PC Active 2009 July/August/PC Active NR.227.iso/Software/Games/windows/Freeciv-2.1.9-win32-gtk2-setup.exe/doc/README.cma

Text File | 2009-03-25 | 10.6 KB | 229 lines

  Citizen Governor (aka Citizen Management Agent, or CMA)
==================================

The CMA is a rather new tool built into the GTK+ client of Freeciv
version 1.12.1. It is designed to help you manage your cities, i.e.
deploy the workers on the available tiles around (or make them
scientists, taxmen, or even entertainers), to get the most out of the
city. You can switch the CMA on or off at any time for any city, but
there are some handicaps (explained below), if you have CMA'd and
non-CMA'd cities nearby. In any case you need an actual 1.12.1 or
above server; the CMA won't run with server version 1.12.0.

The heart of CMA is an optimizing algorithm, that tries to deploy the
workers of a city in such a way, that a user-defined goal is achieved
as much as possible. You know probably, there is already a kind of
optimizing, when you open a city, and click on the center tile (the
city symbol) of the mini map. This optimization tries to maximize
mostly the science output; but it doesn't care about disorder.

The new City Management Agent goes far beyond this old form of
optimizing. First, it performs this task everytime anything changes
with the city. If the city grows or shrinks, troops go in or out,
tiles get irrigation or mining, or are occupied by an enemy, the CMA
becomes active. Second, it supports all kinds of optimizing, like
production (shields), gold, science, or luxury. Third, it gives the
player a fine-grained control over this, with the possibility of
setting constraints for any kind of city output. The latter includes
the constraint of celebration, which makes it very easy to let your
cities grow, even in harder times. The forth, and probably most
valuable thing in war times, is that is keeps your cities content,
preventing them from revolt.


  Usage
=========

You can set up the CMA for a city by opening the city window and
clicking on the CMA tab. On the left side, you can choose a preset for
a specified goal, on the right side you can specify more complex goals
by moving the sliders. You can choose a preset at first, and then
modify it. Once you have created a new setting, you can add a preset
name for it. This is not required, but very useful, since you can
watch and even change the city's setting from within the city report,
if it is given a name. Don't forget to save settings (in the Game
menu), when you've created new presets.

The sliders are of two kinds: the rightmost sliders are factors, which
gauges how much one product is worth compared to the others (e.g how
much shields are worth with respect to everything else). The leftmost
sliders are constraints: you can command the city not to lose food,
e.g. by setting the surplus constraint to zero; and you can allow the
city to lose gold by setting the gold surplus to -3 e.g., and urge
them to make at least 5 shields per round by setting the production
surplus to 5. The most powerful constraint, though, is the Celebrate
contraint, which makes the city celebrate at once (which usually takes
effect the round after you change it).

It is obvious that the CMA can't fulfill all these constraints in
every case. Whenever the constraints can't be fulfilled, the CMA quits
its service for that city, giving a message: "The agent can't fulfill
the requirements for Berlin. Passing back control." You then have the
choice of either managing the city on your own (which has some
drawbacks, see below), or open that city and change the surplus
requirements so that they can be fulfilled.

When you have made a setup for a city, you need to click on
"Control city" to switch on the CMA. If this button's text is greyed,
either the CMA is already active, or the task is impossible. In the
latter case you see dashes instead of numbers in the results block.
If you ever want to switch off the CMA deliberately, click "Release
city".


  Advanced Usage
==================

There is not much experience using the CMA yet, but some common
remarks may be helpful. Usually the goal(s) of your cities depend on
the phase your game is in, whether you want to spread widely, grow
quickly, research advanced techs or wage war. You may want to set up a
high factor for science to research, or a high shields factor to
produce units. The highest factor available is 25, that means: if the
shields factor is set to 25, and other to 1, the CMA prefers a single
shield over 25 gold (or trade also). This is pretty much because money
can buy units too. That also means that the CMA is indifferent about
producing gold, science, luxury, and food; but when you wage war, you
usually prefer gold or luxury. So it's probably a good idea to set a
second (or even third) preference for the city's output, e.g. gold
factor 5. That still prefers 1 shield over 5 gold (and 1 gold over 5
food or anything else).

Constraints aren't useful in all cases. If you want a high income,
it's probably better to set the gold factor to 25, than to set a
minimal surplus of 5 or so. Because a big city can make more gold than
a small one, you'd end up setting a different surplus for each city.

However, if the shields surplus of a city is below zero, it cannot
support all of its units any more. You will lose some of the units the
city supports. If the food surplus is negative, the city will starve
and eventually (when the granary is empty) shrink. This may be
intended, but if the city supports any settlers, you will lose them
before the city shrinks. Constraints can also have a warning function.

