[freeciv-ai] Re: Ferry dating agency.

[Gregory Berkolaiko <Gregory.Berkolaiko@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Per I. Mathisen wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> > This is about how ferries find their passengers and vice versa.
> > Several approaches are possible, for example:
> >
> > 1. Ferries do PF search which goes inland too.
> > 2. Land units do PF search which goes into the seas.
> > 3. Land units head for the nearest shore.Ferries do PF search up to
> > coastal tiles.
> > 3a. As in previous, but unit head for the nearest port.
> > 4. Ferries head for the nearest port.Land units do PF search through
> > their continent only.
> 
> This depends also on how you do targeting. Lets forget fstk targeting,
> because that is going away anyway.
> 
> So we have:
>  1) Rampage - no ferry, easy.
>  2) Hunting - we only "ferry" air units for hunting purposes. We should
> special case this. See hunting patch.
>  3) Army - see below.

I was more thinking about
  4) Non-military travellers, like Settlers (+their bodyguards).

> For armies, some extra CPU to assemble armies is ok. Our main objective is
> to land as big an army as possible in as short time as possible, so
> putting more than one unit into the ferry is probably necessary. We should
> also bodyguard the transport. This requires some changes to the ferry
> code, and also means that we should choose solution 1 above (ferry
> searches for cargo).

I don't see how method 1 is better.  I would even say the contrary, army 
has a meeting point, a port and searches for ferry nearest to the port, 
which is method 2.

> For building up an army, we first need to know our attack needs. If the
> target is a walled city, we need IgWall or very high attack value units.
> And so on. Second, we need to know our transportation needs. If we need
> ferries, then ferries should be assigned to the army and/or built until
> they can transport the necessary number of attackers. Third the
> transporters should be look for and pick up the necessary attackers, and
> everyone look for & acquire necessary body guards. Fourth, when everything

I think "Third: army group set a pickup point and directs ferry and army 
units to this point".  This goes along with the concept "passenger drives 
the ferry", army group being the passenger here.  This concept is the most 
stable IMO.

I think I will stick to making units-look-for-ferries function and test it 
on settlers.  Then, when we have at least some army code in place, we will 
adapt ferries.

G.