[Freeciv-Dev] Re: More problems with troops in the field

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Christian Knoke wrote:

> Please send a savegame if you have one, that I will test.

OK, since I sent a savegame already, I figured I might as well go look for 
instance of the other problem - the units not being correctly displayed - 
right now while I am still right in that same 1946 turn that I just saved. 
I haven't moved anything yet, I just did the save and sent it and am now 
scouting around looking for instances of the incorrectly 
reported/displayed units.

Annoyingly, I cannot find an instance. Maybe doing the save somehow made 
it tidy up such things preparatory to the save? Or possibly it might never 
be present at start of turn, it might evolve during the play of the turn. 
If so I might have to write a blow by blow of all the moves I make up to 
the first time it happens...

I don't recall actually having ever seen it happen over on the continent 
where the Americans are, it seemed to start when I took a Danish city long 
ago and I seem to see it mostly (or maybe only) when over in the 
north-east area of my home continent, where I have swept over the Danes 
and am now grabbing from the Americans the cities that the lost 
civilisation known as the Boers built, so I'll start over there and see if 
I can get the units to start being incorrectly reported...

Click on the spy out on the road between Vejle and Kbnhavn, for me it is
shown on the units region of the main window as a spy with 3 movement
points on grassland-with-road, its homecity being Esbjerg. That is
probably correct. Now click on the city of Lborg which is a bit north of
there, and click on the spy unit in that city. Its unit popup does not say
what kind of unit it is nor how many movements points it has nor what city
it calls home. (Its home is, I think, Lborg, because I try hard to always
home my spies any time they stop anywhere so I wont forget to do so before
using them.) Now activate that spy. The units area of the main window
still reports the grassland with road and the homecity of Esbjerg. Whereas
in fact it is still in Lborg, which is a forest with a pheasant and
railroad. The movement points happen to appear correct only because both
units happen to be spies and neither has moved yet. In actuality, the
movement points shown are most likely those of the spy out on the raod in
the grassland not actually those of the focussed unit which is the spy in
Lborg.

I am now going to actually quit the game load the save and check that I 
can reproduce this if I actually load the savegame like you will have to 
instead of simply looking at the map while still in the same session of 
play that I just saved...

...Yes, it still happens. I only disconnected from the server and quit the 
server and restarted the server though, I didn't actually quit the client 
because that takes forever on this little old machine, having 
probably consumed most of the swapspace by now. Quitting the client on 
this box always takes a long long time. But I did do it before to try to 
fix this misreported-units problem and it didn't fix the problem.

In case you've lost track - I probably would have by now - I am using 
freeciv-1.14.0beta3-1.i386.rpm (with SDL_mixer-1.2.4-5.i386.rpm which was 
needed in order for it to install on this RedHat 8.0 box).

Hmmm, I noticed when I quit the server and up-arrowed to get my civserver 
command back that I was playing from a save made in 1938 not from the 1941 
save. I made the 1941 save during that same session of play. So I also 
have now quit again and loaded the 1941 save and looked at Fredericton. 
Evidently I saved after correcting the disorder by turning a citizen into 
an entertainer. But whether or not I put the entertainer back to work I 
only see one unhappy face next to the in the field units, not two happy 
faces as I had seen originally and as I reported earlier. I am looking at 
the supported units section of the city window displaying the city of 
Fredericton. I see there one unhappy face beside the bomber none beside 
the battleship. Originally, as I reported, there were two beside the 
battleship and none beside the bomber. So maybe my suffrage wonder is 
working now or something. Yet on the happiness page of that city display 
it still makes no mention of suffrage. I have suffrage in Toronto. I am a 
democracy so units in the field should be two unhappy faces not one, 
right? But the bomber is still in Fredericton having just been built so is 
just one unhappiness due to its field-unit nature, none yet for actually 
being away from the city.

Because I am a democracy though, units in the field should produce two 
unhappy faces not one shouldn't they?

Hmmm here is a twist, I move the bomber out of the city and go back into 
the city display to look. In the supported units area The battleship has 
two unhappy faces by it and the bomber is not visible, I have to click the 
">" thingie to scroll to the rest of the units. Doing that shows just the 
bomber, it has two unhappy faces. Then I press the "<" to go back and 
re-check the battleship. It now has no unhappy faces. It now seems there 
is just one unit that has the two unhappy faces, originally it thought it 
was the battleship because, I'm guessing, it knew it wasn't displaying 
the bomber so didn't attribute them to the bomber, it attributed them to 
the unit I could see. Now that I have gone into the second "page" of 
supported-units to see the bomber it knows I know about the bomber so no 
longer attributes those unhappy faces to the battleship, prefering to 
leave them with the bomber even though I am back on page one unable to see 
the bomber. Nasty, confusing, maybe it IS applying my suffrage to one of 
the two units and just not saying so anywhere.

Now I go look at Shakespear's Theatre in Toronto. It would show unhappy
faces by lots of units I thought, but no, I think I was confused between 
the unhappy faces on the supported units display and the unhappy people in 
the happiness page. It shows lots of unhappy people in the happiness 
display on the line about units away from home but no unhappy faces on the 
supported units display. I go back to Fredericton to check that there, and 
notice that even though I am opening the Fredericton window anew it still 
seems to remember that it already showed me the bomber with the two 
unhappy faces so this time it does not put them on the battleship like it 
did before until I actually looked at the second page of supported units. 
Hmm, so it will maybe expect me to remember that hours later provided I am 
still in the same session of play? I dunno, seems kind of nasty. Looking 
at the happiness page I see that sure enough there are two citizens 
unhappy due to units in the field. Then it applies Bach's and Cancercure 
leaving two unhappy citizens. No mention of suffrage. But, check where the 
battleship is. It is at sea, on a coastal tile next to an enemy city. That 
counts as in the field doesn't it? So it looks like it is silently 
applying the suffrage way early on, before even making anyone unhappy. Is 
that what is meant to happen? They dont actually get unhappy then get made 
content afterward by the policcestation or wonder, they just dont get 
unhappy in the first place so dont need to be mollified?

Maybe the suffrage is working correctly afterall and I just didnt 
understand how it was meant to be applied?

-MarkM-





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