From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 29012 invoked by alias); 28 Sep 2004 18:24:59 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 28974 invoked from network); 28 Sep 2004 18:24:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ob2.cmich.edu) (141.209.20.21) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 28 Sep 2004 18:24:57 -0000 Received: from egate1.central.cmich.local ([141.209.15.85]) by ob2.cmich.edu (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i8SII341019847; Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:18:03 -0400 Received: from leon.phy.cmich.edu ([141.209.165.20]) by egate1.central.cmich.local with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:24:33 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by leon.phy.cmich.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2750870034; Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:24:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 19:12:00 -0000 From: Eric McDonald To: Jim Kingdon Cc: xconq7@sources.redhat.com Subject: Tweaking advances.g (was Re: New Windows Installer and Source Tarball) In-Reply-To: <200409281634.i8SGYId25590@panix5.panix.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Sep 2004 18:24:33.0603 (UTC) FILETIME=[67098930:01C4A588] X-CanItPRO-Stream: default X-Spam-Score: -0.9 () X-Bayes-Prob: 0.0001 X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg01269.txt.bz2 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