Re: [Freeciv-Dev] city plan patch

[Corin Anderson <corin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> There is no production lost in my implementation... I'm not sure
> why there would be, except in cases where the client waits several
> turns before switching from military unit to building improvement.
> I can't think of any good reason for this to occur except when
> the user is doing it manually and forgets to switch production.

I speak only from game-play experience; this may be different
programmatically in the client.  But, even if I change my build target
immediately after I've built a new unit, (change to, say, an improvement),
I suffer the lose-half production penalty.  And it was this production
loss that I expected with a client-side worklist feature -- the client
doesn't have any "privledged" way of asking the server to change a city's
production target type without losing half the shield stock.

But, from the way you describe your implementation (ie, with the added
city_info packet immediately before a city builds a new thing), you may be
able to avoid this problem. 

> If your method eliminates this penalty altogether, that would actually
> require greater micromanagement, since one would be forced to set up
> worklists or lose production.

This is actually one of my personal motivators for worklists:  I want to
auto-switch between units and improments in a city, but I really don't
want the leftover shields from the previous turn to be penalized b/c I
couldn't switch fast enough.

(If anyone thinks that I've changed the rules about production penalty
with this feature, please let me know now.)

Another aspect of the worklists is that, if the human player opts to not
use worklists at all, then gameplay is no different than if the feature
didn't exist.  Worklists should make managing a city only easier.

> Anyway, please look at my GTK front end for city plans; it is very
> easy to learn and use, so you might be able to use some of the same
> GUI code for your server side queues.

I will!

Corey