[Freeciv-Dev] Re: patch: Modified can_build_improvment()

[Ben Webb <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Kevin Brown wrote:

> If the client wants to build something, shouldn't it first query the
> server to see if it's permitted?  Or tell the server that it's going
> to do so and let the server tell it whether or not it worked?  The
> server knows all the rules and has all the information about the game,
> after all.

        Ideally, yes, but this would require a query to the server for
every building type every time you want to change production in a city
(and you'd have to do it for every city if the client had no intelligence,
as different cities may be subject to different restrictions). This is bad
from a bandwidth point of view.

        Also, as has already been pointed out, client-server
communication is (essentially) asynchronous, so this kind of
question-reply communication is tricky.

        The present clients use hard-coded checks, based sometimes on data
from the rulesets, to make these decisions, and I'm not prepared to
completely rewrite them.

        Finally, I think this could be viewed as a "feature". equiv_repl
or equiv_dupl allow you, in theory, to create building types that cannot
be build if a certain building exists in another player's empire on the
other side of the planet. (Presently the checks only prevent you from
building a barracks in a city with Barracks II, for example, but impr-gen
is more, er, general.) Such a ruleset setting would be, IMHO, a bit silly
anyway.

        Ben
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