[Freeciv-Dev] Railroads and AI

[Raahul Kumar <z1156937@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Why does the Railroad work like a Startrek teleporter? If playing on the
earth map, rather than build an airport for fast transport from Asia to
Africa, I waste less movement points by using the railroad. Beyond the
obvious fact that Airports should be used a lot more in freeciv than they
are, by removing this instant transport bonus.

The way I was thinking of handling it was to hand a max_rr_square move,
that increments by 1 every time a unit moves by railroad. You could have
it vary during the game to reflect the changes in railroad technology(i.e
switching from old fashioned steam to new fangled japanese bullet trains.)

I suggest having a limit of 18 squares traversable by RR, and with the
appropiate technical advance(Superconducting?), increase it to 27.

This addresses the problem of having all units travel at the same speed,
and perhaps there could be a movement penalty incorporated? For every 9
railroad squares travelled, you lose 1/3 of the units mv. It is not really
possible to cheat the railroad system effectively, because even if a
player gets off after being on for only 8 squares, he cannot traverse more 
squares than if he remained on the railroad. Sounds good? Alternatively
you can have a unit that travels on a RR square lose 1/27 of its mv for
every square.