====== Strategy: Cropfinder ======


^Purpose  | to find and record resource information about fields in a specified area of the map |
^When to use  | when you want to find croppers in a specific location |
^When to avoid  | when you want to look at large areas, use external analysers instead |

A simple Cropfinder strategy to look for 15, 9 and the Travian 3.5 "7" crop fields, it reports these as events to the console and but in the process builds a file of all resource information it discovers.  This includes basic information about other Villages as well as empty fields.

An optional parameter selects the output format. Current supported output is txt or csv.  The default is a text file that has all information appended on the end even if VilloNanny is restarted. The information contains resource field counts and also Village information and population. The information is time and date stamped so that appended information can be seen. For settled villages the information includes a formated string that can be used for the [[farmizzator|"Farmizzator"]] or [[farmrotator|"FarmRotator"]] strategies.  The csv format also includes the URL for the village or valley so can be used for direct access from a suitable spreadsheet.

It checks each valley in a grid around a nominated start point and writes findings to cropfinder.<format> in the logs directory. The default with no parameters is to check the single 7x7 around the village owning the strategy. 

The maximum radius is in terms of 7x7 map squares but the search does each 7x7 so it will round up to the next square. As it searches 7x7 with the start at the centre it therefore searches 1, 9, 25 7x7s depending on the radius.

It makes some attempt to emulate a person doing this and returns to to the main village page between each 7x7 and uses minPauseMinutes as a short delay as if having a rest between searches.


**Notes**

  * On Travian 3.5 maps it can spot both available and settled croppers and only accesses the map pages.
  * Prior to Travian 3.5 it enters each empty valley, which takes a significant time to run
  * maxRadius is same units as co-ordinates but searching is done in 7x7 blocks
  * There is no limit on maxRadius, it will do this in periodic blocks pausing for "minPauseMinutes" between each 7x7 as a background activity but is not recommended for large searches

==== Syntax ====

<code xml>
<strategy class="CropFinder" desc="DESCRIPTION" enabled="true" 
          maxRadius="RADIUS" minPauseMinutes="MINS" 
          runWhile="RUNWHILE_UID" waitFor="WAITFOR_UID" uid="UID">
            <start x="STARTX" y="STARTY" />
            <from  x="FROMX" y="FROMY" />
            <output append="APPEND" format="FORMAT" />
</strategy>
</code>

==== Attributes and parameters ====

|DESCRIPTION  |some optional description of your choice  |
|WAITFOR_UID  |See [[index|"Strategies"]]  |
|RUNWHILE_UID  |See [[index|"Strategies"]]  |
|UID  |Unique IDentifier. See [[index|"Strategies"]]  |
|RADIUS | maxium no of squares to search from start location |
|MINS |minimum time in minutes between searching each 7x7 - default 2|
|STARTX STARTY |location for the centre of the search - default selected village |
|FROMX FROMY |point of origin to calculate distance each site is from - default start location|
|APPEND |append to (true) or overwrite (false) everytime the stategy is run from the start - default true|
|FORMAT |output file format, see above - default txt|



==== Examples ====

Search your 7x7 and generate a .txt file
<code xml>
   
<strategy class="CropFinder" desc="Local" enabled="true"  uid="sV1cf" />
</code>

Search around 100,-100 as if your village was at 10, -10 and overwite any existing .csv file
<code xml>
   
<strategy class="CropFinder" desc="Find 9 and 15 Croppers around given location" 
                enabled="true" maxRadius="10" minPauseMinutes="1" uid="sV1cf">
            <start x="100" y="-100" />
            <from  x="10" y="-10" />
            <output append="false" format="csv" />
</strategy>
</code>