[freeciv-ai] Re: Borg AI.

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 02:55:13PM +0200, Per I Mathisen wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > Is there a reason why you can't use these guesses with influence maps?
> 
> No, as I said, it is possible to use influence maps in freeciv, but it
> isn't as easy as the standard influence map model, where you just map
> units into a map struct and mesh the values out. The really hard part is
> to figure out where the units could be hiding, and the influence map
> doesn't really help there.

The influence map shouldn't help with the estimation of the enemy
units. But to estimate the danger to your cities.

> > 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.
> 
> I was thinking more high-level. ie we try one attack on continent X with Y
> units and fail. So next time we try continent 2 instead. Or something.
> Attacking repeatedly on the same spot is a typical AI failure that we
> should avoid.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> That doesn't sound right. Often the enemy will attempt to rush its units
> into the single spot where you concentrate your attacks, leaving other
> cities less defended.

But if you don't counter this concentration of enemy units the enemy
may decide to not only use these units as a defense but will attack
with them.

        Raimar

-- 
 email: rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 "Many of my assistants were fans of Tolkien, who wrote 'Lord of the Rings'
  and a number of other children's stories for adults.  The first character
  alphabet that was programmed for my plotter was Elvish rather than Latin."
    -- from SAIs "life as a computer for a quarter of a century"