[freeciv-ai] Re: Borg AI.

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 10:30:26AM +0200, Per I Mathisen wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > How does the current AI and how would another AI answer the scenario:
> > "I want to get this enemy city. How strong it is defended and how many
> > units do I have to send?".
> 
> The current AI just checks... it is omniscient!
> 
> A non-omniscient AI would have to remember units spotted on the continent
> and assume their are still around and remember the last spotting of the
> city and assume it is still as well/poorly defended. Or it might simply
> make an educated guess depending on information we have about the techs
> the player has.

Is there a reason why you can't use these guesses with influence maps?

> When our non-omniscient AI spots a city (say with an exploring caravel),
> we don't know how many defenders the city has nor what kind they are. We
> just note if it is defended or not. Often a number of cities will be
> undefended, so can we go for them.

> When we don't find undefended cities, things get more difficult.

But an AI has to cope with the difficult but common case.

> Often we will simply have to do an attack in the dark without much
> knowledge of the enemy's real strength. Then we can use the
> knowledge of how this attack fared to determine the quality of the
> defenses of the area.

So you attacked and found that there is a defending Archer. You killed
it but the city is still defended. What information does this give to
the attacker about the remaining defending forces? IMHO nothing except
that the city doesn't currently have stronger defenders than Archers.

IMHO a good way would be to assume a fixed number (1 or 2) of the best
defenders in the city and than attack if you have collected enough
forces to get the city. If you fail increase the number and retry. If
you get your first city you can also learn from this. You know how
many defenders and which type their were. You can now use this to
_estimate_ the defense of other enemy cities.

        Raimar

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