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

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christian Knoke wrote:
> 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.

But it also has no effect when only improvements 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.

Well, the concept that you can change production targets at all lacks 
realism.  But this particular added penalty seems realistic to me.

> 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.

You only lose them when switching between production classes (currently 
improvments, wonders, and units).

> 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.

True.  Is this a better solution?  It would have a much bigger impact on 
gameplay (now the penalty is 100% instead of 50%).

jason