[freeciv-ai] Re: Generalised improvements AI support

[Raahul Kumar <raahul_da_man@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 08:13:18AM -0700, Raahul Kumar wrote:
> I'm only worried it might get a little too complicated. The flags code is
> simple to understand, simple to code and simple to extend. The gen. impr.
> approach is none of the above. But this is another discussion.
> 
> Simple to extend? *Bullshit* cough. I seem to remember two people who've
> already run hard into Raimar's decision that the current no of flags + 2
> was enough.
> 
> We already agreed that it has to be extended.

We haven't agreed on whether that was the right approach. Per and yourself seem
to just want to extend the current no of flags. The problem is that the flag
approach requires someone who understands C to use it. That skillset is not
that common among Freeciv users.

Also, the flag approach swiftly becomes very complex. It takes multiple flags
to implement something as clear and simple as unit_defend. In fact, unit_defend
gets rid of pikemen,horse, Aegis and numerous other effects.

> > And simple to understand: Have you read combat.c? The convulutions I had to
> go through to support Aegis properly etc is fast reaching the point where the
> > flags system cannot cope.
> > 
> > And worst of all, the flags system is only open to two coders, Per and
> myself. Have you seen anyone else send in patches? The AC approach is better.
> Moving stuff into rulesets is the obvious and smart approach.

> I don't have hard numbers but I have the feeling that this will eat a
> lot of CPU.

I suspect this might be the case, but performance comes after getting it
correct.

> Ben: If I understood this correctly you can't give numbers how much
> gen-impr affects an autogame because the AI hasn't been adopted?!

There's Andi Payne's patches. Per has them. In truth, the current AI doesn't
cope with ANY major ruleset changes well. This is hardly the fault of gen-impr.

>       Raimar
> 
> -- 
>  email: rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>  "Python is executable pseudocode. Perl is executable line noise"
>     -- Bruce Eckel

Aloha,
RK.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would
it?
Albert Einstein

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