[Freeciv-Dev] Re: civ 3 impressions

[Greg Wooledge <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen (Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> Workers become a royal pain in the ass on huge maps that are well
> developed. I'm sure I had fifty of them, and the AIs had plenty more. My
> head got dizzy watching those automated little critters move around each
> turn.
> 
> There got to be a better way, perhaps by using build points like Civ:CTP.

Disclaimer: I've not yet played Civ3.

My thought on this is that you should be able to call up a map of your
civilization (or use the main map somehow...) and use a sort of "editor"
on it.  This would be similar to a map-creator's editor, but much less
powerful.  The edits you can do to this map would be limited to the
functions that a worker/settler/engineer/former (call it what you like)
can perform, given your current level of technology.

Your changes to the map would be the instructions to your workers.
They would (in the ideal case) be assigned by the AI to accomplish the
tasks you described in the most efficient manner possible (least wasted
movement points).  (This would be a fairly heavy-duty AI problem; you'd
need a heuristic capable of solving the travelling salesman problem,
and yet you'd also need fairness scheduling so that you don't spend all
your time on one city while all the others stagnate.  Is it any wonder
why your automated workers always suck so much?)

And of course, you should still have the option to move and assign your
workers by hand, every turn, should you choose to do so.

Oooh, and while I'm dreaming: whenever a new terraforming operation
is complete inside a city radius, the tile-workers of that city should
(unless you dictate otherwise) *automatically* shift themselves to take
advantage of it!  I get *so* tired of learning that for the last X turns
my city has been taking in one less food than it could have been, simply
because the workers are sitting on the un-irrigated tile instead of the
one I irrigated back in 850 AD....  (Ah well, I suppose the CMA that's
under development will address this concern.)

-- 
Greg Wooledge                  |   "Truth belongs to everybody."
greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx              |    - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://wooledge.org/~greg/     |

pgpp0nk5rv0xV.pgp
Description: PGP signature