[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#10880) Bugs in 2.0.0 beta 2

["anonymous user" <thompsbj2@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=10880 >



Hello, 

I've never reported bugs before, but there
is a serious game bug I saw when I tried the
new freeciv beta release, so I thought I should report
it:

It is possible to cheat with caravans.  

Version 2.0, unlike 1.14, lets you "Enter Marketplace"
with caravans, even if the two cities involved 
cannot form a new trade route.  The bonus trade
and science is still obtained.  The bonus is high
enough that it can be worth it to Buy caravans in
cities for the sole purpose of getting the bonus. 


What i did to exploit the bug when playing
against the AI:

1. built a large city on one side of the continent,
with the Colossus to increase trade (City A)
2. build another large city on the other side of 
the continent (city B)
3. gave both cities 4 good trade routes.
4. built a railroad between the two cities
5. built a number of small cities connected to the 
railroad
6. On EVERY turn, bought 1 caravan in every small city
This was about 8 caravans per turn (i had about 12
cities total)
7. each turn, i moved each caravan by rail to city A,
made the caravan change "Home City", then moved the
caravan to city B and used the "Enter Marketplace"
function to get the bonus.

buying caravans costs no more than about 218 gold.
The bonus in gold was larger than this.  Plus, several
hundred science PER CARAVAN was obtained.  Even 
Though my civilization was small, i was able to crush
the AI simply because the caravans
generated enourmous amounts of gold and science each
turn. The more caravans i bought, the more gold
i made each turn.


I read the code, and it appears that the bonus
is directly proportional to the mahattan distance
between the cities. being on another continent does
not
matter. So on a large continent, with a long railroad
line, the bonus could be much larger than the cost
of buying the caravan, and the turn-around time for
the investment is only 1 turn.


Other less important bugs:

Auto-settlers in the 2.0.0 don't like large cities. 
As a city grows, they think food is less and less
important.  There is a function in the code
that checks the size of the city when determining the
importance of food. I was able to get auto-settelers
to do what i wanted by fixing this function to
always return the cached value for a city size of 4.


When at peace, it is still possible to steal
technology from another player without hurting your
reputation.  It is not possible to "expel" a diplomat
from your territory without going to war.  I'm 
not sure what the best solution for this is.

thanks,
anonymous freeciv user.






                
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