[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Suggestions - scrolling improvements.

[Gaute B Strokkenes <gs234@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 1 Jan 2001, caz@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Jan 2001, Simon Arneaud wrote:
> 
>> Often I find that when, say, I have moved a settler and now want to
>> build a road, the screen will flash from the settler to another
>> unit.  That would be
> 
> If settler have no movement left, you will gain nothing by ordering
> it to start building road. It gets nothing done before next
> turn. (Well, maybe if you are afraid that you will forget why
> settler is there)

...which, incidentally, reminds me of Gaute's Pet Freeciv Peeve #337:
building roads and railroads does not work as in Civ 2.

In Civ 2, whenever you use a Settler / Engineer to build a road or a
Railroad, the work is done immediately and paid for with the unit's
movement points.  If the work is complete, then the road or the
railroad appears immediately.  In Freeciv, this is done by setting a
flag which is checked and acted upon in the server during the end of
turn updated (at least if I read the sources correctly.)

An example:  Suppose that you wish to build a railroad from A to B.
You start by moving an engineer onto an empty tile (1MP.)  You then
hit 'r' to order it to build a road.  Building a road costs 1MP, so
in Civ 2 the road is completed immediately and the engineer is done
with its turn.  In Freeciv, the road does not appear until the
beginning of the next turn.

This difference is particularly significant if you have more engineers
standing by to help build the railroad, since they can use the road
and the railroad to move into position more quickly.  It can also make
it easier to attack enemy cities, since you can move attacking units
next to it much more easily by building a road.

Personally, I prefer the Civ 2 way since it makes it _much_ less
fiddly to build long railroads.


I think that I can whip up a patch that implements this without too
much trouble.  However, is this deliberate, or just a bug?  Some
people may prefer the current behaviour, so it might be sensible to
make this an option.

PS I tried to search the mailing list archives, but they seem not to
be functioning at the moment.

-- 
Big Gaute                               http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~gs234/
Somewhere in suburban Honolulu, an unemployed bellhop is whipping up
 a batch of illegal psilocybin chop suey!!