[Freeciv-Dev] [PATCH] The AI gets tech too quickly at the easy level

[sam+civ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

My first impression playing freeciv is that the AI gets tech far
too quickly, even at the easy level.  I also have observed, over at
groups.google.com, other people complaining that the AI gets tech too
quickly.  One person, who claimed to be able to beat the SMAC AI at even
the highest level of difficulty, expressed frustration with freeciv's
AI's perceived flagrant cheating.

The way the prorpietary Civilization games handle this is by
having the AI get tech more slowly at the easier levels, and get tech
more quickly at the harder levels.  

I am willing to implement this (should be easy enough to do) under
the current CVS branch in a reasonable way if there is interest in the
developer community to have an AI tech handicap for Freeciv beginners
like myself, and even a possible AI tech bonus for Freeciv experts.

Until then, this quick and dirty patch shows what I have in mind.  This
is near the end of the routine base_total_bulbs_required in tech.c.

- Sam

--- freeciv-1.14.0/common/tech.c.orig   Sat Mar  8 10:36:02 2003
+++ freeciv-1.14.0/common/tech.c        Sat Mar  8 10:44:03 2003
@@ -462,6 +462,13 @@
     cost = 1;
   }
 
+  /* There is a perception, which I share, that the AI flagrantly cheats 
+     to get tech advances more quickly than humans do.  Let's nip that
+     cheating in the bud here */
+  if(pplayer->ai.control) {
+      cost *= 8;
+      }
+
   return cost;
 }