[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Civserver upgrade building (PR#1585)

[Jason Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 12:55:11PM -0700, dspeyer@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Full_Name: Daniel Speyer
> > Version: CVS 
> > Distribution: Built from source
> > Client: Both (or N/A)
> > OS: Gnu/Linux -- Debian woody
> > Submission from: (NULL) (12.243.200.32)
> >
> >
> > If you develope musketeers before pikemen, your cities will continue to build
> > phalanxes.  This can be very annoying.  This patch should fix it (apply to
> > freeciv/server/cityturn.c):
>
> Looks like I miss something here. The patch looks like it transforms a
> while in a for loop. Where is the catch?
The code works the same in that it follows the list of "obsoleted by" 
units upward from the given unit to see if there is a possible upgrade.
The patch changes a "while" loop to a "for" loop.  It also changes the 
boundaries of the iteration: the old code never iterated over the 
original unit, while the new code does.  Neither of these should change 
the effect of the loop.
At first glance I thought that the old code would stop and return -1 as 
soon as it came to an unbuildable unit; thus if you cannot build pikemen 
phalanx will not upgrade to musketeers.  The new code removed this check.
But on closer inspections I see no such constraint in the original code. 
 Is it possible this has already been "fixed" in CVS?  So I'm with 
Raimar: where is the catch?
Does anyone have a saved game that can demonstrate this "bug"?

-----

As for the proposed change itself, I'm all for it.  Even if it is 
allowed to build units that have been obsoleted, or if musketeers don't 
actually "obsolete" phalanx if you don't have pikemen (Raahul's "upgrade 
path" argument), I think as soon as you discover gunpowder the current 
*production* of phalanx should be upgraded to musketeers.
The only problem is that (I think) the current code checks all the time 
for an upgrade, not just when musketeers become available.  My preferred 
behavior here would be to allow the production of phalanx (this makes 
for more stable rulesets but makes the interface harder), but to make a 
one-time production upgrade when musketeers are discovered.  The player 
could then change production back if necessary.  But, so long as players 
aren't allowed to build obsolute units the lack of an upgrade here is a 
bug (and this should be checked at the server and, too!).
jason