Re: Feature Request: Advance Prohibits Advance

[Elijah Meeks <elijahmeeks at yahoo dot com>]

> The ability to make researching advances easier is
> also interesting, 
> because, for example, in a Civ-like game, after
> researching "Formal 
> Logic" and "Empirical Science", a civilization might
> be able to make a 
> whole slew of scientific and technological advances
> much more rapidly 
> than it would otherwise.
> 
> Taken to extremes, the proposed tables could shut
> off advances by 
> boosting the RP requirement to some very large
> number (relative 
> infinity?), or make gaining an advance trivial by
> multiplying its RP 
> requirement by 0%.
> 
> I'll think about it some more. I haven't dealt much
> with the advances 
> aspect of Xconq before. If it's an easy feature to
> add (and test), I 
> might go ahead and add it in the near future.

This is a good and much more feature-rich solution,
but there are two issues:

1) It's more complicated.  Not having seen the code, I
don't know how much, but a simple shut-off switch
would, I think be straightforward.  It would also
allow the game designer to simulate much of what
you're talking about, he'd just have to create a few
more techs, so that you're getting the same tech, only
cheaper, or you have to buy an extra 'Prelim' tech
before to open up the full, which is the closest thing
I can get to simulating something like this using GDL
now (Except I have to manually set the focus of one
group by using what I call limiters.  You can see this
in opal-rules.g, just search for 'limit')

2) The AI doesn't choose research very well.  Really,
this is for the AI, because a player will probably
focus, anyway, while the AI will choose its research
haphazardly and I wouldn't be surprised to see it
short-circuiting by researching an almost-infinite-rp
tech.

Of course, if I'm wrong about these points, which is a
decent possibility given my lack of familiarity with
the research or AI code, then by all means I'd prefer
a more featured implementation.






		
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