[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#6403) massive workers to specialists conversion

["rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is probably no single solution that is any better or worse than
another in cases like this, though I think the current one is more an
artifact of the implementation than by explicit design.

Under democracy, this can stop the fall of the government, which is a
far worse effect, and will deplete the food stock hence city size to
a stable level as rapidly as possible. The citizens should be taxmen
or scientists, though and not entertainers, based on Civ needs/wishes.

Under less restrictive governments, disorder + maximizing food will
hopefully stabilize the city until a solution like adding a trade
route, police unit, pacifying improvement or global tax rate change
is undertaken. If none of these are likely scenarios, then starvation
is still a valid means of recovery from the problem and should be in
the ranking system.

There are likely other strategies that can be devised, ranked and an
appropriate choice made by the advisor or server auto-default code,
though in the case of a human player, minimizing server auto-action is
always a prime directive I would hope. Servers auto-arranging workers
other than the one that might be displaced by some unit action, or
(de)assignment due to worker birth/death always strike me as very bad.
The exception is for various random disaster scenarios, which I don't
think Freeciv has implemented yet.

Flagging such a problem, or setting a bit on any server auto-action to
highlight the problem/change in some way is not a bad idea, whether or
not this is done by the disorder flag/condition or inventing new ones.

Cheers,
RossW
=====

Genevieve Gracian wrote:
> Sometimes, when a city can't be "normally content" and have 0+ food
> surplus, all/most workers are converted to specialists.
> 
> I think that the city should be thrown into disorder instead (at least
> to get the player's attention).
> 
> In the savegame, connect as "a" and add the settler to aid the city in
> growing.
> 
> --
> G. Gracian