Tweaking advances.g (was Re: New Windows Installer and Source Tarball)

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

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> Makes sense.  I don't remember in what order I was in the habit of
> doing Joinery, but perhaps not at all (it appears to be a dead-end
> advance, since Horsemen are just as easy to get as Archers, and
> generally as good or better at combat).

I don't think much of Archers either. But anything that can 
reasonably increase the number of deps required to get to 
Elephants is probably a good thing, even if some of the units that 
are enabled along the way are not effective.

> Joinery already depends on artisanry and carpentry.  Barring a new set
> of construction advances, I don't really see anything else which fits
> the bill (it needs to be 4th generation, at least the way the rp
> values are set now, because 3rd or lower will be easy to get by the
> time one is thinking of going for Elephant, which is 5th generation).

Okay, thanks for looking.

> > Additionally, there is the animal training/guidance aspect; perhaps
> > some animal guidance skills (like a caravan) should be required.
> 
> That would appear to be already covered; elephant depends on a whole
> line of animal advances (horse, donkey, camel, etc).

Yeah, I realized that was probably what those advances represented 
after I wrote the above.

> Another thing to tweak is construction points.  Right now the game
> board quickly gets overrun with units, and it is really tedious to
> move them all.  

Agreed. However, implementing the ability to handle multiple unit 
selections and to more handily set formations might largely 
mitigate this tedium.

>There are some commented out values for construction
> points in advances.g which I thought were an improvement, but Hans
> didn't like the slow start to the game.  The slow start could be
> speeded up by making a few early units cheaper (say, slingers and
> spearmen - I'd probably leave colonizers kind of expensive as they are
> the source of the exponential growth).

Currently the generations are pegged to a 2^n curve, IIRC. Perhaps 
we need to make the curve more of a slanted s-shape so that the 
last few generations don't take forever to research. I say this, 
because there is a limit on city densities (due to their 
increasing size and reach into the terrain), and so one cannot 
continue to settle new cities at a pace that keeps up with the 
growth of research costs. This is especially true if two sides 
are the last ones remaining and in a deadlock situation.

> We shouldn't go too far overboard on elephants; since Elephant is a
> dead-end advance, it does make sense for the units to be kind of
> powerful.  

Agreed. My intention is not to tune the Elephants into oblivion. 
They are, and by all rights should be, a powerful unit.

>Making the player choose between Elephant now (for
> short-term gains) or setting themself up for Phalanx some turns from
> now is an interesting trade-off situation.  

I have found that, in practice, I can wipe the board with 
Elephants before I can even finish researching Phalanxes (let 
alone Legiones).

It would be nice to make Elephants (immediate gratification) 
versus Phalanxes (serious firepower, but later) more of a 
tradeoff. 

>I suppose if we really
> wanted to take this to an extreme, we wouldn't seek to have Elephant
> depend on existing advances like artisanry, but instead to have its
> own set, which don't mix with the advances which take you towards
> Phalanx.

That's a thought. If you have a specific proposal, I am all 
ears.... (Or just check it in, and if I like it, I will adopt it 
for my branch of the sources.)

Eric