Which constraints can be fulfilled depends widely on the global
science, tax, and luxury rates. E.g. a gold surplus >= 0 is easier to
fulfill with a higher tax rate than a lower one. You should always
consider to change these rates, when you going to change the CMA
settings for the most of your cities.

Hint: To avoid acidentally releasing your cities, when you change the
rates, it is best to do so from within the tax dialog rather than from
the rates display in the main window.


  Drawbacks
=============

The CMA is a very powerful tool, which not only releases you from the
micromanagement of your cities, but gives you more performance than
you have ever seen (well, for most players).

There are some drawbacks, though. Once you've switched on the CMA, it
grabs any good tile it can get. So you encounter very hard times
trying to manage a city nearby a CMA-controlled one. This is true for
the city window and the main map worker's interface as well. If you
want to have CMA-controlled and "handmade" cities, they probably
should be on different islands.

There are several situations where the CMA can't fulfill the
requirements just temporarely, e.g. when you move a ship from one city
to another, or when an enemy walks through your country. The CMA
passes back control in these cases, and you have to reenable it
manually. A general approach to prevent this might be, to set the
minimal surpluses as low as possible (-20). Of course you must be
careful with the food and shield surplusses.

While the CMA does a really good job for a single city, no tile will
ever be released for the good of another city. Also, the CMA'd cities
are computed in a more random order; the results may depend on it and
change, when a recalculation is done (when tax changes e.g.). So, no
guarantee is given that the overall results are always optimal.


  Settings file
=================

The client allows the user to load and save preset parameters for the
agent. Choosing "Save Settings" from the "Game" menu will not only
save your general options and message options, but it will save any
changes you made to you CMA presets as well.

The format for the options file (usually ~/.civclientrc) is as follows
(in case you which to change these presets manually, i.e. with a text
editor).

Under the heading [cma], is a "number_of_presets". This should be set
to the number of presets that are present in the options file. If you
manually add or remove a preset, you need to change this number as
appropriate.

After this, is an array that houses the presets. Here is the header:

preset={ "name","minsurp0","factor0","minsurp1","factor1","minsurp2",
"factor2","minsurp3","factor3","minsurp4","factor4","minsurp5",
"factor5","reqhappy","factortarget","happyfactor"

so the order of the preset should be as follows:

name of preset, minimal surplus 0, factor 0, ... ,
require city to be happy, what the target should be [0,1],
the happiness factor

Currently there are 6 surpluses and factors. They are:
0 = food, 1 = production, 2 = trade, 3 = gold, 4 = luxury,
5 = science

Also currently, "factortarget" is not changeable within the client,
see "client/agents/cma_core.h" for more information.

The array should be terminated with a '}'.

Here are 21 presets you can use if you can't come up with some on
your own:

"Max food",0,10,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max production",0,1,0,10,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max trade",0,1,0,1,0,10,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max tax",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,10,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max luxury",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,10,0,1,0,0,1
"Max science",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,10,0,0,1
"+2 food",2,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 production",0,1,2,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 trade",0,1,0,1,2,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 gold",0,1,0,1,0,1,2,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 luxury",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,2,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 science",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,2,1,0,0,1
"Max food no gold limit",0,10,0,1,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max production no gold limit",0,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max trade no gold limit",0,1,0,1,0,10,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max gold no gold limit",0,1,0,1,0,1,-20,10,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max luxury no gold limit",0,1,0,1,0,1,-20,1,0,10,0,1,0,0,1
"Max science no gold limit",0,1,0,1,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,10,0,0,1
"Max food+prod. no gold limit",0,10,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max food+prod.+trade",0,10,0,10,0,10,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"Max all",0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1

here are 6 more that have been added as an afterthought:

"+1 food, max prod. no gold limit",1,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+2 food, max prod. no gold limit",2,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+3 food, max prod. no gold limit",3,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+4 food, max prod. no gold limit",4,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+5 food, max prod. no gold limit",5,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"+6 food, max prod. no gold limit",6,1,0,10,0,1,-20,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,1

and even more, some with multiple goals:

"research at any cost",0,1,0,5,-20,1,-20,1,-20,1,-20,25,0,0,1
"celebration and growing",1,1,0,25,-20,1,-20,12,-20,1,-20,1,1,0,1
"grow at any cost",1,25,0,5,-20,1,-20,1,-20,1,-20,5,0,0,1
"research and some shields",0,1,0,8,0,1,-3,1,0,1,0,25,0,0,1
"shields and a bit money",0,1,0,25,0,1,-3,3,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"many shields and some money",0,1,0,25,0,1,0,9,0,1,0,1,0,0,1
"shields and some research",0,1,0,25,0,1,-2,1,0,1,0,8,0,0,1
"celebrate and grow at once",1,1,0,25,-20,1,-20,1,-20,1,-20,8,1,0,1

Last updated: 9 Jan 2002