[Freeciv-Dev] Re: borders patch (PR#1870)

["Ben Webb" <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 09:18:15AM -0700, Anthony J. Stuckey wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 07:42:06AM -0700, Ben Webb wrote:
> >     The borders code determines the national ownership of each tile
> > at the server, and sends this in tile_info packets to clients. Hence,
> > the approach has been server POV for some time. The fog of war bug is
> > caused because the server only sends tile_info packets for non-fogged
> > tiles; in the latest patch, updated ownership information is now sent
> > for fogged tiles as well. As I've mentioned previously, this does mean
> > that you can guess at enemy city locations rather accurately (for
> > example, if you scout out an island and then move on and leave it fogged,
> > you can tell as soon as another player establishes a city on that
> > island, because the tile ownerships will change). I think this is how
> > SMAC behaves.
>       This seems like a bug to me.  Why should FoW tiles ever be updated
> without being within a unit/city visibility range?

It's a balance between 'true' fog of war and the amount of player
confusion. ;) The borders look very odd if they obey strict fog of war -
see Jason's earlier post and screenshot.

> >  In any case, my suggestion for a possibly more realistic
> > solution is to send tile ownership information for non-fogged tiles ONLY
> > if those tiles are owned by you, or they directly border a tile owned by
> > you. This way, you know your own borders exactly, but don't learn extra
> > information about remote players, except where you can see their
> > territory or they directly border your own tiles. Comments?
>       Sounds good to me.

Well, this appears to contradict your previous statement, but...! I've
done exactly this in the current version of the patch. Feel free to give
it a whirl...

        Ben
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