I'm sure that we are all aware that some very serious events are occurring in North Africa and possible the Arabian peninsula.
However, whenever I read a news report of the events, I can't help but hear the "AI vs AI" battle noise from the NES game Genghis Khan. and see the little "war" animation (complete with clashing swords).
When I play [i]Genghis Khan[i], I tend to start as England, take the two European nations to my south, and then invade Africa before pushing east into Europe.
There is also a nice bug in the game (rounding errors) that allows the human player to severely cheat. The game splits each year into 4 quarters (seasons). Each season, you can issue 3 orders in the country that you rule, and 1 order to any nations that you control directly. If you raise taxes, you people will lower their morale. If you give money, morale goes back up.
If your leader is in a country that is well protected from attack, then you can do the following to crank taxes up way high and still keep a high morale. I haven't played this game since the mid-90's so my memory might be off here...
(Nomenclature: 'A-n'. A = season, 'n' = command (1-3)).
A-1) Re-assign ALL citizens to the army, execpt one citizen in each of the other three job roles. Morale will drop.
A-2) Give a little gold (gold spread over so few citizens will make them very happy).
A-3) Move entire army OUT of the country to a neighborring one that you control.
B-1) Crank taxes to 99% (or whatever the max is). The real tax rate will go to something like 53% or so. Morale will plummet.
B-2) Give a fair bit of gold to your citizens. Morale will jump way up.
B-3) Give more gold. Morale++;
C-1) Move troops back in. Morale will go down a little, but sitll be really high.
C-2) Convert troops back to regular citizens (artesians mostly).
C-3) n/a.
I've diagnozed this bug via black-box testing while a child. I've not verified it with a code review (and I doubt that I ever will). But basically, you're abusing some rounding that occurs in a division routine. Also, the game does not properly adjust the morale relative to the tax base when converting troops back to citizens.
A simialr bug can be abused to purchase lots of arms for your army:
A-1) Convert troops to citizens (leave 1 troop left).
A-2) Buy lots of arms. Spend all $999 if you've got it.
A-3) Convert citizens back to troops.
You will now have a large, well-armed army for far cheaper then it would have cost to do it honestly. The game doesn't balance your arms when converting between troops + citizens.
Back to Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen. I can only hope that the situation turns out well for the locals and that they reject attempts by terrorists to rise to power. A free and democratic North Africa (and tip or Arabia) hopefully will be a good thing.
However, whenever I read a news report of the events, I can't help but hear the "AI vs AI" battle noise from the NES game Genghis Khan. and see the little "war" animation (complete with clashing swords).
When I play [i]Genghis Khan[i], I tend to start as England, take the two European nations to my south, and then invade Africa before pushing east into Europe.
There is also a nice bug in the game (rounding errors) that allows the human player to severely cheat. The game splits each year into 4 quarters (seasons). Each season, you can issue 3 orders in the country that you rule, and 1 order to any nations that you control directly. If you raise taxes, you people will lower their morale. If you give money, morale goes back up.
If your leader is in a country that is well protected from attack, then you can do the following to crank taxes up way high and still keep a high morale. I haven't played this game since the mid-90's so my memory might be off here...
(Nomenclature: 'A-n'. A = season, 'n' = command (1-3)).
A-1) Re-assign ALL citizens to the army, execpt one citizen in each of the other three job roles. Morale will drop.
A-2) Give a little gold (gold spread over so few citizens will make them very happy).
A-3) Move entire army OUT of the country to a neighborring one that you control.
B-1) Crank taxes to 99% (or whatever the max is). The real tax rate will go to something like 53% or so. Morale will plummet.
B-2) Give a fair bit of gold to your citizens. Morale will jump way up.
B-3) Give more gold. Morale++;
C-1) Move troops back in. Morale will go down a little, but sitll be really high.
C-2) Convert troops back to regular citizens (artesians mostly).
C-3) n/a.
I've diagnozed this bug via black-box testing while a child. I've not verified it with a code review (and I doubt that I ever will). But basically, you're abusing some rounding that occurs in a division routine. Also, the game does not properly adjust the morale relative to the tax base when converting troops back to citizens.
A simialr bug can be abused to purchase lots of arms for your army:
A-1) Convert troops to citizens (leave 1 troop left).
A-2) Buy lots of arms. Spend all $999 if you've got it.
A-3) Convert citizens back to troops.
You will now have a large, well-armed army for far cheaper then it would have cost to do it honestly. The game doesn't balance your arms when converting between troops + citizens.
Back to Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen. I can only hope that the situation turns out well for the locals and that they reject attempts by terrorists to rise to power. A free and democratic North Africa (and tip or Arabia) hopefully will be a good thing.