[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7249) Auto settlers don't irrigate or mine

["Jason Short" <jshort@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7249 >

>
> <URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7249 >
>
>> [per - Sun Feb 01 21:09:33 2004]:
>>
>> On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Jason Short wrote:
>> > If the value is judged to be less than the value of maintaining the
>> > settlers, then the settlers are released from autosettler mode.
>> > Presumably the autosettler code is recommending that we disband them
>> or
>> > use them to build a city.
>>
>> They are released so that the human can take over control. The AI does
>> not
>> have a separate autosettler mode that it can 'release' them from, it
>> just
>> calculates what is best from turn to turn.
>>
>
> I don't really like this behavior.  I feel that when I, a human player,
> put a settler/engineer on auto mode, it will remain on autosettler mode
> until I reach out and click on it.  If there's no more accessable
> terrain to improve, it should fall asleep and wait for something to
> happen, such as fallout or pollution.

I tend to agree.

Certainly it annoys me when an auto-settler comes out of automode just
because there's nothing *nearby* to work on.  If I had something better to
do with the settler I would have done it myself.

> Just personal preference, though.  This would require splitting up the
> consideration of terrain improvements code into human-player and
> ai-player sections, where the only difference is that the human-player
> version doesn't take into account upkeep costs, and possibly
> discounting, since those are the player's problem :)

No, I think the AI would have *separate* code that determined whether the
settler should be taken out of auto-improve mode.  Although it would
amount to the same thing in the end.

> My other reason for patching the code (besides the obvious) was that a
> friend of mine was complaining that the ai doesn't improve its land at
> all and it was making it a pushover.  With my version 2 patch, I found
> that if the AI wasn't at war, it would eventually build a huge band of
> settlers/engineers and engage in a mass land improvement campaign.  I'm
> not quite sure if this is what my friend wanted.  :)

Does the auto-settle code affect the *creation* of settlers?  Or was it
just that the AI wasn't doing anything else with the settlers?

jason