🚀 go-pugleaf

Is it a bug or a feature ?

There is a neat little characteristic of the Old Empire update algorithm
that allows one to use the same civilians twice in one update.  It is
very useful in the early stages of a game when you need civilians.
Here is your map:     -  -  -  -  -  -
		      -  c  g  m  u  -
		      -  -  -  -  -  -
1) Day 1: move 1 military from the capital to 2,0 and 3,0 and designate
          2,0 a mine, and 3,0 an urban area.  You get the map shown above.
	  Also set a delivery route of ore from the 'm' to the 'u'.
	  At this point the only thing in 2,0 and 3,0 is one military.
2) Time Passes - the timestamp in the 'm' and 'u' does not get updated
	  because the workforce is too small.
3) Day 4: Assuming that there were 127 civilians in the gold mine busily
	  mining the ore since Day 1, set a delivery of civilians, zero
	  threshold from the  'g' to the 'm'. Set a delivery of civilians
	  with a threshold of 80 from the 'm' to the 'u'. Now everything
	  is set up.  Do a   mov c 1,0 0 . This pumps the civilians that
  	  were toiling away in the 'g' over to the 'm'.  Now do a census or 
	  two on the 'm'.  The civilians there do 4 days of work, and multiply
	  as if they had been there 4 days.  The overflow over 80 gets
 	  sent into the 'u'. The ore gets pumped into the 'u'.
	  Now set a delivery of civilians with zero threshold from the
	  'm' to the 'u'.  Do a  mov c 2,0 0  and a  mov o 2,0 0  to
	  pump all the remaining civilians and ore into the 'u'.
	  Now the civilians that have already done about 8 days worth are
	  sitting in the 'u' to be exploited again.  Do a census on
	  the 'u' and watch your population grow !

This is a 'simple' example of how one can use those civilians many times.

I know of one case where someone had some very old sectors (timestamp was
weeks older than the current date), and managed to build a harbor and
several battleships all in a few minutes when his undeveloped coastline
was threatened by an approaching raiding party.

We have a proposed fix for this, but before implementing it, I would
like to know if the current empire has the same characteristic, and if
people consider this a bug or a feature. So far the comments locally have
been running slightly in favor of calling it a bug.

Tom Fisher	ihnp4!druxn!tsf