology leak" or something like that.... The patch as it where is
probably gone now but it should be a small thing to reimplement a better
version of it if someone thinks it's a good idea.. (Of course, the amount of
leak was a serverside option)

/ Mathias