Re: [Rails-devel] Test report: 1835 in Rails 1.5.1

[Stefan F. <ste...@we...>]

This is a  follow-up to the one of the issues in the 1835 test report:

I think we should highlight somewhere in the wiki and the comments for the 
restrictions that the tile and token laying rule enforcement and highlighting 
currently suggest and allows some illegal tile and token lays. However both 
mechanisms should NEVER disallow or forget to suggest allowed and illegal tile 
lays. The latter are always bugs and should be reported. The other round is 
currently unavoidable and have to be handled by the players themselves.

I quickly went through the 1835 game file and I have not found a situation 
where the tile/token highlighting forgot to suggest a valid hex, but it is 
easy to make a mistake here.

So if John or Erik could possible point out some cases the algorithm missed 
upgradable or buildable hexes in that test game, that would be helpful.

Stefan


Some longer remarks on the token and tile laying logic:

There are currently several parts of code that try to add some help for tile 
and token laying. However they are independent from each other and focus on 
different aspects.

A) The main rails game engine suggests Tile and Token laying actions are based 
only on the knowledge of available token and tile laying actions of the 
company.  It currently has knowledge of the map configuration, availability of 
tiles and/or the network of the operating company.
After a tile lay or token lay it checks if the company has sufficient funds 
available to execute the action.

B) There is some support code in the Rails GUI to guide the user through the 
tile selection process. However it can only considers the selected hex and its 
local neighborhood, but has no knowledge about the network of the operating 
company and/or if the company has sufficient funding to execute this action.

C) The highlighting of suggested hexes for tile and token lay is then again 
simply based on the operating companies network only: It highlights all hexes 
that are reachable by the current network and it checks if there is any tile 
that is in the upgrade path of the current tile. It however does not take into 
account the specific neighborhood of the current hex and/or if the company has 
the required funding to executed such an action.

A perfect solution would merge all those checks into one. However this is not 
so easy as it might seem in first place. On a second look it is a non-trivial 
task to find out if and where are valid tile lays considering all constraints 
(operating company network, operating company funding, tile upgrade charts, 
tile availability, local neighborhood restrictions for tile upgrades, checking 
for the permissive or (semi-)restrictive upgrade rules etc.).

> 
> > 9. The Pfalzbahnen owner is being offered opportunities to lay a token
> 
> using
> 
> > its special power even when impossible (because the company currently
> > operating has run out of tokens and/or already has one in the Pfalz hex).
> 
> Yes, that's a detail that still needs to be addressed.  I have no solution
> for that yet. See also your next point.
> 
> > 10. The Map window now allows a "Special" action to close private
> 
> companies
> 
> > voluntarily.  I don't think this is legal in 1835.  (I ran across this
> 
> while looking
> 
> > for a command to use Pfalz's power to lay a tile.  I think this "Special"
> 
> menu
> 
> > would be a much better place for tile- and token-laying powers to be,
> 
> rather
> 
> > than make the user click "No Tile" or "No Token" an extra time every
> > turn. But I suppose that's a style issue.)
> 
> This is a stop-gap to enable closing privates that do not automatically
> close according to the rules, such as the PfB above. This also applies to
> the OBB.
> Once all that works correctly, this option will be removed.
> 
> > 11. The tile-laying logic is mostly correct but still suggests tile lays
> 
> where the
> 
> > new tile is rotated in a way that makes it not connect to any station of
> 
> the
> 
> > company.  And there are situations where some tile lays are allowed but
> > nothing gets suggested.
> 
> Indeed the tile laying process needs several refinements.  We all know, and
> if it was easy it would probably have been done already.
> 
> > (This game, the Pfalz owner did not have a major company before Phase 3,
> > so I was unable to verify whether it still offers the Pfalz tile-lay on
> 
> every
> 
> > major-company turn of that player during yellow phase, which should never
> > happen because the tile lay is impossible then.)
> > 
> > 12. The token-laying logic similarly still makes mistakes.  It suggests
> 
> every turn
> 
> > that BY lay a station marker in the south side of Nurnberg- Furth, even
> > though it laid one on the north side in OR2 using the NF.
> 
> That would obviously be a bug.
> 
> > (Oddly enough, in a problem that resembles point 3 in reverse, the five
> > PR tokens that are supposed to be reserved for exchanging minor company
> > tokens
> > *do* show up as available to be built.  Next time I'll try to build them
> 
> in
> 
> > arbitrary locations and see what happens -- both then and when the minor
> > companies merge and there aren't any PR tokens for them.)
> 
> Interesting question: are these PR tokens really reserved?  I don't believe
> the rules say so.
>