[Freeciv-Dev] Re: two new difficulty levels

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 12:50:26PM +0100, Daniel Sjölie wrote:
> On 2002-02-25 12:33:10, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Daniel Sjölie wrote:
> > > I think it would be a good idea to put this in separate (a) variable(s)
> > > though... Compare with commercial strategy games - you shouldn't have 10
> > > levels of dificulty but a bunch of difficulty related variables you can
> > > all tune independently and some presets for these for a few predefined
> > > difficulties... This might be somewhat less userfriendly when using the
> > > commandline server but we should have a gui for this for those who
> > > prefer userfriendliness anyway...
> > 
> > I disagree. If we make it a server var, it will be lost in the jungle of
> > server vars and few will know about it. This is supposed to fix the
> > TODO/FAQ that the freeciv AI is too easy.
> > 
> > I think a single variable for difficulty is a good idea, because it
> > presents the user with a simple choice. New users (or actually most users)
> > do not want to fiddle with a few dozen server vars just to make games more
> > or less difficult. They want to be able to say (if to none else then to
> > themselves): "I beat 4 AIs on 'harder'!", not "I beat 4 AIs with
> > servervars a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i!".
> 
> This is what I was talking about when I said "This might be somewhat
> less userfriendly when using the commandline server but we should have
> a gui for this for those who prefer userfriendliness anyway"...
> 
> I really think new users shouldn't be exposed to the commandline
> server at all...
> 
> If necessary, wouldn't it be possible to make a command that issued two
> other commands? (Or variables who set other variables?) So that when
> you set difficulty to tough you actually set the ai to hard and set some
> ais_allied variable...
> 
> In short, if you agree a variable of its own is the right thing to do
> the usability argument is not good enough...
> 
> Does the difficulty change anything but the actual AI today? If not I
> don't think we should mix more stuff into the same variable...
> 
> In addition, there are several other variables that would be nice to
> have different presets for different difficulties for...

> What about having difficulty commands that actually load files (standard
> files included with freeciv) with settings for relevant server
> variables?

IMHO an alias mechanism would be more powerful:
 alias make_hard: set foo $1; set bar $1
 make_hard Sauron

        Raimar

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