[Freeciv-Dev] SV: Preparations for other AIs and humans

["Erik Sigra" <freeciv@xxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: freeciv development list <freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 1:00 PM
Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Preparations for other AIs and humans

> It would be good if any client can easily access these basic kinds of
> automation. Sometimes more flexibilty would be useful. The human may
> specify "auto settle and emphasize on roads/railroads and also build
> them between my cities" because he knows he will attack with cannons
> in 15 turns.

I know about 2 different ways to build infrastructure:
1. Build worker units and assign jobs to them. This is the way it works in 
Freeciv.
2. Mark jobs that need to be done and build workers. The workers then do the 
jobs. This is the way it works in The Settlers games.

I prefer the 2. way. But they can be combined like this:
* Players can make a plan for how they want to use a particular tile. It can be 
something like "City", "Irrigate+Road+
Farmland", "Road+Mine+Railroad", .... The plan would be stored in the tile 
record (warning: could be memory hungry).
* Workers set to auto will go from job to job until they can't find any more 
and become idle.
* Workers not set to auto can be assigned jobs (like now).

Computer players and player scripts could easily be programmed to always assign 
the same plan to the same terrain type, overrriding it with "City" where 
adequate.