[Freeciv] some newbie questions about autosettler and anti-smallpox..

[Andy Smith <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

I'm a complete newbie to freeciv.  I've been meaning for years to
get some games organised with my civII-loving friends but have only
now gotten around to trying it out.

Firstly, congratulations people on an amazing implementation of
these rules!  I'm totally hooked and already missing sleep.

OK now down to business.  This email is very long because I know
that some of it is a big topic and I wanted to show that I have done
some research myself rather than just bother the list immediately.

First the easy question: about the "autosettler" mode.  It's been
many years since I played civII so I do not recall if this was in
that game.  When I have a continent full of my cities I like to let
the settlers automatically improve the worked land.  However it all
moves too quickly for me to really be able to tell sometimes if they
are doing the right thing.  Is it generally a good idea to let the
settlers automatically improve land in this fashion?  I realise that
in some cases exactly what to do with the land will not fit any sort
of equation, but is the autosettler generally sane?  

Also what does it mean when a settler brings itself out of the
autosettler mode and waits for commands again?  I have noticed this
happen on continents even when there were city areas not fully
improved still visible.  Does this mean that it got too complicated
for the algorithm and it wants me to tell it, or does it mean that
the algorithm has programmatically and correctly worked out that
there is no point working the land further?

I'm sure those questions were easy for old hands at freeciv (though
I couldn't find any details anywhere in the manuals).  I think the
next one will be harder..

We come to freeciv as a bunch of CivII human-vs-multiple-AI players.
All those years ago we were used to games that lasted a very long
time and encompassed most of the game's features.  So, we expect the
games to last past 500AD, we expect to see some of the more modern
units.  In short we did not expect the phenomena of smallpoxing that
I have tankfully so far only read about in the freeciv tutorials and
not seen first-hand.

Now, we don't play on public servers, just on our own server with
each other, so this hasn't become too prevalent yet because everyone
is trying to play it like CivII single player.  They're not building
cities within 2 squares of each other.  Yet.

I've no desire to start a flamewar, I just get the impression from
the tutorials (and especially Mike Jing's statement that it has
caused him to lose all interest in freeciv), that some people think
this is a terrible flaw/misconfiguration, and I would like to hear
some opinions from others.  Don't get the idea that I;m some
ungrateful newbie who can't be bothered to research: I've actually
been googling this topic like mad over the last 3 days or so and
have read many pages about freeciv smallpoxing.

The problem is that they all seem to be from the same small number
of people, and they all only vaguely mention how it might be cured.
Mike's own page on freeciv.org lists a bunch of settings but it also
mentions that a patch is needed, and then doesn't provide it.  It is
also unclear if he meant that the patch was needed for versions
PRIOR to 1.14 and now his patch has turned into standard server
settings.  Mike's ideas claim to solve it with unhappyness, yet some
other pages ("The Italian Style") claim to solve it by setting
higher thresholds for when cities produce trade.  All very
confusing.

So before I spent any more time delving into this I thought I would
just ask if this is a real problem, and if so, how you go about
solving it, if that is possible with server settings or if it
requires a patch.

All we want is CivII-like server settings where every game is not
"build 15 or so cities 2 to 3 squares apart, get to monarchy or
republic, get ships and some kind of attacking unit, and swarm your
neighbours immediately".

I hope that all of this email made sense and was not too annoying.
Thanks for reading.

Regards,
Andy