New Windows Installer and Source Tarball

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Hello Xconquerors,

   I have released a new Windows installer and source tarball for Xconq 
at the usual spot:
   http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net

   This is newer than the 09/26 release from a few days ago. The 
rationale for releasing new packages so soon again was simply that I was 
feeling guilty about breaking the Opal game, and degrading the 
performance somewhat with all games that utilized advances.

   Addressed in this release:
(1) Opal now works again. You will get a warning about a cycle being 
detected in the advances graph. You can choose to ignore it and continue 
playing the game.
(2) All games that use advances should experience no delays on startup 
now. The cycle-checking code has been improved. Also a piece of the 
research goal choice code has been disabled because it was hogging too 
much CPU. This should not adversely impact the choice of goals too much.

   New features (for game designers):
(1) Updated documentation, including on some advances-related things 
that were never documented or were documented incorrectly.
(2) New GDL global variable: 'ai-initial-research-goals' is a weighted 
list of research goals that the AI will evaluate if it currently does 
not have a research goal. The "initial" is perhaps a bit of a misnomer 
since this list can be evaluated at any point in the game where the 
above condition is true.
(3) Examples of using 'ai-next-goal' and 'ai-initial-research-goals' in 
'advances.g'. (I did not make an example of using 
'advance-precludes-advance', since I assume Elijah will probably be 
providing it in his next release of Opal....

   I also reduced the ACP of Elephants in the Advances game in an 
attempt to make that unit type less deity-like and thereby make other 
units such as Chariots more attractive.

   Enjoy,
     Eric

P.S. Since I am not currently checking into CVS, I realize that using my 
updates may be inconvenient to some. If there is an interest, I will 
provide diffs between releases to help ease the pain.