Currently I think the AIs actually only effect the player in 3 ways (OK, other than the psychological impact of the “Booooo” anouncements).
- Affecting the value of a Cure - via demand of a Cure (flooding the market)
- Affectingt the price of an Ingredient (by increasing/decreasing Ingredient saturation)
- Patents - preventing a player from producing a particular combo of Delivery, Cure, and Effect(s) for some period of time
The last, patents, is the greatest impact (IMO) on player’s game play - thanks Tim! But the game would be much more challenging if
we could actually compete AGAINST the AIs. All the info appears to be in game .sav files (all the AI revenue, profit, # drugs produced, etc.).
So I’d like to see a mechanism to actually compete agaisnt an AI , rather than time frame.
In my thinking this would be a modification to the Victory Condition “within years” to have option to change it to “before AI”.
This is probably not a trivial change, as I’m guessing the game sets the time to check the victory condition when the game starts,
and this might require constant checking of victory conditions (or triggered by some events, e.g. “product w/ level X” produced),
but hey, I’m not a Dev, just asking for Features!
Current Victory Conditions in Custom Games:
Within Years (the one I think would be modified)
I believe all the rest would work with this “before AI” change:
Total Revenue
Operating Profit
Products with Profit
Products with Value
Products with Level
Min Cure Rating
Total Products
Pay off Loan
If we had this change, I don’t think it need be limited to “Custom Games”, it could be used in built-in scenarios.