[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#3665) [PATCH] Thanks for the really addictive game, guys!

["Mike Kaufman" <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 06:26:31PM -0800, sam+civ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> I just want to thank everyone for making a really addictive 100%
> free game.  To be honest, while I miss the diplomacy in 1.14.0 (which
> I see you guys working very hard on), I don't miss the barbarians.
> 
> Anyway, here is a revised version of the patch.  This version only gives 
> the human a strong tech advantage at the "easy" level.  
> 
> Out of curiosity, any reason why there are only three and not seven
> difficulty levels?  
> 
> - Sam (back to playing freeciv)
> 
> --- 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 18:18:47 2003
> @@ -462,6 +462,12 @@
>      cost = 1;
>    }
>  
> +  /* For casual players, the AI gets tech far too fast.  This
> +     slows down how fast the AI gets tech by 4x at the easy level */
> +  if(pplayer->ai.control && pplayer->ai.skill_level <= 3) {
> +      cost *= 4;
> +      }
> +
>    return cost;
>  }

frankly, this patch or one similar is not going to make it in for the
reasons mentioned previously. A better solution might be to require the
easy AI to limit government rates like humans. This ought to slow the AI's 
tech discovery early in the game and address your problem. The places to
tweak are:

common/player.c:player_limit_to_government_rates()

I notice that easy and normal levels have H_RATES, and ai_manage_taxes()
takes this into account, but player_limit_to_government_rates() does not.
Anybody tell me what goes on here? Does [easy] AI limit or not?

But really, all this cries out for user-configurable ai difficulty levels
defined in rulesets. Handicaps should not necessarily be binary...

+  if (pplayer->ai.control) {
+    cost = ai_rule[pplayer->player_no].tech_handicap;
+  } else {
+    cost = 1;
+  }

or whatever.

-mike