I've got a feature request/suggestion/idea based on my experience playing Freeciv. When I play, I put my engineers, etc. on auto settler, so I can spend my efforts on other things. However, later in the game my enemies will start sending paratroopers, instantly killing my engineers. If I put a military unit on the same tile as an engineer, they won't send the paratroopers, but then I have to either track the engineer or turn auto settler off so that I can have my military unit continue to stay with it.
I suggest a "guard" action to solve this problem. Essentially you would click on the unit you want to do the "guarding," click on the "guard" action (or press the hotkey, whatever that may be), and then it prompts you to select the unit to guard. The guarding unit then chooses the shortest route to the guarded unit, and as long as it's guarding, every time the guarded unit moves, the guarding unit follows it and tries to stay on the same square, as best as the movement rules allow. Perhaps when guarding, the guarded unit limits its movement points to match those of the guarding unit, if necessary. And of course, the guarding unit would use its movement points as it moves to guard, just like normal. It wouldn't provide any advantages other than automation, freeing up more time to enjoy the other aspects of the game.
This would come in handy for a lot of other things as well; you could have a battleship guard a transport, or have a military unit that has stronger defense guard one with weaker defense, for example a mech infantry could guard a howitzer, for example.
Thoughts? Would anyone else find this useful? Would this have to be part of the client or part of the server (or both)?
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That sounds like a good idea to me. One suggestion I have would be for the guarding unit to actually move before the guarded unit so you can order the guarded unit to "attack" something, but the guardian will actually do it. That would be convenient.