[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#11185) ugliness in is_my_zoc

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11185 >

is_my_zoc is very problematic.

My attention was first drawn here because this function uses is_server. 
  But fixing this isn't easy, and is_server is really the least of the 
problems in this function.

The function is omniscient in the server but works in the client as 
well.  Hence the is_server check.

However the function should not always be omniscient in the server!  It 
should respect AI capabilities and shouldn't cheat unless it's supposed 
to.  This can only be done in the server.  Moving it into server/ might 
makes sense (with the client having a separate, almost completely 
different function).  But the function is called in several places 
(including PF) in common which is hard to fix.

One possible solution is to make the AI handicaps into tangible things. 
  Rather than allow the AI to see unknown tiles when the handicap is 
set, instead mark those tiles as known.  Then the common code would work 
with it without having to know any more.  This would also allow 
client-side AIs to work with handicaps.  However there are several 
problems with this idea as well.  If a human were to /take an AI player 
they would get all of the knowledge of the map from the AI player.  Also 
AI handicaps are a little more fine-grained than just revealing the map 
(although this could be fixed).  For the plan of changing handicaps into 
*player* effects - or simply of allowing human players to have handicaps 
- this is the only solution however.

-jason