[Freeciv-Dev] Re: worker allocation bug

["Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

worker_loop() that does the automatic and emergency server allocations
has some marginal ideas about priority. It places undue emphasis on 
production with food only kicking in when it is starving. Trade is not
actively weighted, but may in fact have effects through lux calculations
and the happy initial conditions (quite possibly negative).

ai_find_elvis_tile() and the nearby routines are the nearly similar 
algorithms that drive the server AI. These have a tendency to convert
all surplus workers into scientists or taxmen, so if you decrease the
production or food wants below "starving" reflex levels, it shifts to
specialists. This can have severe repercussions on growth.

The resulting AI strategy is thus to produce lots of small cities with
high production, no need for improvements, and thus a tendency to produce 
lots of military units that engage in heavy warfare.

If you boost the foodneed a point or two so +1 or +2 food is the point
at which "starving" reflexes kick in vs -1 or 0, AIs can actually become
fairly growth oriented.

With larger cities, AIs build lots of improvements, have settlers doing
local improvements vs city founding and become quite pacific, with
military budgets significantly overshadowed by other production wants.

The latter games are deemed "boring" by many, but tend to be won by
reaching AlphaCentauri in the 17th or 18th century, rather than raging
ironclad battles at termination in 2001.

There is some ongoing work to find ways to balance the extremes, and
optimize the degree of effectiveness at either strategy.

Cheers,
RossW
=====

At 04:00 PM 02/05/01 -0700, Thanasis Kinias wrote:
>Greetings.
>
>I've got the worker allocation doing something strange.  A size-one city
>is choosing to allocate its worker to forest, when grassland and
>forest+river are both available.  Upon increasing to size-two, it puts
>both in forest, thereby halting the city's growth.  Shouldn't it prefer
>to allocate to forest+river every time over forest?  And shouldn't it go
>for grassland over forest, if forest will halt growth at size one or
>two?
>
>Sorry I can't be more specific in terms of locating the bug, but I
>haven't really looked at the source files all that much.
>
>I'm running yesterday's CVS with Per's autoconf2.52 patch, on Linux 2.4.17.
>
>I've put a savegame at
>ftp.freeciv.org/pub/freeciv/incoming/civgame+0360m.sav.gz if anyone
>wants to see.  The city in question is Smolensk, player tkinias =
>Russians.
>
>-- 
>Thanasis Kinias
>Web Developer, Information Technology
>Graduate Student, Department of History
>Arizona State University
>Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
>
>Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
>Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
>
>
>