[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Removing citizens working tiles

["Peter Schaefer" <peter.schaefer@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/9/06, Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The single design mistake in Freeciv that I think has given us the most
> trouble is citizens working tiles. It gives lots of rather pointless
> micromanagement, unless you ignore it or use automanagement like in Moo3,
> which is not fun.
Well, it depends on whether the target audience / goal is to develop a
multiplayer game or a single-player game. Maybe it also depends on the
year of the game/number of cities you have.

The main issue you seem to take is the effort spent on global
optimization of worker placement. Maybe that is what really should go
and be replaced by local optimization. I guess that doesn't sound very
smart yet, so let me find some arguments:

In single player mode against the CPU, micromanaging is fun,
especially in the beginning.
With many cities, it becomes a nuisance.

So how about a compromise, allow for some micromanagent in the
capital, for example by combining the proposal of a static city income
with one extra worker for the capital, which can be placed?

This would keep the worker placement GUI code alive in the main trunk,
while the civ compatibility optimization code for workers could be
tuned down to just do local optimization for sqrt(n) out of n cities
every turn. Perfect worker placement would be left to war clients.

Also, making worker placement possible everywhere regardless of
borders or tile ownership would prevent border/worker update storms.
Then on the other hand, besieging a city would not work anymore -
maybe it could be reenabled by adding an Alpha Centaur style remote
worker unit, which would simply transfer all resources to its home
city, or adding a block&pillage command(which would harm your own
production as well).

Ah yes, and how would game balance work? The moo2 output averaging
mechanism will produce a very different pattern of city output. On the
other hand, one that works against smallpox a bit.

--peter