[Freeciv-Dev] A problem with carrying over leftover sheilds

[John Paul Rodman <jp@xxxxxxxx>]

From a player's standpoint, I really like that leftover sheilds are
carried over when a city completes building something.  For one thing, it
means that there's no need to micromanage sheild production to make sure
that none is lost when something gets built.  However, it seems like it
creates a significant loophole.  It undermines the 50% penalty for
switching between units/improvements/wonders.  If you start building a
very large improvement, buy it, then switch to a small improvement, then
the next turn you will have a huge stockpile of sheilds which you paid
improvement prices for, but which you can now use to build anything.  You
can even pump out several units in a row through this method.  Admittedly,
it does take an extra turn to do this, and you have to have all the money
up front, but it seems like a pretty big loophole to me.  

If we are going to leave this in, we might want to add another "penalty"
for switching the working item: 
If the item being switched to is of the same class as the item currently
being worked on, and we would have more than enough sheilds to complete
the new item, some percentage (maybe all) of the excess should be lost.
If the current item already has excess, then maybe the new item should
maintain at least that much excess.  
Unfortunately, this seems a little awkward.  

Does anyone else think this is a problem worth fixing?


JP Rodman