[Freeciv-Dev] Re: finding distance from one player to another

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Jason Short wrote:
> IMO it is better to look at the average distance from the cities of one
> civilization to that of another. Distance is a clearly defined concept.

Agreed. What you describe above is what my first version did. I don't
remember who it was that convinced me otherwise, but someone did. The new
version:

/**********************************************************************
  Calculate average distances to other players. We calculate the
  average distance from all of our cities to the closest enemy city
  (except we do it in reverse).
***********************************************************************/

This ensures that we don't get discouraged if the enemy creates some silly
insignificant cities far away from us. We want to know how fast we can
start the carnage, to avoid sending units across the entire map to attack,
and that is how fast we can reach its first cities, or in this case, first
city. I think the above algorithm achieves its purpose just fine.

Of course, it is for the most part used as a tie-breaker, so discussing
the finer points of it is only so useful.

  - Per