In earlier versions of Freeciv, there were two very useful options that seem to have been removed.
The "Return to homecity" option, which obviously sent the unit back to its homecity
The "Attack automatically" option, which caused a unit to move out and attack whenever it sees an enemy unit close to the city, and then returns to the city
If these options would be re-implemented, I'd be really happy
To make it more clear: I'm not talking about the server option(beause that kind of causes all units to do that all the time), but about the command for the unit itself.
I played a longturn game during some turns with autoattack option enabled, but I don't remember well how it worked exactly.
Maybe fortified units couldn't autoattack.