[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#5672) Changing production categories when having to much shields

["Christian Knoke" <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 01:39:49PM -0700, Jason Short wrote:
> 
> [ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - Mon Sep  1 18:51:48 2003]:
> 
> > Set production in a size 1 city to settlers. Wait until you have 200
> > shields, change the production to warrior and set the next item in the
> > worklist to foo (foo item from improvement/wonder) You get the warrior
> > and have ~ 190 shields for the wonder or improvement. That shouldn't be
> > possible. You should lose 95 shields when doing that.
> 
> As discussed in a separate thread, I think this is a bug.  The
> unpenalized shields you get to use the turn after building something
> should be restricted to just those shields produced on the last turn
> when it was built.
> 
> So if you have 196 shields and change your production to warrior, with a
> surplus of 4, then you'll end up next turn with 190 shields (196+4-10)
> and you'll still be making a warrior.  But if you change to a wonder,
> 186 of these shields will be penalized (at 50%) so you'll end up with
> just 97 shields.

I don't think that the current behaviour is a bug.

When you are building a factory, collect a hundred shields, and then switch
to Barracks III when they become available, you're having a leftover of 60
shields. But you have worked for each of them. All what you are doing is
delay a decision (what's being built). That means that the outcome of the
improvement is also delayed, which is, in a growing civilization, always a
disadvantage. It's like putting money on a bank account: you gain
flexibility, but you loose profit.

If you penalize the change of production in the suggested way, you make it
harder to build a well-structured civilization, because there is less
flexibility. It will also be frustrating for the player to loose his shields
in a way that is not thoroughly transparent.

Note, that this will also encourage smallpoxing, because it has no effect
when only units are built.

It also lacks some realism. If at all, you have to penalize the change in
production from one improvement to another, too. A factory is not easily
usable as barracks.

Unit production will be often upgraded. You can produce tanks, and switch to
howitzers when available. The loss of the exceeding shields is unnecessary
and unmotivated.

The case of a city size 1 with zero food surplus producing infinete shields
is clearly an extremum, even when I don't think this is used as an effective
strategy. It's probably more effective to let that city grow to size 3
first. But the 'surprise' effect can be negative. This case can be addressed
by not allowing a city's shield stock to grow over the production target's
costs. It is the only case where the shield stock can exceed that limit.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke          * * *          http://www.cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.