[Freeciv] Re: default production

[John Wheeler <jdwheeler42@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- "Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > The default production in a new city is a combat
> unit. Does anyone
> > ever want to do that after the first few cities? I
> never do,
> > which makes this default rather unhelpful.
> 
> [snip] 
> Maybe the first build code should take this into
> consideration, and
> suggest settlers instead of defender when you have
> both enough food and
> contact with no hostile civs?

What I build first definitely depends on the situation
in the game.  With generator set to anything other
than 2, I always build warriors first, because before
I did that, several times my first contact with
another nation was one of my cities being taken over
by their horsemen.  Likewise, if barbarians are not
set to 0, I make sure every city has at least warriors
(preferably phalanx on border cities) before the onset
of barbarians.  Othertimes I'll build workers,
diplomats, or settlers first.  Usually, what I do for
defense is build a barracks in my highest production
city, then build good defensive units there and ship
them to other cities, and using them to escort
settlers, so I already have a defensive unit the
moment a city is built.

The bottom line is, I think deciding what is optimal
to build is too complex to hard code (of course, the
AI needs to have something.)  I would like to see a
resurrection of buildfirst and citypref worklist
functionality, with one difference: rather than having
specially named worklists which then have to be
changed all the time, make those flags which can be
set in the worklist editor dialog.  Then it would be
quite simple to change what the default is when the
situation changes.

++JohnWheeler

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